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Technology (Apple) Businesses Cellphones Technology Apple

Apple's iPhone Developer Crisis 315

Posted by Soulskill from the mo'-apps-mo'-problems dept.
David Gerard writes "iPhone development sounds closed-shop but simple — apply to be a developer, put application on the App Store, you and Apple make money. Except Apple can't keep up with the request load — whereas getting a developer contract used to take a couple of days, it's now taking months. Some early developers' contracts are expiring with no notice of renewal options. And Apple has no idea what's going on or the state of things. If you want to maintain a completely closed system, it helps if you can actually keep up with it." Reader h11:6 points out news of a recent study which suggests that "Android's open source nature will give it a boost over Apple's iPhone," and thus take the lead in sales as soon as three years from now. It will be interesting to see how they deal with the flood of proposed apps as their popularity rises.
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Apple's iPhone Developer Crisis More

Apple's iPhone Developer Crisis

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  • I hope the article is right (Score:4, Insightful)

    by stokessd ( 89903 ) on Sunday March 08, 2009 @08:42AM (#27111917) Homepage

    As an owner of an iPhone I am frustrated with what I can't have. What I do have is pretty darn sweet, but things like adblock won't ever come to my phone. And that's where it's needed most, where my bandwidth to the phone and inside the phone is the smallest. So in that regard I'm really rooting for android, but I can't help but draw parallels with Linux on the desktop.

    Sure, we all know how great linux is for certain tasks, but it has missed that spark that makes it catch on in a big way outside IT infrastructures and embedded systems.

    So that three years prediciton is sounds a lot like "the year of the linux on the desktop"

    Sheldon

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by wisty ( 1335733 )

      When they start using tcl (or some other framework that lets gui and event driven apps get stitched together the UNIX way), *then* it will be the year of the Linux desktop.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Nerdfest ( 867930 )
      I recently abandoned my Palm OS device for a new phone, and one requirement was that it be able to run Android (there are no native Android devices in Canada yet). I'm hoping it's not too late in the race to stop the iPhone doing to the mobile market what Wintel did to the PC market.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hitmark ( 640295 )

        not going to happen, because wintel (or more like dostel back when it started) could be slapped on any gray box and run the same apps as any other wintel gray box.

        the iphone is closer to what ibm hoped to do with their pc before compaq reverse engineered the bios and managed to get it past the courts.

        however, phones are still not on par with a desktop pc in terms of freedom of the user to slap any old "firmware" on it.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by NineNine ( 235196 )

        It's also not going to ever happen because of price. Apple is always the most expensive in whatever market they're in. The mobile market is no exception. Very few people both want and can afford an iPhone. I happen to like most Apple stuff, but I'm not willing to pay their premium or deal with their extreme lock-in (as the previous poster suggested).

      • I recently abandoned my Palm OS device for a new phone, and one requirement was that it be able to run Android (there are no native Android devices in Canada yet). I'm hoping it's not too late in the race to stop the iPhone doing to the mobile market what Wintel did to the PC market.

        There doesn't seem like much chance of that. The mobile market is already quite established, and Apple only has modestly good sales.

    • Re:I hope the article is right (Score:4, Insightful)

      by rho ( 6063 ) on Sunday March 08, 2009 @09:00AM (#27112031) Journal

      I hope the article is right

      This article is full of hope. Android is going to sweep away all competition "in three years"; Apple is having trouble, and due to the inherent nature of closed systems, will never be able to fix or improve it; a band of merry gnomes is going to dismantle all of the nuclear missiles in the world and turn them into slides for orphans.

      I'm completely in favor of Android developing into a viable competitor, as it will improve both the iPhone and Android platforms. But since we only have ONE phone and a whole lot of enthusiasm, I think reserving judgement isn't such a crazy idea.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Idaho ( 12907 )

        This article is full of hope. Android is going to sweep away all competition "in three years";

        Exactly. "2012 will be the year of the Android Deskto^H^H^H^H^H^HCellphone".

