iPhone SDK Downloaded Over 100,000 Times

[ChrisA]

You can count me as one who downloaded it and doesn't know what the hell they're doing. I've just been using some of the example projects Apple made available to try to teach myself. It's not going well, and all the Objective C resources I've found seem to expect you to already know C :-/

No surprise that an SDK would have as it's target audience software developers.

If you do want to learn it's best to start by writing some programs that run on the Mac. It is always easier to write software for a large powerful machine than for a small device. Easier by a large factor. "C" is easy to learn. You can be up to speed in a week. The language itself is so simple. What takes times to learn is the libraries and frameworks that you use. Those are huge and there is a ton of stuff to read. When it comes right down to it the programming language is really a kind of "glue" that you use to string together calls into the framework libraries.

 

[dr_lha]

Does anyone really think all 100,000 of those downloads are by software developers? I'd bet that 90% of the downloads were done by clueless end-uses who have no need for, or ability to use an SDK. If I'm right that means 10,000 developers did download the SDK. Even that is a huge number. Maybe it's 98% not 90% 2,000 real developers seems about right

I don't know about "clueless" people, but I bet a lot of people downloaded it purely to try stuff like the iPhone simulator.

 

[chuckles:)]

Does anyone really think all 100,000 of those downloads are by software developers? I'd bet that 90% of the downloads were done by clueless end-uses who have no need for, or ability to use an SDK. If I'm right that means 10,000 developers did download the SDK. Even that is a huge number. Maybe it's 98% not 90% 2,000 real developers seems about right

Probably closer to 50% then 98%. There are more developers out there then you think.

 

[morespce54]

How many iPhones have been sold?

I think I remember it being about 4 million so iPhones sold to SDK downloads is 40:1.

That seems pretty crazy to me.

Seems like June will be a very good month for my iPhone.
don't forget all the iPod touches out there!

Yes, but you'll have to pay extra-accounting-administration-fees to get those 4.99 applications on the iPod Touch!

 

[Loge]

OK, impressive number (though I downloaded it twice because the first time I had issues with the dmg).

I'd be interested to know how many copies of the 2.0 firmware have been distributed so far.

 

[Niiro13]

Now where's my dev certificate? XD

I hope that's Bejeweled 2...

But yeah, I know for a fact the majority of those are from people who thought it was an update (5 GB wasted =( ) [Yahoo! Answers flooded a ton of questions asking how to get the SDK on their iPod Touch/iPhone]

 

[aleksander]

I think you have to pay the $99 developer fee to actually compile for a physical iPhone instead of the virtual device, at which point the code would be signed with your certificate. Which is not to say it's not possible, but would leave out a lot of people not willing to pay $99 just to compile someone else's app for their phone.

Or I could be completely wrong. Please correct me if so.

While installing the SDK I had my iPhone docked and I was asked if I wanted the phone to be registered for development. What does that mean? It would be great if you'd be able to somehow lock your own phone for testing your own apps. I didn't have time to check it though - anyone?

 

[chuckles:)]

I don't know about "clueless" people, but I bet a lot of people downloaded it purely to try stuff like the iPhone simulator.

Speaking of which, i've been playing around with the SDK, and can't find the simulator anywhere. do you have to instal it separately?

 

[Stella]

100K downloads looks promising.

However, the proof is in the pudding: how many smaller developers are willing to pay $US99, especially opensource / freeware devs. Many good applications come from these developers.

Larger companies won't have a problem. Lets hope Apple's policy doesn't restrict the gems that come from freeware/ one person devs.

 

[stompy]

But yeah, I know for a fact the majority of those are from people who thought it was an update (5 GB wasted =( ) [Yahoo! Answers flooded a ton of questions asking how to get the SDK on their iPod Touch/iPhone]

Number of downloads has a lot to do with Apple putting it on their home page instead of simply adding it to http://developer.apple.com/.

Maybe they wanted to reach as wide an audience as possible, maybe they wanted to hype some impressive numbers.

 

[Phil A.]

