The site owner wouldn't have to charge for the app (unless I missed something). They just now have a native app for their website. Native app interaction speed and offline use are obvious advantages over using the blog in the mobile browser, so there's definitely value here. And the number of WordPress sites is so huge (over 70 million) that there's undoubtedly a market for this.
Unless the app auto-updates its content to be sure it is always in sync with the website, having native app speed and offline use grows increasingly less desirable the farther out you get from the date the app was created. For Wordpress sites one would expect new content daily. If Appifier pulls content and makes it all available offline that's great, until/unless the site being "appified" has new content. Will the app re-roll itself to incorporate that new content for offline and/or native access? If not then an appified site is useless the moment the app is generated.
I’m not questioning whether there is a market for this. I’m questioning the purpose and value to the user if it’s really nothing more than a snapshot of a dynamic site or just a site shortcut.
I don't disagree with your premise, but I do think there's a fair number of people who push wordpress as a CMS rather than a 'blog' as such. Given that, many WP sites are rather static anyway.
I agree on the 'auto update' aspect, but if you only update your CMS once every 2-4 months, it may not be that big a loss if there's no auto update right now.
I saw a demo of mulberry.toura.com and that was a question that came up - auto-updating. Apparently the iTunes store is a bit iffy about updating the apps if the functionality has changed too much, but if it's just content, it should be OK.
You should check out the site when its back up, obviously the app auto updates when new content is published.
It works because you have to install a plugin in your WP blog, which presumably has WP publish/edit hooks etc which notifies an Appifier service, which then pushes to the apps, making sure all content is up to date and available offline. It's a pretty popular, if not the only, design for content surfacing apps.
It is actually not obvious. Now the site is back up I can't find anything that explains how updates are handled, or how offline works. For all I can tell the plugin might just be to build the app... I hope you are right as that is more useful. Some explanation would be good...