        That said, I do hope so, but at this point it's not much more than "hope".

      • I just RTA, and didn't see anything to back up the claim. It's based on a study by a research company, but they didn't give any numbers or trends, so what good is the claim?

    • Re:I hope the article is right (Score:5, Informative)

      by Fusen ( 841730 ) on Sunday March 08, 2009 @10:01AM (#27112303)
      Others may have already told you, but http://www.cocoamug.com/adblock/ [cocoamug.com] Adblock is available for jailbroken phones and does what it says on the tin, uses the same filters your firefox extension uses. search for Quickpwn to find out more about jailbreaking.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by yttrstein ( 891553 )
      All I can imagine when I think of everyone and their pothead kid being allowed to drop anything they want into Android is Rasterman porting Enlightenment to it, turning it into what enlightenment turned all my computers into in the late 90s; beautiful devices that didn't actually ever work.

      • Re:I hope the article is right (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Darkness404 ( 1287218 ) on Sunday March 08, 2009 @01:59PM (#27113773)
        Oh please, take a look at the iPhone app store and tell me how great the quality of software is. There are several *paid* apps that crash all the time, not to mention that at most there are 4 different hardware revisions each with approximately the same basic specs (accelerometer, touch screen, etc) so there are no excuses. All the while interesting, useful stuff gets filtered by our overlords, err... the app store approvers because it might be slightly competitive to Apple (why? when you bought the phone should Apple care whether or not you use Safari or Opera Mini to browse the web???) or "obscene", or in the worst cases no feedback.

        With the Android Marketplace, the worst that could happen is a few crap apps start appearing, however, due to the community nature of the Marketplace, they will almost always be near the bottom in ratings, etc, I would much rather have a few crap applications at the bottom of some lists then for some puritan organization telling me how I can use my phone.
    • There's an adblock app for Safari in Cydia, I believe.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mdwh2 ( 535323 )

      I'm unclear on your analogy - because Linux has failed to catch on, therefore, any new product that isn't already popular will fail to catch on?

      I guess the Iphone's going to be a flop then. It's not the major player either - indeed, on that note, comparing Iphone v. Android seems rather odd to me, and seems typical of the pro-Iphone bias in that it paints a picture where the Iphone is the only phone around, except for a new niche contender. Which is completely unrealistic - the phone market is dominated by

    • Sure, we all know how great linux is for certain tasks, but it has missed that spark that makes it catch on in a big way outside IT infrastructures and embedded systems.

      Yes, and that spark is called a marketing budget and either lucrative anti-competitive agreements with computer makers, or its own computer making branch.

    • Re:I hope the article is right (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Darkness404 ( 1287218 ) on Sunday March 08, 2009 @01:47PM (#27113701)
      I think that the day that Android wins is whenever all carriers start offering Android phones. Right now, if you are in the USA and on AT&T the best application phone you can get is an iPhone, on T-Mobile the best you can get is a G1, and for Verizon, the best is a Blackberry. When the day comes that I can walk into an AT&T store and find a phone running Android, walk into a Sprint store and find one running Android, walk into a Verizon store and find one running Android, that is the day that Android wins. Until then, you are out of luck on Android unless you have T-Mobile or want to jump ship to a different carrier (Android jailbreaking/dev phone excluded)

    • Allow me to summarize Slashdot's record when it comes to predicting Apple's success and failures:

      "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame."

  • HTTP 500 (Score:4, Informative)

    by Meneth ( 872868 ) on Sunday March 08, 2009 @08:44AM (#27111927)
    Ars Technica seems to have a spot of trouble with their server...

  • Android might be open-source, but Android phones using Google's app store are completely locked and Tivoised, developers can't even download their own apps from the store using their unlocked phones. The fact that Android is built on top of Linux is as irrelevant as the fact that the iPhone kernel uses Mach and BSD.

    • It's not irrelevant at all because you can already run non-blessed software including an entire desktop on the non-Android side of your Android phone. In fact, it is entirely relevant, because you can do this to the phone already.

