iPhone "SDK" To Receive Improvements, Remain Web-based

[Rot'nApple]

The way to make Apple pay attention is to work with it-- write emails galore. Avoid MacWorld if all else fails.

Great Post! I couldn't agree more with everything you said.

I quoted only the last sentence of your post because it is the most important thought Apple's employees browsing this message board and other like it need to know about and report back to the higher ups.

So to all the hackers, unlockers, 3rd party app developers, 3rd party apps users, keep fanning the flames - it's the only way you are going to get that fire (under 's arse) started!

 

[BillyShears]

Poll's misleading

Are you trying to mislead people with your flawed logic or are you just being ignorant?
You can't fool a third grader with your ill-conceived comment of 1880 "out of a million iphones. "
That 1880 people .. well btw its now up to 3344 ... is out of 6500 TOTAL THAT 1) TOOK THE POLL AND 2) OWN AN IPHONE. Or said another way, just over 51%. and YES, that is a simple MAJORITY

I would think the sort of people who find such a poll and take the time to vote on it would probably be biased in favour of modifying their iPhones.

 

[winterspan]

Yeah, I forgot that Skype and VOIP services don't hurt AT&T's bottom line. Oh, I also forgot that IM doesn't take away from AT&T's text messaging revenue. I can't recall that free ringtones take away money for the record companies, and that most other services charge $2.50 and don't let you choose the snippet or keep the actual song. It escaped my mind that MMS is outdated and Apple is abandoning it like many other technologies (Floppy, Modem) to push e-mail as the preferred way of multimedia messaging.
My memory is absolutely horrible.

Skype and Voip hurting At&t's bottom line? IM taking away from TXT message revenue? God you really just drink up the coolaid, huh? You talk like a Verizon executive. Where did you get the concept that you weren't entitled to run whatever application you want on your PURCHASED device?
I just find it incredible that you would be proud of yourself taking this stance and calling out the other guy you responded to.

I am all about Apple's products and I like the company, but
There is no other company's/product's fanboy ON THIS PLANET that would agree with the perspective of an American Telecommunications CEO.



btw, MMS outdated? Are you kidding? How many people do you know that email pictures from their cellphone to other peoples phone's email address ?
Go look up the facts. There are tens of billions of MMS sent each year world wide. Talk about apple apologists...

Badly coded apps can be unstable, and ruin the user experience...

hence the concept of Apple writing a good sandboxed platform SDK and pre-approving applications for quality and selling them on Itunes.

Win-Win-Win

 

[macaron1]

Marketing an SDK

Guys -- Not that you should, but you got to chill out.

Don't you feel the freakin' native-app SDK is going to come out soon? It's in the air. It almost seems AAPL needs this build-up of furor (which started to make it into mainstream news) to release the thing to public funfare and attention.

 

[HiRez]

Oh and for God's sake - let me drag and drop individual songs and videos to my iPhone when connected to iTunes. I loathe playlist sync.

How is dragging songs into a playlist any more cumbersome than dragging them into the iPhone directly? OK, so you have to hit the Sync button when you're done, but big deal. I'm not seeing the problem.

 

[Rot'nApple]

"takes a special kind of dumb.." -- thats the funniest thing I've heard in awhile. Literally laughing out loud right now...

about the numbers, see my earlier comment. Right now, when you remove people who do not own iphones, the split is about 50/50 with 51% using 3rd party apps who answered the poll....

Ah the power of polls, where you can give a slighted worded question and several options but never the option the one answering the poll wants, so you have to go with the next best selection.

Hey, let's fire all the politicians and govern by polls! Who should write the poll questions and answers? We can make that our first 'Poll Question'!

With that in mind, my selection would not have been "do not own an iPhone" but would have been, waiting for a higher capacity iPhone (like iPod Touch 16GB) and personally, do not care about third party apps or that it is exclusive to AT&T - if apps or other carriers are available that's great, if not, I still would purchase the iPhone, that is, when it has bigger storage available. However, since that wasn't an available selection, I had to choose (semi-correct) the choice of "do not own an iPhone" (yet), which is just too vague and statistically, can lead to an inappropriate reading of the poll's results because I answered the poll question but it wasn't my answer - if that makes any sense.

