I see lots of unanswered questions in the iPhoneWebDev Google group. People are developing mobile Safari web apps and finding out how limited the platform is. I’m having good luck so far, but have found that frugal is absolutely required.

Yesterday’s iPhone/iPod touch firmware updates seem to fix the most obnoxious of the early release bugs. My favorite fix? The music player no longer randomly crashes while browsing the web. Safari seems snappier too.

Here are a pair of tech talks on mobile Safari web development (part 1, part 2, and PDF notes). A choice quote:

Probably the tastiest morsel of information I got from the Apple iPhone Tech Talk was hearing Mark Malone explain that Apple developed all of the iPhone native applications, such as the Stocks, Clock, and Weather apps, using Canvas. It makes sense now when one understands that Apple developed Canvas as part of their Mac OS X Dashboard SDK for creating widgets. Who knew?

Here’s a list of file types supported on mobile Safari, and my Del.ico.us stream of iPhone development links.

My iPod touch “development” hardware arrived today. I’ve been more excited by this toy than any I can remember, as it seems like such a disruptive leap in technology. And once the hardware was unpacked and set up, it was no disappointment: it’s the most enjoyable computing device I’ve every touched.

So what have I liked so far?

• It’s fun, and the interface is fall-over obvious
• The web browser works really well
• The screen is perfect for video
• iTunes store and uTube work better than expected
• Wifi works better than my HP laptop’s

What don’t I like?

• No easy local file storage (offline eBooks might be tough)
• Closed OS (ignoring the current hacks in the wild)
• Smudges easily
• Google reader doesn’t run very well
• No Java/Flash
• Selection of uTube content is limited

This device is perfect for me. I can read eBooks online, read news, watch some video, and listen to my music library. It’s also a tool I can use to test iPhone/iPod touch applications for work.

Update

The iTouch can view PDF files (which was one of my main questions before I bought it).