I’m writing this on my iPhone*. It’s so much easier than going and booting up my heavy, 15″-screened laptop. I can just sit here comfortably in a reclined position and let my thoughts direct my thumbs to articulate what I’m thinking. Writing, editing, looking up lyrics to songs to punctuate my post with cheesy classic rock references. It’s great.

What I’m thinking about is Apps. Like every buzzworthy “latest thing” to happen every two years (“Mutimedia”, “Broadband”, “Online Video”, “Immersive Brand Experiences”, “3D/PaperVision”, “Augmented Reality”) “Apps” are very hot.

You can’t go a day in advertising without overhearing, “You do Apps? We do Apps. Do they have an App? Can you make an App? That’s a killer App. We need an App.”

However, the real rage isn’t Apps. It’s the fact that personal computing has gotten tiny. And because it’s gotten so tiny, it’s gone mobile. It used to be awesome to carry around your computer in the form of a laptop. Now, at 40 years old, for me it’s nothing more than a pinched nerve in waiting.

What’s awesome is carrying my computer in my hand. Now I am on my computer almost every waking moment. I’m not proud of it, but I’m not alone. It’s an epidemic. It’s also a marketer’s orgy of possibilities too amazing to be true.

I can pull up by the curb
I can make it on the road
Goin’ mobile
I can stop in any street
And talk with people that we meet
Goin’ mobile
Keep me movin’

It’s this type of freedom (celebrated by The Who about the time I was born) that is driving the App craze. But I think Apps are a fad. I think mobile content is bound for the browser.

In 1998, we used to make Apps. They were called Projectors. We were doing very cool, processor intensive stuff using Macromedia Authorware and Director, but it wouldn’t run in browsers. And if it did, it took too long to download. So in order to run our work, our clients would copy files from CD-ROM to their computers. We’d drop a cute, customized “icon” on their desktop and when they double-clicked it would launch an interface full-screen, no browser.

Sound familiar?

Projectors went the way of the dinosaurs quickly. Our stuff started running in browsers, mainly thanks to Flash. Once that happened, it was unanimously preferable to access content directly at URL addresses. Who wanted to litter their desktops with bright, colorful, even attractive icons of Projectors? Nobody.

It’s been that way ever since.

Well, sorta. Ever since many months ago. Suddenly, our stuff isn’t running in browsers anymore because the browsers are primitive mobile versions made for primitive mobile computers. This is déjà vu all over again.

The moral of the story? The sooner we can deliver great mobile experiences in the browser the better. People want to search for brands and products “on the internet” not “in the App store”.

* I wasn’t bold enough to post this from my iPhone using the WordPress App. Needed to lean on my heavy, 15″-screened laptop browser.