We eagerly await further news.

However recently Apple has rejected a number of phonegap-based apps — see Mike Nachbaur’s blog — needless to say we are concerned, and the phonegap people (developers and users alike) are bordering on outraged, and certainly scared. Mike Nachbaur did the right thing and sent Apple a politely written open letter, which they acknolwegded but apparently have not responded to yet.

Ajaxian complained, and ReadWriteWeb offered some potential reasons for Apple to be rejecting phonegap apps. Not least of which being that Apple may want to make cross-platform development more difficult than it has to be.

To us at Logimake this may mean the following:

1. Because our time spent learning and developing for the iPhone will not easily benefit our strategy on other mobile platforms, we will have to spend more time right now on Android and Blackberry (using phonegap, perhaps), to compensate for the loss of synergy
2. Because it is still not clear yet whether the iPhone will become a serious player in the enterprise, that loss of synergy is making it doubly imperative to develop on a Blackberry-enabled platform like phonegap. 

Apple’s forte on the iPhone is in consumer apps, and it has lots to prove in enterprise apps — and integration. By keeping cross-platform frameworks, and hence applications, at bay, Apple may be reducing its own potential success in the enterprise.

We are eagerly waiting any news from Mike or Apple.

Apple support forum has some answers:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=8538445

Particularly helpful:

This fixed it for me.

I moved :
DivX Decoder.component
DivX Encoder.component

out of the directory:
/Library/Quicktime
The video player used to not play files that I encoded myself. Now it does.

Thanks 

ed.anisko

I did exactly that and everything worked fine. Note: I don’t use DivX so I cannot be sure that this quick fix will not break something important to you.

http://www.iphonedevsdk.com/forum/iphone-sdk-development/6239-database-sync-between-iphone-server.html

http://blogs.sybase.com/ithain/?p=577

Who else has reusable components for a solution?

Here is a summary of the distinctions, taken straight from Apple’s iPhone developer’s web content.

Web Application on Safari Mobile version 4:

You cannot arbitrarily access the iPhone’s resources (the camera, GPS, audio, files, data, applications, etc.)

But:

You can make it look and feel like a native app:

How do I ensure that my web content uses all of the available screen space on iPhone?
How do I create a Home screen icon for my website or web application?
How do I hide the Safari on iPhone OS UI components when my web application is running?
How do I disable user zooming and scaling in my web application?
How do I detect iPhone orientation changes in my web application?
How do I conditionally load CSS that I have customized for iPhone?
How do I launch iPhone applications, like YouTube, iTunes, or Maps, to display content?
How do I dial a phone number from a webpage on iPhone?

(read the answers at Safari on iPhone User Experience Coding How-To’s)

You can make it view/play/perform content in native iPhone apps, a bit like a desktop browser plugin would, using Apple Url Scheme:

“Mail Links” describes the format for sending email with the Mail application.
“Phone Links” describes the format for dialing phone numbers in the Phone application.
“Text Links” describes the format for launching the Text application.
“Map Links” describes the format for specifying locations in the Maps application.
“YouTube Links” describes the format for linking to YouTube videos.
“iTunes Links” describes the format for linking to items in the iTunes Music Store.

(quoted from Apple URL Scheme Reference)

You can make it work offline:

… Safari provides an offline application cache. This cache allows you to create web-based applications that work correctly even when the user’s computer or web-enabled device is not connected to the Internet.
(quoted from HTML 5 Offline Application Cache)

… Safari supports the HTML 5 client-side storage specification.
(quoted from Key-Value Storage)

… Safari supports the HTML5 JavaScript database class. The JavaScript database class, based on SQLite, provides a very basic relational database intended for local storage of content that is too large to conveniently store in cookies (or is too important to accidentally delete when the user clears out his or her cookies).
(quoted from Using the JavaScript Database)

(get the complete PDF document at: Safari Client-Side Storage and Offline Applications Programming Guide)

Native iPhone application:

Unlike a web application, which runs in Safari, a native application runs directly as a standalone executable on an iPhone OS–based device. Native applications have access to all the features that make the iPhone interesting, such as the accelerometers, location service, and Multi-Touch interface. They can also save data to the local file system and even communicate with other installed applications through custom URL schemes.

(quoted from iPhone Reference Library)

Ulitzer.com has a some stats for an informal poll on LinkedIn about which (web or native) developers seem to favor:

Web or SDK?
— Web Development and SDK Development each offer distinct advantages to the iPhone Developer…So I set out over the last two months, with the aid of the LinkedIn Polls feature to gauge the trend

And btw they also have a simple summary of what you need to do to get your first iPhone application out there, starting from 0:

Seven Steps to the iPhone Developer’s World
… here are my seven steps to becoming an iPhone Developer. Tread carefully and you will become a wise man… Buy an Intel Based Mac & a Device – though the iPhone/iPod Touch device isn’t 100% necessary for this early stage, as the iPhone simulator that you will get with the SDK is free and more that capable for initial development …

I hope this helps clarify your options as a developer for the iPhone.