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Thanks for the very thoughtful comment. You bring up some good points about how some of the large web apps out there are approaching their specific technical challenges.

I’m not sure that it’s going to continue to play out the way you suggest. But, then again, who can predict the future?

When it gets down to it, these apps have their core data/content, then it’s just the delivery mechanism that changes. That’s really what we’re debating here.

I think in time it really will come down to dedicated apps versus a “responsive-ish” approach for a couple reasons. The main problem with the model that you describe, which yes, is the way several large sites are currently approaching the mobile experience, is that it’s the worst of both worlds.

For brevity’s sake, let’s say the shorthand arguments about apps vs. the web are “apps:: fast, but closed” and “responsive sites:: open, but slow”. Then what is the point of creating a native app that simply loads a mobile website? You are negating the advantages of either approach.

The gmail app that you mention was truly bad – for this exact reason. As several people pointed out – it doesn’t do anything you can’t do through the mobile site (with the exception of allowing push notifications).

You are having to go through the app process, only to have a window to your mobile site? That doesn’t do anything for anyone. And from what I’ve heard in reaction to the gmail app, users know it.

I think that the larger players will realize that wrapping apps around mobile sites leads to a bad user experience, and will eventually shift away from them. Now, maybe someone like Google or Facebook WILL have the resources to make mobile-specific sites tailored for each and every device out there (and not be responsive), but that still doesn’t make much business sense. There could be a business case that I’m not seeing, of course.

We shall see!

Great post, but I somewhat disagree on with your conclusion. I’m developing a responsive website at the moment and while I think that it’s definitely the way forward, I don’t think that “mobile design will sift out into two paths: apps and responsive design”.

There’s a third path which companies seem to be adopting, which is to create a specific mobile site, then use that as the core of their app. That’s what Facebook are doing to cover multiple platforms on mobile – the news feed in the iPhone app is, for all intents and purposes, just their mobile website. Google’s Gmail app on iPhone – which isn’t great – is also just a window frame to their mobile site.

Maybe apps could start using responsive designs as the ‘glass’ in their window frames, but I doubt it. Using a website in that way requires it to be heavily optimised. While responsive design is going to be great for 90% of sites, I think the heavily transactional ones like Facebook and Gmail will still use mobile-only sites.

Looking back at their acquisition of Typekit, I still am not totally optimistic. However, one reason to think that they’ll help Typekit succeed even more, as opposed to languish, is that Adobe is a company that understands fonts, and their importance. Fonts and font design are core to what Adobe is, and where it came from. Hopefully that means leadership at the company will allow Typekit to keep doin’ what it’s doin’.

The cautionary tales of other startups dying tend to be in situations where the new owner had no business buying the startup in the first place. Exhibit A: Yahoo!’s many confusing acquisitions. I don’t see Adobe misunderstanding Typekit in that way.

On the other hand, Adobe has demonstrated a shocking amount of real adaptation and ingenuity anda much more standards-based approach in the last six months than I can remember them ever doing before. Twice in the last few months I’ve thought, “Wow, that’s a great thing to push into the standards [their CSS shapes model and their HTML5 Shaders proposal],” which stands in stark contrast to my previous, “Adobe, not again” response to most of their web announcements. Somebody high up has clearly gotten the message that the future of the web is standards-oriented, not plugin-driven, and accordingly they’re focusing that way. Will Flash be an integral part of their web future? I’m sure. Is it the main thing they’re emphasizing and talking about right now? Thankfully, no.

If they can keep that vision, I’m not worried about Typekit, except perhaps on an agility level. Here’s hoping Adobe recognizes the value of startups acting like startups and doesn’t attempt to (for lack of a better, real word) corporatize them.

First off – regarding Chrome/Win 7 – what kind of bug are you running into? I have to confess that the font combinator is a bit of a hobby project, so I’ve not been as rigorous with browser testing as I would normally be.

Second – if you want to take the JavaScript and mash it up – go for it! It’s not terribly complex. Just out of curiosity, what kind of features are you trying to accomplish?