    • Re:Android's open-source nature is irrelevant. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by BlackCreek ( 1004083 ) on Sunday March 08, 2009 @09:37AM (#27112215)
      BS. Google sells a completely unlocked version of the phone. You can download Android's source, change it, compile and run.

      If you bought a G1 and have the knowledge, you can turn it into a ADP and do just as you please.

      Developers can

      1. perform full backup of the phone image,
      2. install a "consumer version" of Android, download, test and use any locked app.
      3. backup the image
      4. reflash the original iamge

        Does Apple has something like that? I guess not, since there are no developer versions of the Iphone.

        BTW, Where can I **legally** download the source to the Iphone OS?

      • Re:Android's open-source nature is irrelevant. (Score:4, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 08, 2009 @10:09AM (#27112365)

        Actually GP is partly right. Google block unlocked phones from downloading paid-for apps on the Android Market.

        • Re:Android's open-source nature is irrelevant. (Score:5, Informative)

          by BlackCreek ( 1004083 ) on Sunday March 08, 2009 @11:12AM (#27112781)
          Google blocks users running the ADP version of the OS from accessing paid applications.

          However, as I mentioned in my previous post: if you have a phone running the developer version, you can fully backup the whole phone (the entire thing). Install the "consumer version of it", do as you will, backup your "consumer image", reflash the dev version.

          If you are a developer, it is as simple as changing phone covers. I know that as I own a G1 running the development version of the OS, and have performed the described operations.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by putzin ( 99318 )

        While all that is true, it's not all that helpful to most, even many developers. I'm an iPhone developer right now, and hate that there are so many restrictions on my apps. But I have consumers for my apps, and to be honest, I can live with the issues (though don't always like them). The G1 is still a toy, so until there are more devices, all the openness doesn't mean as much. To some extent, it's open source nature is irrelevant to most. Unfortunate, but the phone is just a tool, not an ideology. It needs

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by BlackCreek ( 1004083 )
          The open source nature of Android matters a lot. As it is an attempt to become a complete software stack to be installed into "commodity" handsets. No one expects that to be fully realized into 3 or 6 months.

          So it is actually more of a direct competitor with Symbian than with Apple. (it is just that people in the US love to talk about Apple). While Symbian has millions of units sold, AFAIK writing apps that actually use "fancy" functionality (GPS, camera, maps, calendar) is not a "write once, run on any S

      • Re:Android's open-source nature is irrelevant. (Score:5, Informative)

        by BlackCreek ( 1004083 ) on Sunday March 08, 2009 @11:25AM (#27112873)
        Dear Apple zealot with mod points,

        Would you please be so kind to stop modding posts you disagree with as troll?

        I mean, everything in my post is factually correct:

        1. Backup and restore of Android phones: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=459830 [xda-developers.com]
        2. Android source code is available: http://source.android.com/ [android.com]

  • Android vs. Apple? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by drolli ( 522659 ) on Sunday March 08, 2009 @08:50AM (#27111963) Journal

    Did we not forget a little mobile OS, outselling both? Did we not forget that Nokai still sells probably more phones per month than apple and android per year? Did we not forget that j2me and symbian programs do not only run on nokia phones but on a lot of other phones?

    This does not mean that i done believe that android is not a promising and cool platform, nevertheless hundreds of millions (more likely well over a billion) active j2me compatible phones, for which everybody can develop would derserve to ben mentioned, when comparing the iphone to some competitors.

    • Re:Android vs. Apple? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Rakshasa Taisab ( 244699 ) on Sunday March 08, 2009 @09:08AM (#27112063) Homepage

      I've dabbled in j2me, and now programming for the iPhone. All I can say is; yes, we're forgetting Nokia and J2ME.

      But there's also a reason for it. The iPhone dev kit makes me happy in my my pants compared to what Nokia offers.

    • Did we forget that Motorola is the ultimate power in the cell phone industry because they make the best selling phone the RAZR.....oh wait...

