iPhone SDK Details Emerging?

[Antares]

I think we're all missing the big question here:

If Apple is the Gatekeeper, then who is the Keymaster?


But yeah, this is what it looks like how it's going to be: If you want official, supported apps, you'll have to get them through iTunes. If you want unsupported apps, you'll have to Jailbreak and get them some other way. We'll just have to live with this.....

 

[Spades]

can you say facist.

No. They can do what they want. And we'll do what we want. It's not very likely that I'll give up jailbreaking. Whether or not Apple's plan is a good idea is another question.

 

[filmguy15]

Who in the world are you talking about? Are you saying you have zero third party apps on your Mac now?

An Apple user uses a Macintosh, and a Macintosh has THOUSANDS of third party apps - some great, some crappy, most Steve Jobs has never even seen.

The free market has, for years and years, pushed the crappy apps off into obscurity, while rising the best ones to the top. Sticking Apple in the loop restricts your freedom and costs you money.

If you want Apple to judge what's "poorly made", then please feel free to download only from Apple, but allow me the freedom to do what I want. I understand if you're nervous. I'm not.

Sorry, should have specified. I was talking specifically about the iPhone. I too have many 3rd party apps on my Mac. But the iPhone is NOT a Mac. Apple has AT&T that they must please as well. They cannot and will not risk reliability and ease of use just for "freedom" sake. It doesn't make sense business-wise. They are a company last time I checked, here to make money and nothing else. Why you would expect anything different is beyond me.....

And no, I am not nervous. Why would I be? I know my phone will work as designed.

 

[dicklacara]

You guys broke the MR forum!

This forum shows 15 pages, but won't go beyond 14...

 

[mdriftmeyer]

Certification Lab Testing

Here's an observation to folks complaining about possibly perceived delays for getting your application accepted.

BUG TEST IT AND MAKE IT BUILD CLEAN, ELIMINATE BOUNDS CHECKS, CORRECTLY DEAL WITH EXCEPTIONS HANDLING, et. al.

No one is going to be allowed to have a certified Application that basically circumvents the middle layer and be a Trojan Horse.

 

[EagerDragon]

You can't make a device totally secure and still keep it useful, but you can certainly make it so hard to break that it's not worth the effort. If Apple got their security to that level and just worried about verifying their own OS, they wouldn't need to worry about security with 3rd party apps.

And it would be a lot easier and cheaper for them to QA their own code than everybody else's.

Bingo, it is called risk management. If the cost of a fix is larger than the gain, it may not be worth fixing. However one has to consider the number of re-oiccurances of the issue for a year and be well informed to make the decision not to fix.

I do not believe Apple has a team like our that go over the code and follow every call and every memory assignement. Unfortunatly we are not allowed to give back so if we find anything we fork the code and fix it in our copy. It does not matter if is something like sudo, grep, or a full fledge application, we do not pass back issues we found, we just fix it for us. Not my call, Legal is doing that.

BTW we have like 3000 programmers beating on our team to review their code, and they been trained in how to code securely. Lets see 14/3000 = too many programmers per reviewer. LOL

 

[averyash]

Electronista

Electronista posted this: http://www.electronista.com/articles/08/02/29/apple.and.free.iphone.apps/ which offers alleged insight into how free apps will be treated.

"In spite of fears that Apple may impose tight restrictions on third-party iPhone applications developed with its upcoming SDK, the company may loosen those restrictions for free programs"

 

[Spades]

BTW we have like 3000 programmers beating on our team to review their code, and they been trained in how to code securely. Lets see 14/3000 = too many programmers per reviewer. LOL

Yowsers. I thought a 5:1 developer/test ratio was bad. I don't think I could stay sane at over 214:1.

 

[farmboy]

I stand by my comment. He doesn't understand the word.

Not being able to spell correctly hardly equates to using words one does not understand.

Yes, it does. Words have both definitions AND meanings, and there is a difference.

Fascism has caused immeasurable death and suffering, and continues to do so today. Applying that word, and the gravitas of that word, to a discussion of a cell phone and indie apps is a prima facie indication that the word is not understood and the usage is clueless and careless.

It's like using "concentration camp" in a discussion of after-school detention.

 

[JGowan]

As a small 3rd party developer I'm just going to refuse to do anything for the iPhone/iTouch platform if Apple acts like a gatekeeper. If iTunes is an option that's fine, if its mandatory and Apple has to approve each app I'm just not interested. Hopefully other developers feel the same way.

First time post -- Negative -- love it. What's your website. Would love to see what we'll be missing.

 

[DefiantSoul]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A102 Safari/419.3)

apple are paranoid about security and i dont blame them imagine what a virus could or would do for the iphone.

Viruses don't affect other phones, despite other smartphones being open (i.e., developers freely allowed to write applications and distribute them ). There are viruses out there, but the security models of the OSes are good enough. iPhone must have a very very weak security model.

I think Apple's parania says everything: The iPhone is still a beta product that is very weak. It 'just about' works, and thats it.

Baaahahaha!! Yeah, ok! Can you say "bitter Windows mobile user"?

 

[Tosser]

Yes, it does. Words have both definitions AND meanings, and there is a difference.

Fascism has caused immeasurable death and suffering, and continues to do so today. Applying that word, and the gravitas of that word, to a discussion of a cell phone and indie apps is a prima facie indication that the word is not understood and the usage is clueless and careless.

It's like using "concentration camp" in a discussion of after-school detention.

That is indeed an argument, but that wasn't how you went about it.
You criticised his argument, tried to show the flaw in it by stating he couldn't have understood the word since he misspelled the word. And that is quite a stretch, frankly.

 

[EagerDragon]

Yowsers. I thought a 5:1 developer/test ratio was bad. I don't think I could stay sane at over 214:1.

