iPhone SDK Reactions and Ongoing Questions

[AlphaAnt]

I just posted this to roughlydrafted, but it applies here, too.

All this talk of the iPhone SDK delays... 1st: never; then: use web apps; then: in Feb; then: in June...

June? The SDK is out as originally promised, I downloaded it last night. It was a few days later than they originally said (late February) but my calendar says March, not June. He never said the App Store was coming out in February or March, after all. You can't even make that assumption based on any of their announcements so many months ago.

I really don't have a problem with the delay between SDK and the App Store. Do people really think that the apps are going to write themselves? Application development takes time. Sure they cranked out several applications in a few days, but these are people that have already had the SDK and know how to program in Cocoa. If I want to write even the simplest app I've got to spend several days learning the basics of Cocoa (which, incidentally, I've started already), flesh out a GUI in Illustrator so I know what I want to create, write the code, test it thoroughly. Then, if I want to sell it, I have to get the app out there faster than anyone else with the same idea, so testing might be rushed just so I can say "First". With the June release of the App store, now I have 3-3.5 months to actually test the app so I can release a quality product.

 

[HaGG]

Not too long to wait really

 

[OS X Dude]

While I'm here, would Firefox ever be compiled for the iPhone, or even a Linux distro???

 

[sebastianlewis]

Generally speaking I think the App store is a great idea. Thirty percent isn't bad considering it allows the programs to get to each iPhone and each iPod Touch easily...and you don't have to worry about hosting anything.

The one thing I wonder though is what about programs that are used for internal use? Meaning some companies might make programs they want on the iPhone, but don't want to mass distribute it. I've already thought of a couple programs that I might want to try and develop for the companies I work for, but they aren't ones that I'd want to stick on the App Store so anyone could use it. It'd just be for internal use only.

Did I miss something in the presentation because at this point it seems like everything has to go the App store?

While this wasn't mentioned at the Keynote, and it might not even be in the plans yet, I suspect Apple will allow businesses to setup an Intranet App Store for companies to post custom apps to when on the corporate WiFi network, I also suspect the same for Universities as well.

Sebastian

 

[Kageden]

Nm

Never mind. I answered my own question when I went to register for the beta. One option for usage is:

Enterprise (In-House) Applications

Good to know.

 

[scottybe]

70/30 a great deal

It's a win-win-win: Apple, developers, and me. I have a Windows Mobile Cingular 8125. Do you know how hard it is to find, buy, and install a new app on this thing? I'm sure others have figured out how to do it, but as a casual user who has downloaded only 3-4 apps over the last two years, each time is an ordeal.

Exchange integration was the only thing keeping me from jumping to the iPhone. I can't wait for June!

 

[deathshrub]

"what Microsoft and Windows was to the desktop, Apple and Touch will be to mobile."


is that a JOKE? microsoft bastardized the entire pc industry with its substandard software.

 

[t^3]

The significance of a native iPhone version of Epocrates for health care professionals can not be overstated. In my experience, it alone has been significant driver in Palm sales amongst physicians, and its absence on the iPhone has been a significant hurdle for physician adoption of Apple's phone.

No doubt about this. As a pharmacy student, I got a Palm primarily because our school provides a free subscription to a drug database similar to Epocrates, and it is one of the two main reasons that has prevented me from getting an iPhone (the other being cost). The Palm platform is a dying one, and I am eager to jump ship. I think come this June, we'll start seeing a lot of healthcare professionals carrying around iPhone's/iPod touch's.

 

[JoeBruin]

Exactly

Upon being forced to watch the EPocrates portion of the Town Hall presentation, my wife (physician) just said "Wow. I need to get an iPhone now. I won't need my Palm anymore. When is our TMobile contract up?"

I'm so proud.

The quality of the product with hi-res images of pills, being able to ID pills by patients' descriptions (the guy was dead-on when he described a medication by "orange and 3-sided"), having the drug side-affect checker, and being able to consolidate another device will make this a deal breaker for the medical field.

Our Sys Admin (Apple-phobic) was having some serious inner-conflict about Exchange support, Cisco VPN support, music, video, ... Both our WinMo Treos will probably be retired about the same time (late June).

Now I'm just hoping 3G comes along with v.2.0.

Buy AAPL now since they'll definitely be hitting to 10M mark by Q4 2008.

 

[AlphaAnt]

I'm 16 and iPhone/iPod Touch will be my first foray into software engineering, and what has seemed a lil unfair is the price of all this.