    • Re:Android vs. Apple? (Score:5, Informative)

      by siDDis ( 961791 ) on Sunday March 08, 2009 @09:16AM (#27112095)

      Not to mention PyS60 which is Python for Symbian 60 based phones.

      Nokia has developed a Python API which give access to GPS, Camera, Internet, Native GUI, Canvas based GUI, SMS, Phonecalls, Phonebook, MMS, accelerometer, OpenGL and a lot more.

      And just to show how easy it is to program a SMS application with PyS60:

      import messaging
      messaging.sms_send("number", u"message")

      But it's not only Python, you can still write software in C/C++ and J2ME. Though C++ applications requires a signature from nokia to be able to run.

      • Re:Android vs. Apple? (Score:5, Funny)

        by wisty ( 1335733 ) on Sunday March 08, 2009 @09:22AM (#27112147)

        But, where are the objects? Where are the interfaces? Where has all the programming gone? It's like you are just telling the computer what to do, and it's doing it. Where is the skill in that?

      • But it's not only Python, you can still write software in C/C++ and J2ME. Though C++ applications requires a signature from nokia to be able to run.

        I haven't done any C++ programming for S60 (have done so in Python), but isn't it so that you need a signature if your application wants access to certain phone functions? For example, if your application is simply a game you wouldn't need a signature, but if you want to access the contact list you do. Last time I checked this was how it was done with PyS60.

        Anyw

    • Re:Android vs. Apple? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Sunday March 08, 2009 @09:17AM (#27112103) Homepage Journal

      J2ME is crap because phones are only required to implement small portions of the specifications to be able to claim J2ME and practically no code of any complexity can make it into J2ME without heavy reauthoring. Once again Java lives up to the promise of "write once, debug anywhere". The real problem is with phones like my RAZR V3i which has a camera but no Java support for it, meaning you can't use any of the cool Java applets (like QR code readers) on my phone - but the point is that the specification should have demanded that these things be supported when the hardware is available on the phone. The lack of this requirement is confusing for consumers and developers alike.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by David Gerard ( 12369 )

      Dude. The GNUphone [today.com] is the way to go! The only phone any righteous Slashdot reader could use!

      Really, weâ(TM)re not out to destroy Apple; that will just be a completely unintentional side effect.

    • Having now delt with Nokia's support people for their products, I can assure you their phone could shit gold in to the palm of my hand and I wouldn't want it.

      Fuck that company, they've entered my permenant shit list, I will tell friends and family to avoid them as much as possible and I myself will also, I doubt it will amount to anything but those scumbags do not deserve my cash.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by 0xdeadbeef ( 28836 )

      Everyone who enjoys developing for Series 60, say "aye". Everyone who considers J2ME useful, say "aye".

      *crickets*

      Yeah. There's the relevance of your billion smartphones.

  • I own an iPhone, and I almost bought the G1 just because of its potential. Now I'm waiting to see if an an Android phone ever makes it to AT&T. I love my iPhone, but I'm annoyed with its limitations. Lack of cut and paste and the inability to have background processes are the worst of the limitations, in my opinion. I like Android in theory. A friend of mine has the G1 and loves it. But I live in a rural area, and the only reliable cell service here is AT&T.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Fusen ( 841730 )
      I have copy and paste on my iPhone and I can even run background applications when I want. Over a million people so far have jailbroken their iphone, there is nothing illegal or wrong about it either. It simply opens up the phone to the sort of apps that we all want but apple won't allow. http://www.google.co.uk/search?&channel=s&hl=en&q=why+you+should+jailbreak&btnG=Google+Search [google.co.uk]

      • Re:Would Love an Android Phone (Score:5, Insightful)

        by peragrin ( 659227 ) on Sunday March 08, 2009 @10:47AM (#27112631)

        Other than cut and paste which is the only feature i do miss, I don't see why people want background apps. I don't want the world to know that just because my phone is on they can IM me all day long.

