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Apple Opening Up iPhone Developer Program

I found the blog about Adium. The NDA doesn't permit them from making an IM client, the NDA permits them from disclosing the cord, why their other GPLs state they have to. This conflict is the issue. I'm certain this will change shortly.

But teh Adium team still states that they have no experience with many frameworks of the iPhone and will build a Leopard-only version before releasing to the iPhone.
They recommend Apollo for jailbroken devices in the interim.


min_t said:
Totally Disagree. It shouldn't be Apple's job to determine what users want or don't want. The creamy apps will rise to the top. The crap will fade away. We can't always tell what will be popular, so let's give everyone a chance at the million dollars.
Click to expand...

For you and me, that is fine. But the iPhone is not teh smartphone of yesterday, designed by geeks for geeks. My parents are tech-tarded by have an iPhone, their first smartphone, because they were marketed by it's ease of use and reliability. Should the majority of the world have an iPhone with 3rd party that can drain the battery because Apple has allowed developers to run whatever they choose in the background, or one that ineffectively ads a plugin to Safari that causes it to crash thus making the user think the iPhone itself is crap, or one that makes up for being free by snagging your personal data to send to telemarketers? You can say the user should know better, but to the majority of the people have no idea that would even be possible. If you want experimental, beta apps that are outside the norm of the average user's need then jailbreak it and use the Installer. It should be available from Pwnage shortly.
 
The trick is to give developers as much leeway as possible and consumers as many choices as possible while maintaining the quality (and safety) of applications. Apple no doubt wants to find the right balance.
 
Delighted to see this finally happen - there are close to 250,000 downloads of the SDK and most were left out of the first run.

Now I think that we'll see new apps hitting the store just like we saw widgets being added.

I can understand that some of the apps now available might not be the best around - there wasn't much time and there were a few betas of the SDK. Companies that can thrown some talent at the project will generally have better apps - especially if it is tied to their basic Mac apps.

My only concern is how fast I could fill up a 16 GB iPhone with various apps as well as music & pics. As soon as I learned that the iPhone was running OS X I figured I would want 32 GB at a minimum. Maybe at MWSF 09.
 
Anybody notice the poor quality of reviews on all the iPhone apps? Many of them are from kids who don't even own a phone. Some are from the actual developers, talking about upcoming versions of their software. But mostly it is just immature kids using the area as a place to act childish. I'm surprised Apple is not filtering these- at least the ones that are clearly not relevant... such as "i wanna get this but don't have the money." Yes, that is very useful to me.

It is all starting to look a little flea-market-ish to me. (used flashlights included.)

I think I'd rather developers be able to host their own apps on their own web site, and then Apple could choose more restrictively which ones they'd feature in the App Store. This way nobody gets their feelings hurt. The flashlight app could live happily at iphone-flashlight.com and Apple can toss this crap out of the app store so we don't have to sort through it.
 
Imagine me... a developer ...?!!

nagromme said:
I applied ages ago and was only accepted on Friday. Clearly the beta was limited (only makes sense) but that certainly seems to have changed!

I'm actually very encouraged by the fact that I see some apps in the App Store that look pretty poor. It means Apple's being fairly hands-off, as I'd hoped.
Click to expand...

Yea, I got the email on Friday too. I wonder how many went out. I have yet to follow up on it although looking at the app store, I see PLENTY of room for good applications.
 
Imperil said:
Just as a little update the program is definitely totally open. I have been building an application with the SDK since the release but didn't even apply for the program as I live in Canada and did not have access to the device.

I just picked up my iPhone this morning :) And since I knew I was last night I joined up to the developer program and was accepted immediately and now have full access.

So it seems it really is open completely for registration at this time.
Click to expand...

I paid yesterday and got an order acknowledgement but haven't had anything else... no 'full access' whatever that means.

How do you know you have full access? Is there a page to go to or something? Apple help pages aren't, well, helpful (in fact they don't mention the dev programme at all).
 
Video recorder? Jailbroken 1.14 has it.

sjo said:
dont hold your breath waiting for those three particular apps :)
Click to expand...

I was recording video on my 1.14 iphone before I upgraded to 2.0. It worked OK but apparently that app has not made the app store yet.

As for MMS, someone released a jailbroken psuedo-MMS recently but it was a little confusing to use.

Skype? Nothing here.
 
Wirelessly posted (iPhone: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5A347 Safari/525.20)

This is great. It means more great apps for the masses.
 
TonyHoyle said:
I paid yesterday and got an order acknowledgement but haven't had anything else... no 'full access' whatever that means.

How do you know you have full access? Is there a page to go to or something? Apple help pages aren't, well, helpful (in fact they don't mention the dev programme at all).
Click to expand...

I got the email (below), but when I try to activate I get an error message.

Of course support is only active M-F :)

Anyone been able to activate?

