No matter what you’ve heard, Wave does work on iPhones.

There’s recently been a bit of a murmur about Waveboard, a “client” for Google Wave, and whether or not it’s worth the download. I’m going to say the answer is a technical no. Please, feel free to give it a try for yourselves, but for those of you out there who are curious — but not that curious — don’t bother.

Waveboard: What is it?

I’ll open up by saying what it’s not: Waveboard is not an app. It’s presented like one, it’s referred to as one, it’s even downloaded and installed like one, but it’s not. It’s nothing more than a site-specific browser (see: Fluid) with Growl built into it. That being said, there’s no monumental reason not to use it — there just isn’t any reason to use it. The only plusses you’ll get in using Waveboard will be notifications popping up on your screen (which will inevitably get annoying), and a separate browser devoted singularly to Wave that will not crash when the most recent Facebook app breaks in one of your open browser-tabs.

Waveboard is available as both a desktop application as well as an iPhone app. At the time of this article, both run poorly.

What about the iPhone?

People have thus far been pretty quick to see the uselessness in Waveboard’s desktop app, but they’ve not been so quick to see the same logic concerning the iPhone. The problem is a simple one, it’s just misunderstanding. When a user goes to wave.google.com on their iPhone, they are greeted with the very same warning splash that users with unsupported browsers receive. The key here is to read the whole splash warning, which ends in a tiny clause that gives the option (via hyperlink) to proceed at one’s own risk.

Those intrepid enough to select this option and press their luck will then proceed into Wave. They’ll find an iPhone specific, gmail-esque webapp in fully functioning and very efficient working order, and they’ll see their inbox populate before their eyes. People need to realize that when they’re surfing the web on an iPhone, that they are in fact using Safari, that they’re browsing a full-blown webkit browser. As you can see from the image; Wave works on iPhones.

The first thing that you’ll notice when using Wave on an iPhone is the speed, or lack thereof. Wave is extremely intense for browsing on the iPhone, and its framework is young. That being said, it’s a shaky experience. As it stands, Wave in a desktop browser is already plagued with constant loading activity. This is because unlike emails, which simply show up, waves are always checking in and updating. All that data can be a bit much for the iPhone to handle, and the overall user experience suffers in the long run. None of this changes the fact that it’s actually working.

The Logical Desktop Alternative:

Aside from the obvious “just be more careful about crashing your browser, and use less tabs” approach, there is a sensible alternative that works quite well. Simply use another browser. This is done as simply as opening two browsers, and using the second only for Wave. What I’ve found to work quite well, being that I currently use Safari 4 as my primary (default) browser due to its native 64-bit operating mode, is to open an instance of Google Chrome, which would be used solely for Wave and wave-related browsing. This way, when I hit a link in Wave, my activity stays within the same browser as Wave. Everything is clean and simple; no worrying about either browser affecting the other.

If you’re a big fan of site-specific browsers, there’s always the option of simply using Fluid on your own, to create an SSB for Wave. It won’t have the extra clunky business that the folks at Waveboard have somehow managed to introduce, since it will be an SSB in its simplest form. Again, I honestly don’t see a reason to ever do this, but there’s also no real reason not to do it if it makes you happy.

Happy Waving.