        The point is battery life. I can go two full days between charges with 3G on, calls, occasional bluetooth(it is only on when i am in the car ) and wifi when it is available. 3G 90% of the time, when i am home or at a place with wifi for a while I turn it on.

        My other phones would last 3-4 days between charges, however I never surfaced the web or played games on them.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Khuffie ( 818093 )
        Using jailbreaking as a justification for the iPhone's limited features doesn't really work. I have an unlocked and jailbroken iPhone, but I almost never bother to install any jailbroken apps. Everytime Apple does an update, I have to re-jailbreak and reinstall the jailbroken apps I downloaded. It's annoying.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Fusen ( 841730 )
          afaik I never did try and justify it's closed nature, I simply gave advise to get around the fact apple severely locks down. Also why even bother to jailbreak if you don't use any of the applications that jailbreaking is there for?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Khuffie ( 818093 )
            Because I have to unlock my iphone to get it to work on my network. The one app I use that needs jailbreaking is one to disable the Edge on my phone, since I don't want to pay for data.
  • It's not like Apple could use its 20 Billion dollars in the bank to, you know, hire more people to handle the developer requests. That would just be impossible. Companies never grow by actually applying resources to a problem.

    • Re:"Can't keep up with the request load" (Score:5, Insightful)

      by itsdapead ( 734413 ) on Sunday March 08, 2009 @10:07AM (#27112355)

      It's not like Apple could use its 20 Billion dollars in the bank to, you know, hire more people to handle the developer requests.

      Apple may have 20bn in the bank but I bet that the iPhone developer support group doesn't have the keys to the vault, and the sharehoders and SEC wouldn't be too chuffed if it did.

      Thing is, in any large organization, you have to prepare budgets and plans months in advance and get them approved by accountants - who rarely understand concepts such as "no one has done this before so we don't have a fscking clue how many developers per month will sign up over the first 3 years"...

  • Android (Score:4, Informative)

    by gEvil (beta) ( 945888 ) on Sunday March 08, 2009 @09:08AM (#27112061)
    I picked up a G1 last weekend, but ended up taking it back yesterday. On the software side, it was absolutely beautiful. But the hardware left a lot to be desired (mainly the form factor/weight). I'm hoping T-Mobile gets access to the HTC Magic [htc.com] sometime later in the year, in which case I'll go ahead and switch back.

    As for the apps, the open source nature of the Android really showed (in more ways than one). On the one hand, there were some very interesting and innovative apps in the marketplace (and elsewhere on the web). For instance, there were several cyclocomputer apps that take advantage of the GPS and mapping abilities of the device. I didn't get a chance to try any of them out, but depending on the quality, I could see an Android phone replacing a $300-$800 dedicated GPS cyclocomputer (hell, there's probably even a way to tie a cadence monitor into the Android). OTOH, there were also a whole ton of crap programs in the marketplace. But I think the ratings and reviews are doing a decent job of weeding those out.

    Overall, I do have the feeling that the Android will become a pretty major player in the coming months/years.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Khuffie ( 818093 )
      Don't worry. A whole ton of crap programs in the marketplace isn't a symptom of it being open source. You should see the gems on the iPhone Appstore. The choice of fart apps is outstanding.

    • Hardware (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Midnight Thunder ( 17205 )

      I picked up a G1 last weekend, but ended up taking it back yesterday. On the software side, it was absolutely beautiful. But the hardware left a lot to be desired...

      I want to see Android succeed, for a number of reasons, but like many things it is a good as its weakest component. In this case it is the hardware. What could really hurt android is if the phone companies treat it as a silver bullet, hoping it will solve all their problems, only to fail to create hardware that presents itself as a sleek item th

  • Highly unlikely (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jeffehobbs ( 419930 ) on Sunday March 08, 2009 @09:15AM (#27112093) Homepage

    The article linked is incredibly vague and seems to presuppose that the trajectory of all open-source projects is up, up, up. While this is possible -- if Google puts the resources into constant improvement, Android certainly will improve -- it presupposes that Apple is going to be standing still. Not so. Apple's iPhone platform is now a moving target, and the year to two-year market advantage is going to be difficult for Android to top.