 

[winterspan]

The problem is that the 7% in question are the most passionate users and could really create problems for Apple. I have gotten Apple at least 1 iPhone, 3 iPods, and probably 10+ macs sold in the last 3 years due to my evangelizing. They lose me and the rest of that 7% and they lose something more powerful than their marketing department could ever come up with.

Precisely. They lose the Apple "evangelical" 10% and that is a HUGE blow. That loyal passionate 10% is what KEPT APPLE AFLOAT for years. It's easy to understand. Why do you think they always say the LARGEST form of marketing is word of mouth. Especially from your loyal base. business 101.

and I don't believe it is 7% based upon a few things, one being all the lay people I know with iPhones that have figured out how to run AppTap or whatever. ( I dont have an Iphone... I refuse to buy one for now)
The 7% is based upon one application's download volume. Based upon my personal experience, the other stats I have seen, and how simple it had become to upload apps, I'd say its 12-15%.

So say we have 12-15%. Now how many of the others with an iphone WOULD LOVE 3rd party applications, but don't want to risk "hacking" it or already have 1.1.1? I'd say we'd take that 12-15% up to % 30-35 at least.
The others? I bet if you show them the possibilities of 3rd party applications on an iPhone, the MAJORITY of them would love the idea.

Now when are in the 2/3rds majority range at least.... Like someone else said, WHAT CUSTOMER WOULDN'T want 3rd party applications if given the choice? Especially fast, stable, quality applications approved by apple sold via Itunes. Simple and easy.

What is the big deal with the 3rd party apps? Let's be honest, many of us on here like Steve Jobs for a reason, he represents the way most of us think... control freaks. If we weren't control freaks, none of us would complain about not having 3rd party apps. We would all just let Apple do what Apple does, which is control everything.

Um... no. The argument that only a control freak would be upset that another control freak is controlling everything is totally false. EVERY *NORMAL* PERSON does not want someone to control everything.

I understand we liked having the Nintendo Emulators and the ability to use the disk space to save things, but some of the apps were just ridiculous and gimmicky more than anything. Is it necessary to have a dock on an iPhone? No, but it looks cool.

Yes, every single person who installed an application to their iphone is a 16 year old geek playing nintendo on an emulator??? I would use "we" with much more discretion from now on. Besides, the fact that you find some 3rd party application ridiculous, as I do a game emulator, is entirely irrelevant to the argument of why Apple needs to allow open development.

If you want it "Your Way Right Away", go to Burger King. If you want an iPhone, buy one, but from day one, Apple said they wouldn't support those 3rd party apps.

<annoying voice> "but apple said they wouldn't allow them..." </annoying voice>
This has been rehashed in these forums so many times that my eye balls are going to be sucked back into my frontal lobe until my skull collapses...

 

[Mike Teezie]

I have a non hacked iPhone running 1.1.1, and think it's bloody amazing.

That said, I'd love to see an SDK for developing native apps, for two reasons:

1. So people will shut up about it, possibly giving them the opportunity to find a sense of perspective in their lives.
2. I'd like to see what people come up with, so Apple can steal it, and make it better. That was a joke, whiners - contain yourselves.

For all the people yammering on and on about IM, if you have to have WiFi or Edge anyway, what't the problem with something like BeeJive IM? I'm legitimately asking. I never tried a native IM app, but I'm using Beejive now, and think it roxx soxx.

 

[winterspan]

You shouldnt have hacked the phone then, or you shouldnt have updated. Apple has every right to cllose down there platform if they want to. Its not up to you how they should react.

keep sucking the kool aid. Seriously, did you have to use a generic Steve Jobs quote in your signature... at least you COULD try to hide your ultra ridiculous fanboy status...

 

[3282872]

Given that explanation, then yes, I'm back to agreeing with you. I guess I just sort of stepped through your OP while concentrating on my other posts.

Hopefully we're in for a surprise when Leopard comes out and they'll announce a true SDK at that time, with the explanation that working with it alongside Tiger either just wouldn't work or would have been severely crippled for some reason.

But, I'm not holding my breath on that thought. Just wishing.

Although to be honest, I thought my knowledge of "irony" was correct (and that video taught me a lot, but I was able to dig myself out of that hole LOL).