Dick


Error Message:

We are unable to activate your iPhone Developer Program membership because we are unable to successfully verify your identity. Please contact us and reference Enrollment ID# xxxxxxxxxx for further assistance.


email:

Thank you for applying to the iPhone Developer Program. To activate, simply click on the Activation code link below

Activation Code Part Number

iPhone Developer Program xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx D4521G/A


If you need furthur assistance, please contact us.

iPhone Developer Program
 
dicklacara said:
I got the email (below), but when I try to activate I get an error message.

Of course support is only active M-F :)

Anyone been able to activate?

Dick


Error Message:

We are unable to activate your iPhone Developer Program membership because we are unable to successfully verify your identity. Please contact us and reference Enrollment ID# xxxxxxxxxx for further assistance.


email:

Thank you for applying to the iPhone Developer Program. To activate, simply click on the Activation code link below

Activation Code Part Number

iPhone Developer Program xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx D4521G/A


If you need furthur assistance, please contact us.

iPhone Developer Program
Click to expand...


How long did it take for the activation code to come through? - i've had nothing and I place my order over 11 hours ago :mad:
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5A347 Safari/525.20)

I'm looking forward to what developers will come up with.
 
philwa2 said:
How long did it take for the activation code to come through? - i've had nothing and I place my order over 11 hours ago :mad:
Click to expand...

There's several people posting that it took only 1-2 hours for them, so I think if you haven't had one by now it's a phone call to apple I think. I'm in the same boat.. damned annoying.
 
brewno said:
All I need now is MSN, Skype and TomTom.
Click to expand...

Neither of which is going to happen, since:


Furthermore, it seems that developers willing to write software for the iPhone have to pay a fee each year, and they'll have to sign a NDA.
Honestly, if I was a developer, I'd just stick to Windows Mobile, Palm OS, Android, and S60/Symbian, given the current situation. Apple already managed once to make sure that developers wrote software for the Palm instead of for the Newton (the development kit was only made free when the Newton platform was already dead). Seems they're eager to repeat history (though, given the popularity of the iPhone, this will be much harder to achieve this time).
 
does apple screen the applications to make sure they don't contain malicious code before they put them in the app store?
 
philwa2 said:
How long did it take for the activation code to come through? - i've had nothing and I place my order over 11 hours ago :mad:
Click to expand...

July 11, 2008 4:44:09 PM PDT rec'd email iPhone Developer Program Enrollment Status

July 11, 2008 5:00:00 PM PDT Completed Enrollment

July 11, 2008 6:20:47 PM PDT rec'd email iPhone Developer Program Activation Code

July 11, 2008 7:35:59 PM PDT rec'd email Your Apple invoice # xxxxxxxxxx
 
weg said:
Neither of which is going to happen, since:
Click to expand...
I guess you missed some news.

1) During the WWDC keynote, Apple announced a push notification service so that apps can stop running yet you'll still receive message notifications.

2) News from 2 days ago. TeleNav is developing a GPS application for the iPhone. I guess they have some sort of deal with Apple and that's the reason the SDK forbids any other similar application.
 
weg said:
Neither of which is going to happen, since:


Furthermore, it seems that developers willing to write software for the iPhone have to pay a fee each year, and they'll have to sign a NDA.
Honestly, if I was a developer, I'd just stick to Windows Mobile, Palm OS, Android, and S60/Symbian, given the current situation. Apple already managed once to make sure that developers wrote software for the Palm instead of for the Newton (the development kit was only made free when the Newton platform was already dead). Seems they're eager to repeat history (though, given the popularity of the iPhone, this will be much harder to achieve this time).
Click to expand...
1) Skype and MSN Messenger are allowed. Apple is using it's Push service to allow for multiple apps to run virtually in their cloud, pushing notifications to you as they arrive as badges, pop-up windows, sounds and/or vibrations. This is quite ingenious as I can have dozens of apps "running" on my iPhone while not draining my battery. Skype is however only allowed to work via WiFi per the SDK rules.

2) The fee is a whooping $99. Other mobile development platforms have fees and NDAs too. Apple's is quite reasonable and any developer would be foolish to only develop for a platform that is slow, unorganized and will has a far less viable user-base for smartphone apps.

3) You say Apple is eager to repeat history after you say the Newton SDK was not free, yet you know the iPhone SDK is free. That make no sense. Not to mention there are 552 apps available as of yesterday and there are many more a comin'.
 
I expect Apps to really take off in the next few months

While some had higher hopes for many apps released yesterday, I figured most wouldn't be of real use to me

But, I expect that to change as we voice what we want
 
Doctor Q said:
The trick is to give developers as much leeway as possible and consumers as many choices as possible while maintaining the quality (and safety) of applications. Apple no doubt wants to find the right balance.
Click to expand...
Which is definitely a tough thing to accomplish but seems like Apple is definitely going in the right direction.
 
min_t said:
Totally Disagree. It shouldn't be Apple's job to determine what users want or don't want. The creamy apps will rise to the top. The crap will fade away. We can't always tell what will be popular, so let's give everyone a chance at the million dollars.
Click to expand...

In the process thousands of customers will get burned, especially since there are so many, many useless reviews now. I don't think that's the ideal way.
 
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