    Google, as much as I love some of their products, has shown themselves to be a bit spotty with support and improvements to many of their initiatives. Everyone understands that mobile is a big deal, but if Google's decides that they can dominate search just as much on the iPhone than on their own platform, it's possible their drive to improve Android will wither.

    The fact that the platform is open-source means virtually nothing to consumers, by the way. They simply want to make calls, surf the web and play games.

  • Apple is hardly promoting it as a dev platform yet (Score:3, Insightful)

    by JCWDenton ( 851047 ) on Sunday March 08, 2009 @09:20AM (#27112129)

    It's pretty interesting the way developers are almost falling over themselves (if you believe the summary) to start developing for the iPhone. Build an attractive product and not only will the customers appear but also the Developers! Developers! Developers!. As a developer you'll need to buy an Apple computer for the privilege, and probably start learning Objective C, not an easy language to pick up when you're used to Java/C#. It's almost contrary to the idea usually associated with MS of making it easy for developers and the platform will succeed.
    I'd imagine Apple is shifting quite a few new machines to iPhone developers who would otherwise still be developing on Windows/Java ME.

    • Actually all the stuff I have been programming for the phone has been in C#. Not that objective C is difficult to learn either if you can actually program, it took me what about 3 or 4 nights
      to nail down the language. Just like every other language Objective C just has different syntactical sugar, nothing ground breaking just another language.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by EvilIdler ( 21087 )

      I found Objective-C easy to pick up. It's the Cocoa(Touch) API which is tricky. The differences between C and Obj-C fit in a page, and the garbage collection isn't even in the iPhone version of the language.

      But yeah, the iPhone/iPod touch are the third portable device type I've wanted to develop for, and the second to actually be accessible. Sure, it costs money (Macbook+subscription+game engines are among my expenses), but Nintendo haven't yet done anything like Wiiware for the DS, and even that is not en

  • Apple wants the iPhone to Rule The Roost. It's going to happen through apps, so they need to straighten this mess out RIGHT NOW.

    Having worked there for several years, I would suspect someone's ass is already on the line and 4 months from now this will be "fixed".

    Frankly, I think software isn't the iPhones biggest problem, but hardware. No photo, no video, etc. Panasonic has a phone that kicks the iPhone up and down the stairs.

    RS

  • My Data Point (Score:5, Informative)

    by superid ( 46543 ) on Sunday March 08, 2009 @09:44AM (#27112231) Homepage

    I've been actively developing simple apps for the past few months. The submission process has been straightforward and acceptable. Nothing has taken longer than a week. Critical questions (banking, etc) have been answered in one day.

    Would I like it to be faster? Sure. But right now I'm satisfied.

    • I've had an application pending for some time now. I submitted (by fax, how 20th century) some corporate documents, and later I received a couple of unintelligible voice mail messages from Apple. They were sent at odd hours, and the all had the same characteristics: low volume, very high background noise, and a heavily-accented voice, which rendered the messages incomprehensible. Then I get an email telling me that I haven't submitted the documents that I had indeed submitted, and to reply as soon as pos

  • 3 years from now : AppStore is not even 1 yr old ! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by AwaxSlashdot ( 600672 ) on Sunday March 08, 2009 @09:50AM (#27112249) Homepage Journal

    One year ago, the AppStore was not existing. Two years ago, the iPhone was not available.

    How can someone make a prediction for "three years from now" ?

    When the iPhone was launch every one called it doomed because it was closed, even if it was obvious Apple would sooner or later release a SDK for it. Now, the AppStore is not even 1 year old, people do not know how Apple will make it evolve (more staff, more open, ... ), and they are forecasting something for 3 years from now ?!