 

[winterspan]

I would love to see this. Then you'd have anything javascript with a database can do, whether you're connected to a network or not. At that point the remaining issues are the speed of executing Javascript and the features of the phone exposed to the Javascript interpreter (multitouch? network connectivity? camera? audio in/out? bluetooth? etc)

When apple says Javascript "integration with the phone", they DO NOT mean rewriting the whole dang language and engine to be able to interface with multitouch, camera, audio in/out, bluetooth. Thats just ridiculous. If thats what you are expecting, you are going to be in for a big disappointment.
Precisely why exactly the things you quoted are the major problem with using javascript/html as a platform, other than the painful execution speed, inability to use the excellent graphics hardwares, multitouch, etc.

The javascript -> phone "integration" is more along the lines of custom protocol handlers like the "click on a number" and call it or click on an address and it opens google maps.

 

[3282872]

Why don't you take off your geek hat for a second and put on a quality of service hat.

Ugh. Seriously. Big . When you start addressing people with sentences like that, I don't even both reading the rest of your argument.

What fascinates me is that those who state that Apple is wrong in its manner of addressing third party applications, etc. seem to generally have taken the time in thinking the issue through and writing logical and convincing arguments, while those who disagree seem to take personal slams and use rhetoric that lacks any thought. Very interesting...

 

[winterspan]

problems with your "supercomputer" device...

At work we all use web and/or server based apps that run better outside our computer and have very large database access.
A lot of people think this is the future. If you have a very fast interface (like your laptop or iPone) to new server and web based apps (not the little crippled web 2.0) then you have a small supercomputer without the hassle of native data storage, ram limitations, etc. Maybe this is the Think Different that we all are missing while we whine about the lack of silly little 3rd party native apps. IMHO

You are missing a few GLARING problems here.

First of all, If you are talking about web-based applications that do most of their processing on a fast server with a large database, then the client device doesn't really matter, only the latency of your connection. A fast cable modem takes about 50-80ms to and from your computer. An Iphone over EDGE has a TERRIBLE LATENCY, taking between 600-800ms. In laymen's terms, you click a button and wait forever for something to happen. Talk about unresponsive. Even on my fast 3G WinMo phone, latency/responsiveness is a major issue.
Couple this with the painful execution speed of the javascript engine, and slow interface from webKit not being graphic accelerated and you have an unresponsive MESS.
That type of unresponsiveness on a phone which has the most responsive native interface of anything out there? Now that would be Ironic.

Secondly, I've gone into this too much already on this same thread, but remember your great "web apps" running on the server and written in javascript on the client don't have ANY access to all the things that make the iphone the iphone. No access to the excellent graphics hardware for cool graphics and transistions, No access to the Speaker or Microphone, No access to the awesome multi-touch interface, no access to the camera, etc etc.

Finally, EVERYONE here is ignoring the fact that you CANNOT use a web application and receive a phone call at the same time. If you are on the internet, it will go to VOICEMAIL.

 

[aaronh3]

How many more people are holding off?

I suspect there is a few

 

[THE JUICEMAN]

Maybe this is just wishful thinking but Apple listened to our complaints about the $200 price cut and did something about it. Hopefully in time they will also listen to our complaints about 3rd party apps and do something about it........at least this is a step in the right direction. I would be happy with anything i can get right now......

 

[winterspan]

IThere are very good reasons to keep it closed, as many have pointed out. Just today I read that all iPhone apps run with root privileges. If this is true, that's one VERY good reason to not open it up.

Oh, come on --- give me a break. APPLE ITSELF MADE THE APP'S RUN ROOT.
That could easily be changed.

Another is processing power. Forget security, etc. How many apps have you installed on your Mac, only to watch the new one conflict with an existing favorite in some way or another? How many apps have revved up your processor and sent your fans into overdrive? Sure, they may not crash the system, but they do affect performance. Now imagine the resource drain poorly written code might inflict upon the iPhone's hardware. It's not a DuoCore, after all!