OK, so it's £50 ish pounds per year to get the dev certificate you need, then they get 30% of your proceeds. So, in a year (with programs priced at £5 and an average of 150 downloads), thats £1825 gross to you every year (£152/month). Then out of that comes the £50 hosting fee (£1,775) and Apple takes 30% of the remaining figure (so that's you £532.50 out of pocket) finally leaving you with £1,242.50 take home in a year (£103.54/month).

That seems to me a little bit greedy on Apple's part - surely the £50/year is enough for Apple considering the amount of people who will develop for the platform?? Or am I just too damn inexperienced and this is fact the norm??

Sorry if the maths is complicated

I wold say that this is closer to the norm. There's no charge for writing apps for yourself and some friends, you just push the app through the SDK. Look at the App Store this way: If there was no App Store, how would you advertise/host/sell your app? On your own server? That'll cost a lot more than 99 dollars + 30% of sales?

With the App Store, anyone with an iPhone or iTouch can easily get access to your app. You'll likely find that sales that way will end up being a lot higher than they would if you had to do it yourself.

For large development companies, the 99 dollars becomes nominal and the 30% is no more than they would have to pay in overhead anyway.

 

[Virgil-TB2]

"never"?

... All this talk of the iPhone SDK delays... 1st: never; then: use web apps; then: in Feb; then: in June...

Just because I see this all the time, I would like someone to refer for once to the actual announcement where Jobs/Apple said that there would "never be third party development on the iPhone."

Most articles about the SDK reference this belief (that Apple had "refused" to allow third party development and now has "changed it's mind"), and thousands of comments on this forum do so as well. Speaking as someone who has followed all the announcements quite avidly however, I can't once remember Apple saying anything of the sort. A (temporary) absence of opportunity is not evidence of a refusal.

I remember people *expecting* third party development. I remember them being disappointed when it was announced that for the moment that this amounted to web apps. I also remember Jobs specifically hinting that they were looking into native development down the road at the time they announced web apps.

It's possible I just missed it but I do not remember (as everyone else seems to) any time when Apple said "we are not going to allow third party apps on the iPhone."

This has always seemed to me to be the same kind of fake drama that evolved around the iPhone rebate. Just because people draw wild inferences from Apple's statements doesn't mean that they are actually true.

 

[felixkunze]

Best distribution model....ever....

I agree, but there are still some major questions. I would imagine they will tie the App Store somewhat to the iTunes Store. That's all very nice - but will we see what we are seeing on the iTunes store now? There's content on the US store that we can't get in the UK and vica versa. Its not Apple's fault per se but it does make me think. The software developers generally distribute world-wide, but I'm not sure that the iTunes store infrastructure (if they base the App store on it) will be able to handle the distribution, internationally of these apps. I think the delayed launch date has a lot more to do with distribution infrastructure to create a more open distribution framework than is immediately obvious. It wouldn't be an issue if they are distributing all Apps for free, but they are gonna have to accept international payments. They can accept payments from all countries where they have iPhones, as those countries have iTunes stores. But the same can't be said for the Touch as it is undoubtedly being sold (and I'm not talking grey-markets here) in non-iTunes countries.

While this has been an issue since before the SDK announcement, Apple essentially has to have an iTunes store in a country before they can really launch the iPhone, or face a very crippled experience for consumers.

I'd like to know:
- Will apps be country-specific?
- How will payments work from countries that don't have the itunes infrastructure already in place.
- How will distribution of free apps work? Will customers in countries without an iTunes store only be able to get the free apps on their iPod Touches?

 

[Virgil-TB2]

... Then out of that comes the £50 hosting fee..

The fifty pounds is not a hosting fee. It is the price you pay to become part of the developer network. It's also dead cheap compared to the same fees in other developer networks.

The 30% distribution/processing/hosting fee is also very fair compared to other similar situations. You are paying a minimal percentage to get access to a huge market and have Apple handle all the processing etc.

 

[grappler]

Wonder if it'll be possible to have a call carried over voip and wifi while I'm near a good wifi hotspot, and have it transferred to AT&T's voice network as I leave the hotspot area...

 

[stompy]

Just because I see this all the time, I would like someone to refer for once to the actual announcement where Jobs/Apple said that there would "never be third party development on the iPhone."

Just because people draw wild inferences from Apple's statements doesn't mean that they are actually true.

Just generally accepted as truth, and reported by "journalists" as well. If I had a buck for ever article that's claimed "Apple does 180" "Apple about face..."

BTW, your comment was very well written, thank you.

 

[objc]

Pretty cool

Well it's pretty cool that one can now develop for this thing using Cocoa. And the fact that they have a simulator and remote debugging is really great. These features will make it much easier to develop "kick ass" applications for the phone.

