waveboardlogoTuesday morning Waveboard (a Google Wave client) became available for iPhone. Around mid-October the Waveboard crew announced they would be submitting an iPhone app to iTunes that would run Google Wave. Since then I’ve been tracking Waveboard’s movements, hoping the app would soon become available.

iPhone users do have the ability to access Wave on their Safari browser–however it seems slow, temperamental, and unreliable (not to mention when you pull up the URL, it gives you the “If you want to continue at your own peril, go ahead” message.) I was hoping that Waveboard would solve the issues I’ve seen with accessing Wave directly from the Safari browser on my iPhone.

I downloaded the Waveboard app for 99 cents, logged in, and… waited. It took a while for Wave to load. In fact, running Waveboard seems slower than “continuing at your own peril” in the regular browser. There seems to be nothing special about this app and I’ve generally been disappointed by it. I had high expectations for something as awesome as a Google Wave iPhone app but I suppose I’ll have to wait until someone else comes out with something better, or until Waveboard makes significant updates.

Here are some things I would like to see  Waveboard do:

  • Accommodate push notifications
  • Navigate faster through screens
  • Translate waves character by character just like you would see when you log in from your computer
  • Allow different screen views (for instance – have links to folders set up within Wave)

As I said, I’m a little disappointed with this app because I’d hoped it would have more functionality. Perhaps it was created hastily to get something out there and maybe a future release will incorporate the things I mentioned above. One can only hope.

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