First of all, the iPhone has an incredible amount of power compared to most of the crap that runs PALM OS, Windows Mobile, and Symbian.. and THEY ALL RUN 3RD PARTY APPLICATIONS!....
Now about sloppy code.. Thats why Apple should have an approval process for quality applications and then make them easily installable from iTunes.
Besides, keep them sandboxed with a simple uninstall process and if they do something you don't like, DELETE THEM for god sakes

Need we mention battery life? As some bug in a new app you installed sends your processor into overdrive and drains your battery, other iPhone functions probably wouldn't work as well. I can think of a few occasions when some misbehaving app essentially ground my system to a halt, taking forever to switch between apps, much less bring up the Force Quit panel. Is this really the experience we want on the iPhone? Battery life would go down the toilet.

Again, Precisely why apple has a secure sandbox to run applications in and All of them have to be digitally signed by Apple to run after going through an approval process and sold via Itunes. You can't tell me thats not a good solution.

besides... if for some reason, even a approved application starts having problems, are you going sit there and go "oh shoot this app keeps ****** everything up. I should keep it on my phone indefinitely."
UNINSTALL THE APPLICATION!

The iPhone is a CE device. Period. Yes, it shares a lot with our beloved Macs, but it's NOT a Mac. It's an iPhone. And the rules are different - and for very good reason.

Keep drinking the kool-aid... It has a fast processor, RAM, Video Acceleration, onboard Storage, a screen, touchscreen input, a speaker...
Most people call that a computer.

I discovered that Volkswagen deliberately and with malice, refuse to allow developers to tinker with the software on the car's in built computer and engine management system.

I think this is disgusting. I will return the car as I refuse to drive a closed system any longer. I can't believe the arrogance of Volkswagen. They are worse than Microsoft.
/joke.

Yes, because engine management systems and a mobile phone OS are in the same class.

 

[irun5k]

I'm not sure why Apple didn't just include Java on the phone as use that as the platform for 3rd party development. The way the virtual machine is designed, it would insulate the phone from most of the things that Apple is concerned about.

A while back, Steve made a comment that nobody uses Java anymore. That was a pretty stupid and inaccurate comment. It showed arrogance and the fact that he is somewhat out of touch with reality in Apple Land. His stance also had the side effect of alienating a lot of Java developers who had switched to Macbooks. Most people didn't give much thought to that comment Steve made but for me it was the first red flag. Obviously we've had a lot more red flags lately.

 

[winmacguy]

This might have something to do with it

Apple may eventually abandon its custom-designed Samsung system on chip (SoC) found at the heart of the iPhone for one developed by Intel, according to a new report.
Citing OEM channel sources, DigiTimes claims that Apple has been looking closely at Intel's Moorestown mobile Internet device (MID) platform processor introduced at the Intel Developer Forum last month.
Although not expected until 2009, Moorestown chips will be based on Intel's 45-nanometer manufacturing process and therefore promise to be ten times more power-efficent than today's embedded mobile chips, enabling longer battery life in smaller form factors.
Similar to the Samsung SoC that Apple uses in its existing iPhone design, Moorestown will combine the CPU, graphics, video and memory controller onto a single chip. Based on Intel's "Menlow" MID design due out a year earlier, it will also incorporate wireless technologies such as Wi-Fi, 3G and WiMAX.

http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/10/03/apple_considering_intel_chip_for_future_iphone.html

"Suddenly, Apple's apparent downer on third-party iPhone software development becomes much clearer. Taiwanese moles claim the company is considering founding future iPhones on the next generation of Intel's Ultra Mobile Platform," Tony Smith reports for The Register.

"Today's iPhones are based on ARM processor technology. Intel abandoned its ARM chip line in practice last year, but focused its efforts on its own x86 processor platform in spirit back in 2005. Since the two are incompatible, moving to x86-based iPhones would by necessity render all existing iPhone apps unusable on the new platform," Smith reports.

 

[winterspan]

Why don't you take off your geek hat for a second and put on a quality of service hat. Everything on the iphone runs as root... therefore everything has the ability to A) crash the system B) hog resources and cause other programs to perform poorly C) cause users to have to worry about buffer overflows and other security issues that Apple has no control over.

Why don't you take off your ultra-fanboy HAT for a second and put on a customer hat. APPLE MADE THE OS AS SUCH TO RUN THEIR APPLICATIONS AS ROOT. Obviously, this could easily be changed and limit system access to 3rd party apps, not to mention they would probably build a separate sandbox anyways.