While installing the SDK I had my iPhone docked and I was asked if I wanted the phone to be registered for development. What does that mean? It would be great if you'd be able to somehow lock your own phone for testing your own apps. I didn't have time to check it though - anyone?

It doesn't work unless the phone has V2.0 of the firmware on it...

 

[OS X Dude]

First time programmer and I am sooooo pissed with it!!! Well, more of my inability to grasp anything to do with programming whatsoever.

Seriously, I read docs on the dev support site, copy code they say is right into the SDK, then click Build & Go to check it works only for it to say "Undeclared" or some really stupid thing.

Im hopeless

Speaking of which, i've been playing around with the SDK, and can't find the simulator anywhere. do you have to instal it separately?

Spotlight "Aspen Simulator" or click "Build & Go" from the SDK to bring up the simulator.

 

[EagerDragon]

The not so good thing though is that there are going to be a lot of competition. The individual developers would have to be really good to go up against the big boys.

Survival of the fittest.
The best ideas and executions will bubble to the top and make the most sales.

As it should be.

However just because they are bigger does not mean that their idea and execution is better. They may get to market faster because there are more of them, but you can still beat them if your ideas and programs are better and more popular.

Find the group of people you want to target (10-20, 15-30,30-40, lawyers, secretaries, coal workers, etc), then determine what they need, brainstorm how to deliver it, sit an write it.

 

[filterban]

The not so good thing though is that there are going to be a lot of competition. The individual developers would have to be really good to go up against the big boys.

How is this bad? It's not like indie developers on Windows or Mac OS X have trouble succeeding.

Additional competition is great for the marketplace. Indie developers will have to come up with creative ideas in order to make a lot of money, but that's no different from the world at large.

What would truly be unfortunate is if Apple only allowed a certain number of developers to write software for the iPhone. That would basically mean that the big companies (EA, SixApart, Google, etc) would be fine because they'd have the money to get in, while the indie developer is left out in the cold.

I'm already concerned that we won't have any open source projects on the iphone because of GPLv3 incompatibilities. The more developers, the merrier, is what I say - because having a rich software base will continue to attract users which will continue to grow the potential market (and revenue $) for all iPhone developers.

 

[Thataboy]

Where would a total newbie go if he were interested in developing on this platform?

I imagine a lot of the normal Mac development stuff would be applicable, but I'd think there's a market for a streamlined iPhone-specific development guide. I'd buy such a guide, at least

 

[caoxiang]

Apple said they provide AudioUnit framework in iPhone SDK. But what I can found are just headers without any static library.

 

[OS X Dude]

You can count me as one who downloaded it and doesn't know what the hell they're doing. I've just been using some of the example projects Apple made available to try to teach myself. It's not going well, and all the Objective C resources I've found seem to expect you to already know C :-/

Because Objective-C is a superset of C (a "layer" on top of the C language if you like).

So, basically do what I'm doing (I'm in your boat too mate) - learn C (great resource links on Wikipedia) and you'll find Obj-C is basically C with a few new things on top, like icing on a cake i suppose.

 

[MacFly123]

Speaking of which, i've been playing around with the SDK, and can't find the simulator anywhere. do you have to instal it separately?

You have to have a project open in Xcode and when you hit the build button it launches it into the simulator automatically.

I downloaded the SDK and I have never coded anything before. I think there probably were a lot of people that did this, but I think that is really cool. Apple can make an entirely new platform generation of potential programmers. I have never had interest in programming before, and here I am starting to make apps for the iPhone!

I think this is a serious sign as well of how much of an impact the iPhone is really going to have over the next few years. We are talking THE future platform for computing in the world. All of the iPods around the world are going to turn into iPhones soon. Virtually EVERYONE is going to have one. Combining all of our daily gadgets into one elegant, easy to use mobile device is the future and Apple was brilliant enough to recognize that and implement it successfully where so many have tried and failed. This is awesome to watch. It is like knowing how huge the iPod was going to be even from its humble beginnings and watching it all from the start. I think the iPhone will be even bigger than the iPod eventually. In the near future people will have a home computer or laptop and an iPhone.