  • Bureaucracy (Score:4, Interesting)

    by damaki ( 997243 ) on Sunday March 08, 2009 @10:09AM (#27112383)
    It really feels like Apple's iPhone store is being weakened by its own bureaucratic approach. Sure, it's great to have virus-free apps, but how about choice, diversity and freedom? The content validation works pretty easily for music, but apps are not the same business at all. If you've got to re-certify your stuff each time it's updated, to renew your damn certificate, how can you focus on doing good software?
    I do not give a rat ass to open source stuff on my phone, but it could be an interesting approach to make it at least possible on iPhone. How about a common certificate for multiple developers and non obligatorily checked releases?

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by PeeShootr ( 949875 )
      I think that the app store certainly offers choice and diversity! If it's freedom you want, don't buy an Apple product! If you want it to "just work" then buy Apple!

  • Crisis? What Crisis? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by stiller ( 451878 ) on Sunday March 08, 2009 @10:51AM (#27112649) Homepage Journal

    I'm sorry, but isn't Apple not being able to keep up with developer applications the exact opposite of a developer crisis? Sure, it might be a crisis for the developers involved, but certainly not for the market or Apple itself!

    With 15,000 available applications and over 500 million downloads, it sounds like a pretty damn succesful platform to me. With growth on that scale, it doesn't surprise me that they would run into some hurdles.

    The connection to the android open source analysis completely eludes me, but I wouldn't hold my breath in any case. To most people, the term iPhone is synonymous to smartphone and being slightly more open isn't going to change anything about that soon.

  • Android conquering the world? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by despisethesun ( 880261 ) on Sunday March 08, 2009 @10:55AM (#27112661)
    If this story had come out at this time last year, I might have believed it. As it stands, I don't think Android is going to conquer much of anything. So far there have only been two phones to come from a major handset manufacturer. There are supposedly tons on the way this year from Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, and others but none of them have shown anything at all yet. And on top of that, the phones to come from HTC have been pretty uninspiring. I want to see Android take off, it looks to offer just about everything I want from a phone OS, but I'm not waiting forever for there to be a handset worth owning with it. Right now, I'm planning on getting an E71, and down the road I might grab either the Omnia HD or the N86 as a second phone. Symbian/S60 isn't perfect, but it's here now, it works, and the hardware it runs on is excellent. The members of the Open Handset Alliance can't say that yet, and that's a damn shame.

  • No Source for Research (Score:5, Informative)

    by Wovel ( 964431 ) on Sunday March 08, 2009 @11:23AM (#27112853) Homepage
    Keep in mind that the author of the report, "Informa Telecoms & Media" has a vested interest in people believing the key to the mobile market is an open source platform (This was in fact the key finding of their report). Informa runs what they call "ONLY Mobile Specific Open Source Conference and Exhibition in the World".

    Be cool if the journalists of the world still looked into the motivations of their sources. Informa needs to send IBT, Businessweek and the rest of them a check for advertising fees.

  • This doesn't surprise me a bit. Apple's own Radar bug reporting system is practically useless since you can't see what other people may have reported on a given bug, only what you have submitted. If people have posted work-arounds, you can't see them. Furthermore, Apple's developer website search is nearly useless too because you can't filter out duplicate results that happen to be in PDF and HTML formats nor can you eliminate Java results or Cocoa results if all you're interested in is Carbon. Beyond t

  • The Cydia iPhone App Store just launched (Score:4, Informative)

    by kiddailey ( 165202 ) on Sunday March 08, 2009 @12:57PM (#27113453) Homepage

    Just a day or so ago, Cydia [saurik.com] (the awesome package manager for jailbroken iPhones used by reportedly more than 2million iPhones) launched a new app store of its own.

    There have always been paid apps for jailbroken phones, but usually they would require you to go to the developer's or another web site to purchase the app. Now however, it appears that not only can you write apps that have full access to the device and without censorship, you can also use the Cydia store for a seamless shopping experience.

    The Wall Street Journal [wsj.com] and others [macworld.com] have more information.

    Granted, this doesn't give you exposure in the App store and there are issues with dealing with jailbreaking your phone, but it does provide iPhone developers and users with a choice.

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