Doing what Apple did for the SDK is pure solid genius. I think the only area where they were cruel and unusual was not allowing local storage, and not having hooks into the existing Apps... phonebook, maps, etc. There are extremely valuabe tie ins there.

pure solid genius, eh? Is that why there is such an incredible backlash against the company?

yes there are no killer web 2.0 apps for the iphone... but *gasp* the iPhone *is* the killer app.

COME ON NOW.. thats so just reaching for the stars....

What do you *need* that the iPhone doesnt have, that a 3rd party could give you? The only thing I can think of is instant messaging, but that will never happen with the current agreement terms with AT&T.

I knew THAT ARGUMENT was going to come out.. "what do you need that Apple won't give you". That's just pathetic. Unless you TRULY can't COMPREHEND what could come out of 25,000 developers having access to a revolutionary-in-capability high-speed graphics-accelerated Multitouch device?
You can't think of ANYTHING you might want? just off the top of my head..

- Voice Recorder (college lectures)
- Ebook reader
- Instant messenger
- picture / file transfer
- dictionary / thesaurus
- enhanced email program
- sketch / drawing
- Wi-Fi stumbler
- money manager/quicken pocket
- medical diagnostics for physicians
- DNA sequence / BLAST database
- Corporate applications


[/B]

The thing that mystifies me is, how can Apple expect us to take the idea of using the web for applications when they themselves don't? How stupid do they think we are?

I mean - look at what they do, not what they say. Stocks and Weather are applications that consist of nothing but putting a simple (if pretty) frame around pure internet-supplied, simple data. Hell, the Calculator is so simple that it would be nearly trivial to do it in Javascript... but since you might want to use that when you have no network, let's just keep it to Stocks and Weather, which are useless without net.

Stocks and Weather are applications that are pure naturals for web pages if any ever were - and Apple ships them as native applications, taking 2 out of only 16(*) buttons - a full 12.5% - on the very highest level of the device.

[ (*) OK, 17 buttons if you've updated. I haven't even though I haven't hacked mine in any way.]

It simply doesn't ring true. If Apple isn't content using Safari for such trivial front ends, why in the hell should anybody else be? It's clearly an inadequate approach for applications, and Apple isn't even eating their own dog food on this.

GREAT POINT...

I fail to see your point...

are you serious? is that sarcasm?

I'm the only one in the world who likes that there is no native support.

It forces devlopers to make web apps and web apps don't take up any of my iPhone's precious space. Granted, I have a bit of room on mine fora few apps, but there are soooooooo many web apps out there that we take for granted. I use facebook and an IM client many many times a day. It's nice to have those not take up any room on my phone.

Besides all the shortcomings of webapps... the point here is CHOICE. I don't give a rip what you like or the fact you think little iPhone apps are going fill your 8GB HDD? Just the same, you are not me and want you want, not what I want.
The beauty of choice......

In addition, I think Web 2.0 apps could come extremely close to matching full apps -if there are several improvements to the WebKit engine in the iPhone to improve performance and add more full-app like features.

I am not going to rewrite everything, but look back at my posts on page 5 -7, and you'll see why web apps will never "COME EXTREMELY CLOSE" to matching native apps.

painfully slow javascript execution, no access to the awesome hardware accelerated graphics to make a sweet GUI interface, no access to the camera, no access to the microphone, no access to the speaker, no access to the bluetooth, most importantly NO ACCESS TO MULITOUCH! you take away all these things and whats left? html/javascript interace with a "onclick" event.

What fascinates me is that those who state that Apple is wrong in its manner of addressing third party applications, etc. seem to generally have taken the time in thinking the issue through and writing logical and convincing arguments, while those who disagree seem to take personal slams and use rhetoric that lacks any thought. Very interesting...

Haha.. great post

This might have something to do with it
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/07/10/03/apple_considering_intel_chip_for_future_iphone.html

If you do some more research into Intels upcoming hardware, you'll realize the iphone will run ARM and NOT x86 for at least 3-4 years. And only then the only way that will work is if they had some type of hybrid solution because even an Intel 45nm silverthorne sucks battery like CRAZY compared to an ARM architecture chip. A Silverthorne in an iPhone with a similar size battery as it has now would NOT last more than 7-9 hours standby and 2-3 hours talktime on a charge, if that. They would have to have some type of ARM running the phone radio and then the x86 (well actually it would be x64) running OSX. Go speak to any expert in embedded development and they will tell you the same thing.