Now if they could just make the battery replaceable and find a decent phone company*, it would be the perfect mobile device.

* Of course, I'm not sure there IS such a thing as a cell phone company that isn't evil. At least at&t works in more places, like NSA HEADQUARTERS.

 

[jtm235711131719]

Is there NO ONE in the mainstream or internet media who can ask Apple about Lotus/Domino efforts??? I mean, if Apple says no, they say no, but can someone at least ASK?

Thank you

Here is a reaction from the Lotus Notes/Domino world: disappointment.

Here are my thoughts/predictions:

1. A lot of organizations use Domino servers (like mine), but Exchange is probably more of an exclamation point for marketing purposes.

2. IBM mentioned and then hastly retracted proposed iPhone Domino server support back in January. Retracted I'm sure due to NDA reasons with Apple.

3. Domino support may be still be there by June.

One question that I have for people who know these things, can ActiveSync interface with a Domino server? What I mean is: are there now commercial enterprise solutions for this?

 

[Peace]

I like the fact the the SDK actually works in real time!!

 

[bmk]

That seems to me a little bit greedy on Apple's part - surely the £50/year is enough for Apple considering the amount of people who will develop for the platform?? Or am I just too damn inexperienced and this is fact the norm??

Yes, you are too damn inexperienced. There is no creative artist in the world, whatever their field, who gets 70 per cent of the sale price of their intellectual copyright. A writer is lucky to get 10 per cent of a book's cover price. Radiohead on average got about one pound fifty for every download of their new album, but that is still more than they would have got from the record company.

 

[chrisgeleven]

Too bad I have to wait to December to get my iPhone (Verizon contract ends then).

The SDK and App Store sound wonderful. I cannot wait to try this stuff out.

 

[pdjudd]

Wonder if it'll be possible to have a call carried over voip and wifi while I'm near a good wifi hotspot, and have it transferred to AT&T's voice network as I leave the hotspot area...

No, since VOIP apps will not be able to use a cellular connection. Your call will probably be dropped.

 

[offwidafairies]

there is only one front page news item that is not related to iPhone

 

[dicklacara]

Generally speaking I think the App store is a great idea. Thirty percent isn't bad considering it allows the programs to get to each iPhone and each iPod Touch easily...and you don't have to worry about hosting anything.

The one thing I wonder though is what about programs that are used for internal use? Meaning some companies might make programs they want on the iPhone, but don't want to mass distribute it. I've already thought of a couple programs that I might want to try and develop for the companies I work for, but they aren't ones that I'd want to stick on the App Store so anyone could use it. It'd just be for internal use only.

Did I miss something in the presentation because at this point it seems like everything has to go the App store?

If there is a hole in Apple's distribution plans it is the gap between:

1) IT developing and installing on a large enterprise "network" using an Apple-supplied tool-- presumably an in-house version of the iTunes store.

2) Independent developers selling/installing through the "public" iTunes Store.

Likely, there needs to be an additional distro/install method that satisfies the needs of small, (somewhat) closed ad hoc groups, say:

-- a group of family or friends that share common interests and needs for sharing data: schedules, messaging, contacts.
-- a club
-- a sports league

Once these needs become obvious, there are several ways that Apple could accommodate them.

1) make the IT tool available
2) enhance the iTunes Client on your computer to handle this without going through the iTunes Store-- similar to how the Podcasts which are not listed in the iTunes store. These are downloaded, directly, by the iTunes Client on your computer (and synched to the iPhone).

 

[ruckus]

Generally speaking I think the App store is a great idea. Thirty percent isn't bad considering it allows the programs to get to each iPhone and each iPod Touch easily...and you don't have to worry about hosting anything.

The one thing I wonder though is what about programs that are used for internal use? Meaning some companies might make programs they want on the iPhone, but don't want to mass distribute it. I've already thought of a couple programs that I might want to try and develop for the companies I work for, but they aren't ones that I'd want to stick on the App Store so anyone could use it. It'd just be for internal use only.

Did I miss something in the presentation because at this point it seems like everything has to go the App store?

One of the Q and A questions covered this and the response was "We're working on it"

 

[imwoblin]

I think so, but I wonder if AT&T will be the biggest road block.I can't wait for June. I think as time goes by we will cell the big cell companies fade with the focus being on the consumer buying data plans not hardware. Perhaps focus will shift more to the iPod touch as wifi becomes more available.

I was thinking along the same lines... I'm sure AT&T's CEO dropped his coffee when he heard Steve say VoIp over WiFi was cool. I'll put money on it that he grabbed his iPhone and made an immediate call to Steve telling him "No, No, No!" Stay tuned....