The saga surrounding Apple's policies concerning the App Store hasn't reached its climax just yet. After several seemingly arbitrary application rejections, high profile developers quitting iPhone development, and Apple adding a non-disclosure clause to its App Store rejection emails, we now have another high-profile Mac developer contemplating giving up iPhone development. Craig Hockenberry, of The Iconfactory, has written a public letter to Steve Jobs, detailing his worries that Apple's restrictive App Store policies are detrimental to the young platform.
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Member since:2005-11-15
Xcode is pretty good; whats not to like about the interface builder; and objective C is quite nice; so are the huge and varied frameworks installed for you.
Some lack of effort on development tools.
They just about write the code for you.
One thing you can say about Apple is they give developers excellent tools for free.
Remember when your program had to animate the close box itself?
Member since:2005-07-06
Yer, Xcode is undeniably good, but the problem in everything they do from their practices to the focus they put on their development tools and what you're allowed to do with them is that if you develop something that competes with Apple they get paranoid. In reality they shouldn't, because no one will ever be able to get enough traction to compete with iTunes or the main Apple applications, although they might fill niches that expand Apple's userbase and help them sell more iPhones.
Member since:2005-07-06
You nailed it, and it's this attitude that will further cement them as such a niche product. Microsoft (love them or hate them) is very developer friendly, and it's because of them openly embracing developers that Windows (as a platform) has flourished so much over the years.
The fact that a developer has to PAY APPLE to release their apps in the iStore is beyond ludicrous. It almost makes me ashamed that I even own an iPod touch. It's such an arrogant mindset to have. If enough would-be developers jump ship, perhaps they'll get the message. One of them just might be the one who would've written the next killer iApp that would make the iPhone a must-own device.
Member since:2008-07-15
Agreed. As much of a Mac person as I am--and I must say that the Mac platform is very developer friendly--this whole iPhone ridiculousness leaves me shaking my head. It would be one thing if Apple was specific about what apps will or won't be accepted and held to those policies. I'm not sure what they think they'll accomplish with this current state of affairs except to piss people off, though. I do think that developers having to pay a bit to release their apps via the app store makes sense, as Apple has to keep the app store up and running and the funds for that have to come from somewhere. What is ridiculous is that, short of jailbreaking, the app store is the *only* way to get apps on the iPhone and that's what get me. It would be different if you could just download any app like you can on a computer, or just about every other mobile platform out there. This latest episode with having rejections covered under NDA is just beyond insane. I just hope they learn their lesson from it all--the hard way, if that's how it ends up turning out. Sometimes I think that Apple is a bipolar company, having rapid swings from brilliance to insanity and back again faster than you can blink an eye. On one hand we have OS X, on the other we have the iPhone app store. It's certainly entertaining and maddening at the same time.
Member since:2006-05-29
Sorry, but that is Bullshit.
Appstore is the least expensive (for the developer) store to sell mobile apps. On other Mobile app portals you normally get around 30% or less of sales price. I can't manage to see how getting 70% is a ripoff in comparison. You don't really want to compare to Desktop markets, right? Only a tiny fraction of mobile phone apps are not bought through portals.
Member since:2005-07-06
Not only that. Microsoft is so developers friendly that they have an history of staying away from specific software markets not to affect its developers. That's why in many cases you need 3rdy-party tools to achieve specific functionalities. Couldn't Microsoft develop an A/V software or other tools? Why you have Paint and Notepad instead of better tools? Couldn't Microsoft develop a load of games? That's why.
To that, add that Microsoft is actively supporting popular Windows software instead of breaking compatibilities. Since Windows '95, MS is struggling to be sure that popular softwares will be compatible with newer Windows versions. If we dig into AppCompat sub-system we will find loads of surprises.
Member since:2005-07-12
Not that I disagree with your basic statement, but I was a DOS/Windows developer for quite a few years, and this part of your statement:
"You nailed it, and it's this attitude that will further cement them as such a niche product. Microsoft (love them or hate them) is very developer friendly, and it's because of them openly embracing developers that Windows (as a platform) has flourished so much over the years."
Is not quite true. Microsoft is very developer friendly, until your product gets above a certain point on their radar, then they will either buy you out, create their own version of your product, or failing that, find some other way to put you out of business.
Sorry, don't mean to change the topic, but I've seen way too many good companies and independent developers get buried by Microsoft.
The Verge pointed me to a blog post by Leap Motion - which reveals how their Kinect-like motion control works with Windows 8. "From the second you plug in your Leap Motion Controller, you'll be able to browse the web and interact with your computer just by moving your hands and fingers in the air. With Leap Motion technology and Windows, you can do everything that's possible with multi-touch inputs - without actually touching anything. This also means that existing applications in Windows 7 and 8 will respond to your natural hand and finger movements. Soon, we'll show you how Leap Motion will work with Mac OS X." Quite cool.
PocketNow interviews Marc Dillon, and there's an interesting note about why Jolla is keeping the display properties under wraps: "We're leaving some of those details out because we do understand that there are a lot of really big players in the market and they tend to take certain components in the market and dominate them. We created the ability to actually be able to run Sailfish on multiple hardware displays and be able to swap components, so this is part of the demand and supply planning phase. We are committed to this industrial design which is a 4.5-inch display, an 8 megapixel camera on the back and a front-facing camera at the front, and the exact specs of the display we'll provide when we're close to delivery." Something you rarely hear anything about."This is my NeXTstation Turbo Color booting the Mac System 7.1 Operating System using a hardware add-on called 'Daydream'. The Daydream has a Mac ROM and a few custom ICs in it and hooked up to the NeXTs DSP port. Turns your NeXT into a full fledged 68k powered Mac." So cool.
"The NetBSD Project is pleased to announce NetBSD 6.1, the first feature update of the NetBSD 6 release branch. It represents a selected subset of fixes deemed important for security or stability reasons, as well as new features and enhancements. Please note that all fixes in the prior security/bugfix updates (NetBSD 6.0.1 and 6.0.2) are also in 6.1."
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.
Member since:
2005-07-06
Apple doesn't like developers. I've said that before around here, and it has long been a part of Apple's make-up. From their lack of effort in development tools for external developers to their policies, they simply don't want you.
If you create an application that infringes on what the big Apple applications are doing, especially stuff like iTunes, they are going to get you shut down by any means. Stop trying to make money for Apple by expanding their market by developing applications for their platform. Apple do not get this. It's a big reason why Mac OS usage remained small, and why when Apple gets first to market with something they are always on to a loser in the long-term because they cannot maintain their market share.