Well argued iPhone SDK critique (no whining) | Hacker News Reader

Well argued iPhone SDK critique (no whining)

whydoeseverythingsuck.com

39 pointsbdfh4216 comments

What undermines this argument is that Palm acheived such domniance in handheld and smartphone with no background threads.

That's not exactly true. There was a single background thread which handled (surprise!) comms.

Both the Palm and the Newton also had a sophisticated notification frameworks to deal with asynchonous messages.

It isn't as convenient, but it can be done. Heck, I've done it! And it retains some control by the platform, which is the point.

And while I love the premise of Android, I think that developing for 10 000 000 iPhones rather than 0 gPhones may be a prudent business move.

For now, yes. But I'd rather develop for an open platform than for one where Apple holds all the cards.

It's the mobile version of the Mac vs PC war. Apple is again setting itself for a 5% market share.

Of course, MOST of us are going to have a difficult time trying to develop for the 10 000 000 iPhones. You see, you can download the SDK and do all of the testing you want . . . good luck running your code on an actual iPhone though. A lot of developers read the fine print, and skipped over the finer print. To try out your newly developed games, or virtual worlds, against the actual iPhone accelerometer you have to be accepted into the OFFICIAL iPhone Developer's Program. Guess how many of the 100000 developers who downloaded the SDK were accepted into the program . . . Oh . . . So then you read the article already . . .

http://apple20.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2008/03/15/apple-to-100...

The short version is that Apple is giving its strategic partners a head start, EA, Salesforce, AOL, Epocrates, Sega . . . and Apple quoted a quite a few more the press release Intuit, Namco, Netsuite, PopCap . . . you get the idea. Good for Apple, its partners, and probably the iPhone . . . Bad for startups who happen to compete with something one of the partners wants to do. Guess which app will get the splash page billing on the iTunes App store, the startup's or the partner's?

There is SOME good news though, if someone is willing to search past the first page of the iTunes app store to look for your app, they will probably be able to find and install it without much trouble. Of course that is ASSUMING that you are allowed into the OFFICIAL developer's program, which there is no guarantee of either if you are making an app that competes with a strategic partner.

Cheers!

They didn't have to release an SDK and open up the platform at all :/ Something is better than nothing...

I guess that's true :(

I think there will be other ways to distribute the app than the itunes app store. You have access to the users contacts, so with permission you can send the others an email/sms containing a request for the app. Similar to facebook, myspace or twitter. You don't really need iTunes except for hosting the app for download.

ahem. there's NO WAY apple will allow that.

they've said over and over again that iphone apps must be purchased through their app store. do you think they're suddenly going to say "oh yeah, and there's a loophole you can exploit, where you can email an app to somebody else. sorry for not mentioning that earlier."

as if.

I've said as much in the comment thread on the basic article, but basically all of the limitations baked into the SDK boil down to one primary lesson: Apple thinks that they, and only they, can and should decide what software will run on the iPhone.

If I were an independent developer on the Mac platform, I would personally see this as a slap in the face. Indies spent years keeping the Mac alive as a viable platform while the big vendors ignored it. Now, Apple has chosen to give preferential treatment to the same enterprise and entertainment concerns that once shunned them.

The losers will be the indies, hobbyists, open source developers, and everyone else whose labor kept the platform alive through the dark years.

I've been buying Macs for almost 15 years, but my current system will sadly be my last, unless Apple stops showing such contempt for the intelligence of their own long-time supporters.

Are you sure? Could it be that AT&T thinks that AT&T->Apple, and only AT&T->Apple, can and should decide what software will run on "their" phones?

If you compare the attitudes of cellphone manufacturers with cellular network carriers over the last decade, the manufacturers have almost always wanted open solutions, while the carriers have almost always tried to keep things closed. Apple is, in this case, acting much more like a carrier than a manufacturer, and I think that this might say less about them, and more about their relationship with Cingular/AT&T.

I think I'll have to make a prediction: By June the iPhone developers will have a mechanism for running a lightweight background process. Only one application runs, but you will be able to have a sentinel of some kind. It probably exists now but hasn't been finalized and documented.

Restricting the iPhone’s platform might work for Apple as long as they stay on top of innovation. When Android is released with hardware and start seeing innovative products and services from other companies, iPhone can easily become irrelevant.

I have, quite often, been very close to buying an iPhone. But, I will wait for the Android phones, and if any of them are just somewhat as sleek as the iPhone, that will definitely be my choice over the iPhone.

Looking forward..

"There are many ways to address this through task prioritization, and sandboxing background tasks or even limiting their size."

Huh? Limiting the size of an application? Alright...

    while(1) malloc(1);

Sandboxing doesn't really address that either.

Sure it does. Try 'man ulimit' on any unix machine.

Given how advanced the iPhone OS is, I doubt that managing and controlling background tasks is that hard to do. Most probably, they have just pushed it back on their priority lists to get it exactly right, that is all.

Kind of speaking of background processing. If I open multiple pages in Safari on the iPhone, will they load simultaneously, and lead to time saving for me, or do the pages wait to load until you're on them?

Even with all the perceived shortcomings of the iPhone SDK, there is a cracked-open-window of opportunity for a few, best-of-class new applications from new developers.

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