Besides, even if it was a thought for the future, that is no excuse to completely stifling *REAL* software development on the iPhone. "Web 2.0 Apps" are a complete joke on such a powerful phone. CASE IN POINT, why did Apple not use WebKit for any of THEIR applications, especially weather, stocks, and google maps?
Oh, right because Javascript/HTML "apps" are SLOW, Have crap interfaces, Can't use accelerated graphics, Can't utilize multi-touch etc etc.

To the guy who says he's going to make Ajax apps that are close to native apps, I say SHOW ME. If you are talking about a form-based To-Do list or a Flickr viewer... fine. Anything more complex is NOT going to happen. Have you tried to write/debug/maintain a large javascript/html application?

 

[Stella]

Couldn't agree more. You look at the specs of the iPhone and its going to waste.

All Apple excuses for not having third party applications is pathetic. There are actually some people who buy into SJ explanation that 3rd party apps may actually bring down an entire cell network.

Neither do I buy the reason that iPhone will be moving to another platform in several years time. Thats more than enough time for this generation of iPhone.

You under estimate the power of other phones. For example, the iPhone isn't the first smartphone to have Video Acceleration.

Keep drinking the kool-aid... It has a fast processor, RAM, Video Acceleration, onboard Storage, a screen, touchscreen input, a speaker...
Most people call that a computer.

First of all, the iPhone has an incredible amount of power compared to most of the crap that runs PALM OS, Windows Mobile, and Symbian.. and THEY ALL RUN 3RD PARTY APPLICATIONS!....

I hear the same old rhetoric from people who dislike 3rd party apps. Some of those reasons are pathetic. The other camp is no better.

What fascinates me is that those who state that Apple is wrong in its manner of addressing third party applications, etc. seem to generally have taken the time in thinking the issue through and writing logical and convincing arguments, while those who disagree seem to take personal slams and use rhetoric that lacks any thought. Very interesting...

 

[blackcrayon]

Winterspan-

If Apple had opened the phone from the start... If they had said "We don't have an SDK yet- but we know our customers are clever, people will figure out a way to add applications... But we have an open stance on the iPhone and will be there to guide developers when we're ready. For now, have fun with it!!"

Do you think the same people that are against the idea of 3rd party apps would be blasting Apple for having the phone open? I could see it now, thread after thread of people condemning the iPhone because 3rd party applications are allowed on it... Thousands of emails to Steve Jobs asking him, for god's sake, please close up the iPhone and don't allow anything more than web 2.0 apps. "Look how 3rd party apps destroyed every other 'smartphone' on the market until Apple locked them out and saved the universe"

 

[aristobrat]

All Apple excuses for not having third party applications is pathetic.

How about the one from someone outside of Apple that's done extensive work with the iPhones?

Erica Sadun (from TUAW) seems to be saying that some areas of the iPhone OS are a complete hack, apparently done to get the iPhone out the door.

 

[Stella]

How about the one from someone outside of Apple that's done extensive work with the iPhones?

Erica Sadun (from TUAW) seems to be saying that some areas of the iPhone OS are a complete hack, apparently done to get the iPhone out the door.

Saying an iPhone 3rd party application can bring down a cell network is laughable. Its like saying a rough 3rd party app for windows, Linux, OSX etc etc can bring down the internet!

Its not going to happen, regardless of mobile OSX being a hack, as your saying.

 

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

Saying an iPhone 3rd party application can bring down a cell network is laughable. Its like saying a rough 3rd party app for windows, Linux, OSX etc etc can bring down the internet!

*cough* slammer *cough*

 

[Stella]

*cough* slammer *cough*

Thanks!

However
"The SQL slammer worm is a computer worm that caused a denial of service on some Internet hosts and dramatically slowed down general Internet traffic, starting at 05:30 UTC on January 25, 2003."

Though, please note *some internet hosts*. It didn't bring down the entire internet, but merely just slowed it down for a few - which is quite impressive in itself.

You wouldn't get that sort of application coming out of a cell phone - it wasn't one 3rd party application doing all of that on a single machine - it was a boat load of infected machines. That distinction must be clear.