Let PCs keep shipping their crappy desktops and laptops with Windows. Apple is conquering the future of computing as we speak and selling more Macs will just be a byproduct of that happening.

Here's to the future Apple, can't wait

 

[dasmb]

100,000 is a lot of people. I would not estimate that there are that many developers worldwide who have written in Objective-C. Judging from the activity on various forums and newsgroups, I'd guess a tenth as many.

Apple's dev kit is one of the most impressively documented SDKs I've ever seen...but it doesn't change the fact that this is NOT amateur hour. PHP "developers" need not apply; you're going to need good programming -- not scripting -- skills, a strong understanding of OO -- not procedural -- concepts, and a brain wired for end-to-end quality just to get through the Hello World app, let alone create a workable application. Folks used to copy, modify & paste are going to be discouraged by the dearth of source.

I'll bet most of those downloads were from a) folks looking for clues on how to hack the iPhone b) folks looking to try the simulator, which -- no surprise to anybody who's worked with the Palm/Windows Mobile simulators -- doesn't include any of the native iPhone apps c) folks used to programming in other languages or on other platforms who will find the strangeness of development on this platform compared to other modern strongly typed languages too much to overcome.

There will be more ideas than talent in this space for a while. Which is good news for me -- I expect a lot of contract work in the coming months.

 

[jephrey]

Downside for me is that I'm on a G5 so it'll be a while. I did a few things in xCode, but found realbasic real easy. I can code, but I'm only used to the basic language and assembly code FWIW. I don't know much about building/compiling etc, but that's to learn. There is one thing about the $99 fee, if you work with a group of people, that works, as well as if you sell your idea to someone who has already paid the dev costs. Then just buy your own app.

 

[skiesforme]

I think out of those 100,000 downloads, only 5000 would ever write an application.

 

[OS X Dude]

I was trying out some C in Xcode, and in Edit there's an option that says "Convert to Objective-C 2.0"

So i could code something in C and have Xcode make it iPhone/iTouch friendly Obj-C for me????

Would anyone say that's gonna produce some hit and miss results?

 

[chuckles:)]

Spotlight "Aspen Simulator" or click "Build & Go" from the SDK to bring up the simulator.

Weird... the xcode installer didn't install any of the aspen tools on my comp... i'll try downloading again. maybe its because i'm still on a ppc?

 

[EagerDragon]

Does anyone really think all 100,000 of those downloads are by software developers? I'd bet that 90% of the downloads were done by clueless end-uses who have no need for, or ability to use an SDK. If I'm right that means 10,000 developers did download the SDK. Even that is a huge number. Maybe it's 98% not 90% 2,000 real developers seems about right

Now assume that each team of programmers is composed of 2 or 3 programmers and that will give you a rought idea of how many programs will be started. Then assume for a minute (pick your own number) that X percent of those are duplicate ideas or poor execution which means that they will be eliminated quickly by the market.

I guess about 30 simple ones will be ready within the first week (end of June), and another 50 by end of July, another 70 by August and then it will substantially come down as the first 150+ apps fight it up for a market, mean time I would say about 5 to 10 new ones a month for the rest of the year. I think the number will end up around 150 to 250 as more come in and some drop out.

Just a guess.

 

[Columbo X]

I had a quick look at the SDK, found I couldn't run OpenGL at the moment and left it. I'll certainly go back to it, just to play around with views, types etc. so I know my way around the system when I eventually can run OpenGL stuff.

Sure, most of the SDK downloads will amount to nothing (it reminds me of the XNA downloads Microsoft touted versus the amount of worthwhile content produced), but it's great to see an SDK generate excitement amongst aspiring developers.

I'm so glad Apple maintain their focus on Objective-C (though most of my code is done in Objective-C++) because the runtime and reflection are so much more elegant and less restrictive than the .NET languages I've used.

I do agree with other people on the forum, this is certainly an exciting platform to develop for, particularly thanks to multi-touch and the accelerometer - I think this takes human-computer interaction to a whole other level.