The reviewers burn out and we give them a break. The dump is not cosntant and we do have a queue.

I do the training and quality checks for the team to make sure they did not missed something and that they have crossed the T's and dotted the I's. I also check they are not getting soft, I want them mean as a wild cat, no favors and no looking the other way.

BTW Most reviews take 9 or less days.

 

[darkblu]

Aaah I see - may I have a copy of the list of things that will and will not pass that you clearly own?

why, because you're too inexperienced and don't know how to approach a publisher?

i know that before i start working on my iphone applications (and that's not hypotetical) i'll check their ok with apple. now, if you don't know what app you want to write for the platform, you 'clearly' shouldn't be commenting on the topic the way you do. and if you have actual plans, but don't know how to check their ok with apple then, again, the ball is in your court. maybe you should not write apps for the platform? at least you'll save yourself 'all the time and effort, just to be rejected by big bad apple'.

 

[i.maverick]

Sync in Progress


slide to cancel


apple's sliding!

 

[peestandingup]

The iPhone, although successful & ground breaking, is also a failure & a step backwards in many ways.

This is the most overall restrictive product I believe Apple has ever made.

 

[MacFly123]

Good for Apple...This means that Apple is still in charge and will control what will be will be. It also gives all of those that love to whine something else to express their anger about...so here we go with ALLLLLL of the pissed off users that just want to whine cause the phone won't be able to "think" and "do" for them.

At least this way, we will continue to have a quality, high end product that won't turn into a cheapend Treo with totally broke software and cheap plastic attachements.

So....lets get on with the show and see how many different ways the cry babies can whine and bitch about the same old missing stuff....Entertain me...let the show begin....lmao!!!

Ditto. I think this is great. It is consistent with the whole iPod, iPhone, iTunes model that has proven to be just a little bit successful. They won't hinder free apps just the official higher end ones and I think that is important.

My question is will they ever rename iTunes lol??? Not that I think they should due to major brand recognition, but it sure isn't very accurate anymore hehe. Maybe iMedia? Na, just doesn't have the same ring

 

[JGowan]

Ditto. I think this is great. It is consistent with the whole iPod, iPhone, iTunes model that has proven to be just a little but successful. They won't hinder free apps just the official higher end ones and I think that is important.

I believe there's got to be some type of "Apple Stamp of Approval" for Widgets they offer direct from their website (complete with an individual Advertisement about what the widget is and does) -- and there are, I believe, several thousands available. What's the deal? Sounds like people are afraid to put out something really good.

 

[randyhudson]

I can promise you that the Apple certifications of applications is being driven by AT&T. AT&T does not want consumers calling them when they have problems with an application nor do they want applications on the phone that may expose vulnerabilities in their network.

Interesting argument. Have you ever used your iTunes client on the at&t network? Or gotten tech support from AT&T for the iTunes client?

 

[Sobe]

ME!

It will harm ME! An honest developer with a localized need within the company, or even to select customers. I've got no interest in having my app appear in iTunes, since it isn't applicable to ANYONE outside of my company.

If Apple plays Nanny, then I will be forbidden from writing the handy, remote process monitor I've been dreaming up for months. If Apple has to play man-in-the-loop for my application, they'll never get around to "approving it", and the entire platform will simply not work, and we'll have to go (back) to Palm.

To flip the coin: Raise your hand if you think Apple's policy will be to be given source code, and have their tech boys pour over it looking for malicious code. It's unfeasible and unprofitable and unreliable. Besides, the Macintosh, YOUR Macintosh, has had the ability to arbitrarily install apps for decades, and for the most part, has remained free of defects. OSX in the mac --> OSX in the phone.

We've all covered this ground a million times and it boils down to Personal Responsibility. If you install an evil app on your iPhone, or your macintosh, it's your own fault. Everyone is (probably) an adult and able to make good judgements.

The problem with that is that the media along with the 10 million blogs won't report on mainstreetmark's problems with evil apps, they'll hammer Apple for not protecting their customers and their platform of choice.

They have a lot more at stake than whether or not this meets everyone's needs perfectly. They have an image, a company, and stock holders to protect.

If consumers don't like that, vote with your dollars and stop buying their damned products.

 

[Stella]

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU like Mac OS X; en) AppleWebKit/420.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.0 Mobile/4A102 Safari/419.3)



Baaahahaha!! Yeah, ok! Can you say "bitter Windows mobile user"?

LOL - never used WM and never will.

Why would I be bitter? My existing smartphone does everything I need it to. The iPhone, in its current state, does not.

 

[fred.buckley]

bluetooth GPS 'module'?

bluetooth gps 'antenna's (like garmin's $200 mobile 10) allow gps unit to be located for best satellite reception without interfering with display viewing and interaction... my iPhone purchase awaits garmin moile 10 support...

 

[viennese]

I don't understand why Apple does not support printing on iPhone through Bluetooth, wi-fi or any other route???it is not a very big deal.

 

[needthephone]

To the people who say they aren't interested in developing for the iphone and touch if apple has the audacity to be a gate keeper.

GOOD, stay away I'm not a developer but I'm sick of the crap software served up on windows.

I'm glad apple has (or hopefully ) will add some quality control to keep out the rubbish.

If they make a buck out of it, great, by making money apple will have a decent sustainable platform for the future so that the decent third party developers can develop software with some certainty.

And more importantly dumb users like me will be happy with the applications and can use them, hopefully without risk of a virus or a trojan logging my net banking keystrokes and transmitting them to the Ukraine or somewhere.

 

[ramzez]

Interesting iGo is already showing Nav'n Go for iPhone with GPS module, here is the video

http://www.engadget.com/2008/03/06/video-nav-n-gos-igo-my-way-8-gps-iphone-ipod-touch-edition/