There are two distinct ways to develop applications for Apple's iPhone, the top tech gadget of the year. Programmers can choose to create optimized web applications using web languages, or to write native programs using the iPhone SDK. Rather than seeing this as an either-or proposition, developers should consider the choice a continuum and pick the right tool to create each individual program.  In this talk from the 2009 Emerging Communications Conference, Christopher Allen of iPhoneWebDev.com breaks down the pros and cons of each method as well as the tools to support them.

With iPhone web applications, programmers can enjoy all the advantages of the Internet, including ease of development and deployment, speed of updating, and off-line server access. Meanwhile, with iPhone native applications, programmers can immerse themselves in a sophisticated development environment, dig deep into an object-oriented language, and access the iPhone's built-in utilities, like its accelerometers and its GPS. This session highlights the advantages and disadvantages of each style of programming and discusses ways to hybridize them, creating integrated projects that utilize the best of both worlds.