Basically you're creating simple apps with summary statistics - they call them "dashboards". When you have a button that changes colors - they call those "indicators". You can also swap columns with "alternate columns".

There's back button support, and support for 90 degree rotation (landscape/portrait).

There's support for integration with existing apps on the iPhone (like calling numbers, sending e-mail, mapping via Google Maps, etc.)

The iPhone is running OS X, but there is no SDK - you can only do web apps for Safari.

Quite a few big vendors detect the iPhone and serve custom apps just for the iPhone.

You want to keep things small, compact - information at a glance.

The data in 4D iPhone apps can come from a wide variety of sources - variables, arrays / DCS (Developer Created Selections), fields, etc.

AT&T's EDGE network is not the fastest out there, so you have to keep things light.

All that's needed is the 4D Ajax Framework 2.0 which works on both v2004 and v11.

Rules to keep in mind...

• Keep it to one task per page
• Use minimal graphics - EDGE network is a bit slow
• Hide the address bare to make things look native
• Disable pinching to make it seem native, not a web app
• Have large clickable areas
• More information in landscape

Setting up an iPhone app is largely done in the web browser - you handle the layout there. (There are things that have to be done in code, but the UI is largely done in a browser until you want to drop down and tweak things).

The business indicators can be soft coded with developer hooks, so instead of setting the button to red or green based on a hard coded value you can do it based on the result of a method. If you use developer hooks realize the hooks act on all indicators - so you have to trap for which indicator you're handling.

If you use alternate columns, the business indicator colors can be different for the alternate column than for the primary column. But remember you can't hide/show the alternate column and do something else (like call the person) at the same time.

Realize that you can also link to a normal web page/app (not iPhone optimized) on clicks. That's the closest you can get to drilling into detail pages.

The apps are completely customizable - there's a bunch of HTML, CSS and Javascript files on disk that can be tweaked to meet your needs. The Javascript files have a lot of the basic configuration data.

In terms of CSS, Safari (and iPhones) support CSS3. Currently Safari is the only browser that does support CSS3, but CSS3 is amazing and gives you a lot of powerful features. Since your app is only for iPhones, you don't need to worry about other browsers not supporting CSS3.

Their interface doesn't support paging, so make sure you set the max records so you can see all the records you want, but not so many that you have problems downloading.

The UI editor they have is set up so the first three columns are visible when vertical, and additional columns are available when horizontal. However, you can tweak the column widths if needed.

When you tweak the look and feel - don't touch the HTML files - just the CSS and Javascript files.

If you want to test in a browser, download Safari 3 - it's the closest to the iPhone. There's also iPhoney by a third party vendor.

You can also group results on the page and have group headers and group footers with summary statistics. The summary stats can take method calls which let you put anything you want in there.

Cookies are not supported at this point.

At this point think of iPhone support as version 1. It's just about simple reporting - no data entry at this point. But because of their release model (lots of quick updates), you may see new features more quickly than you'd think.

If you want to update the iPhone address book or calendar with data from 4D do it under OS X to iCal and Address Book and then the iPhone will update from there. It's a little clumsy, but it will work.

Our first cell phone provider was Sprint. The calls really were crystal clear and we liked them a lot. But when our contract ran out was around the time we were launching netterimages.com and I wanted to be able to have an affordable wireless data plan and Cingular was offering "unlimited data" for $20/month and they promised me that I could use my cell phone as a modem, so we went with them.

I didn't use the plan much - mostly just when I went on vacation... Then about a year into things I'm on vacation and try to use it and it works for a while and the stops working. Same thing happened the next day. I call tech support and after a lot confusion I'm told I'm not allowed to use my phone as a modem. I told them they had promised that I could when I signed up for them and gave me Cingular Connection Manager to let me do it. Then they told me that the terms of the plan had changed. I told them I wanted out of the contract and they said that I'd have to pay a penalty for leaving early. To put it gently I told them that was absurd - that they'd breached the contract by changing the terms. They said they had the right to change the terms of the add-on plans, and that I could drop the data plan any time I wanted. It was the core contract for voice calls that I was being held to. But I signed up with the voice plan because of the data plan... That's just plain slimy and I swore we'd leave and go back to Sprint at our first chance.

But when the time came we stayed with Cingular. I kept going to Sprint's web site trying to find a phone I liked, but I wanted something PDA-ish and couldn't imagine myself being happy with any of their phones. I really wanted to switch to them and tried really hard to find one of their phones that I would be OK with, but all of their phones were underwhelming.

The other option was Verizon, but in the prior year we had had customer service problems with them as well. They had a bunch of faulty copper lines coming into our building and had more people subscribed for DSL in our building than they had copper lines to support them. As a result, whoever complained would get a good line and someone else would get one of the bad ones. After having our DSL go out 4 or 5 times over about 3 months, I was frustrated. One time I called tech support and prefaced my remarks by saying I was incredibly frustrated and was literally told "Well, an attitude like that isn't going to help", when all I had said was that I was frustrated. Another time one of the customer support people hung up on me and put me back to the beginning of the queue.

But that was just what was just what was fresh on our mind. Over the 16 years I was a Verizon customer I had all sorts of problems with them. And of course now they've shown their true colors by trying to put Vonage out of business by going after Vonage with overly broad patents that probably shouldn't have been issued in the first place (the Patent Office shares a hefty amount of blame on that one as well).

Given that we were considering Cingular after what they had done, I figured we'd consider Verizon too, but in the end Cingular had the phone I wanted (a Nokia E62), so we stayed with them. But thanks to Cingular the phone isn't as good as it could be. The European version, the E61 has built in Wi-Fi, but Cingular wants people to pay for expensive cellular plans, so they had Nokia take Wi-Fi out of their version.

Not surprisingly, Cingular continues to do stupid things... Graywolf noticed the other day that they have a stated policy of not allowing people to link to their website unless it's in a positive context. This is absurd. In other words, they think they could go after me for the fact that I linked to them in this blog post (using a 'nofollow' of course). The web just doesn't work that way...

Needless to say I'm still hoping Sprint gets their act together in the next 18 months and we can switch back to them, but I'm not holding my breath. Cingular is definitely head of the pack on phones. They have the E62, a bunch of cool Sony Ericsson phones, and they'll even be the first ones to get Apple's iPhone.