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Comment by haseman | Hacker News Reader

I've been writing mobile software for 6 years, and I find all the belly-aching terribly amusing. Despite all the complaints, inconsistencies, and contradictions, Apple treats their developers better than any other mobile marketplace. I'll say that again. Apple treats their phone developers better than any other mobile software marketplace. (Android market might be a little better, but no-one is using it)

Wanted to submit an app for Verizon on the Get-It-Now shop? You're looking at spending 10,000$ in testing fees. Fail testing? You pay again.

By all means, lets keep up with the griping. The more Apple is forced to bow to the teeming masses, the better the other marketplaces have to treat us to keep up.

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The iPhone is heaven for mobile developers, hell for everyone else.

If you're coming from a web software background -- or even a desktop software background -- the App store will increase the length your development cycle by one or two orders of magnitude.

The iPhone brought new developers to the mobile field and they have higher expectations than people who have been working with carriers for the last five years.

In the long run, developers will go where the expected payout is the highest. For now that's the iPhone, but the App Store is a big weakness.

If you're coming from a web software background -- or even a desktop software background -- the App store will increase the length your development cycle by one or two orders of magnitude.

Only if you need to develop a native app. You can develop highly functional Web apps specifically for the iPhone that work through Safari. Hardly ideal, of course, in terms of not being in the catalog everyone's looking at.. but totally doable.

Apple even keeps a directory of them: http://www.apple.com/webapps/

There only seems to be a double standard because you're making an invalid comparison.

On most smartphones, while there's a high bar to pass to get into the official "app store" for that phone or service, nobody is stopping you from selling an app outside that store. As such, Apple's review process is not merely a review process for a store, but also serves as a review process for all applications that a user can install on the phone.

It's the difference between a lengthy review process for selling a game on Steam (reasonable) and a review process for selling a game that a user can install on Windows (not reasonable).

I'm unclear as to how my comparison is invalid. Verizon's Get-It-Now marketplace is a mobile application store as is Apple's iTunes shop. I'm comparing one market to others.

I'm not, by any means, saying that Apple's review process is reasonable, acceptable, or fair. I am, however, saying that, hands down, it's better than every other mobile application market out there.

While that is relevant for you and me, I'm guessing for the vast majority of phone users, this is meaningless. The average phone user does not download apps outside the app store. I would argue the same folks who do download outside the app store would just jailbreak their iPhone.

Either way, I'm all for a more open approval process.

Users cannot download apps outside of the app store without jailbreaking.

It's an awfully far-fetched assumption to think that users wouldn't download apps outside of the app store if that were an option. People download windows/mac apps all the time.

Except that users CAN. It's called ad hoc distribution. Do some research please.

http://developer.apple.com/iPhone/program/distribute.html

"The Standard and Enterprise Programs allow you to share your application with _up to 100_ other iPhone or iPod touch users with Ad Hoc distribution. Share your application through email or by posting it to a web site or server." (emphasis added)

I'm sure you can work around this somehow, but this isn't really the same as allowing unlimited and free distribution.

Ad-hoc distribution requires that you:

1) Share your unique device identifier with the developer.

2) The developer registers that device ID with Apple. Only 100 devices per developer may be registered in one year.

3) Apple signs a signing certificate which includes that device ID.

4) The developer signs the application binary with their private key and includes the Apple-signed certificate with the binary.

This is absolutely not useful for anything other than beta testing.

Read the parent comment. I was replying to the specific statement that one cannot download apps onto the device other than through the App Store, not addressing whether it is useful or not as a channel to distribute apps.

As to your other points, sign up for the Enterprise program.

http://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/Enterprise_Deployment_Gu...

I can get out and push my car, but that doesn't make it a hybrid.

As to your other points, sign up for the Enterprise program.

The enterprise program does not allow for external distribution and is not useful (or even permitted) outside of large enterprise organizations.

I'm tired of this comparison. Smartphone applications have never been behind walled gardens or approval processes. The iPhone is a smartphone.

Yes, if you wanted to J2ME software for mobile phones you had a hell of a time. I'm sure you griped about that too and maybe somebody like Apple actually heard your griping and decided they could do it better.

>Android market might be a little better, but no-one is using it

10000 apps is no-one?

Both stores are full of garbage. Comparing 100k to 10k is meaningless when 99% of the apps in both stores are code abortions. Android store just means fewer raw pieces of shit to wade through, but the gold is harder to find as well.

Using the App Store/Android Market as a selling point for either platform demonstrates a disconnect from reality and little more.

I'm on the verge of buying an Android phone over an iPhone because I can dial out with Google Voice on Android. I don't know when that will be available on iPhone.

So I'd say the app market can make a difference for some people.

The Droid's best feature is it's ability to make and receive phone calls in San Francisco

While I agree that a lot of the griping is unwarranted and developers don't know how good they have it, you're wrong about them being the best. Danger (now Microsoft) had an amazing hiptop developer program that many people forget about.

Of course after their recent data-loss incident it's not that great of a developer platform, but up until then it was a better experience than the iPhone. Fewer eyeballs in the download catalog but also only a handful of developers, each of whom was always willing to help out another. Unlike the App Store with its 1000+ (10 000+?) developers out to make it rich quick.

Anyway the main problem it seems is a lot of desktop developers come to the mobile platform expecting the same process, this is wrong.

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