Apple iPhone development limits

53 Comments
here.

Patience, Padawans. All good things come to those developers who wait for Apple’s timeline to unfurl.

53 Comments

  5. I do understand Apple keeping a tight reign, but with all the patents they hold on this thing, they need to loosen up. Developers make or break a platform, and iPhone is in unique position to have the most robust 3rd party app support of any phone ever, and yet seems content on a “good enough” stance.

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  6. I agree with everyone on this point. It’s time to open the doors to iPhone Nirvana. Even if the have the biggest bouncer at the door checking I.D.

    I LOVE my iphone, but we need to get with the program if it’s ever going to see 10 million sold.

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  7. It is more complexe than exposed.

    Java and Flash are NOT part of that web 2.0 trend.

    It is understandable that Apple will take is time to release those plug-in. If it was up to me, flash and Java would never come to the iPhone platform. I am still having a hard time with a 1Ghz processor and a gig of ram to play JAVA games. Imagine on an iPhone all the crappy polluted apps that would develop….!!

    Peace to Apple,

    Steve, buy Adobe first and then make it to the iPhone.

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  9. Flash was not fully developed at the time the iphone was in R&D, by the time the iphone prototype was complete, there was no time to include flash in order to Q&A it to the maximum standard Apple requires.

    Wait until the iphone has been launched World-wide and Leopard has been released, the boffins will then be unleashed to really start openning up the platform so that any Apps developed, can be fully tested before being installed into the OS itself.

    I can visualize the Ball/mers/silies of this World spread that kind of FUD so that they can get access to the iphones OS in order to write apps that will allow bugs into the iphone.

    Industrial espionage is alive and kicking folks! Just have a look at Ferrari in the last two weeks!!!!!!

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  11. Apple is a for-profit corporation that also happens to be the most technologically innovative institution around. Why would they play all their cards all at once when the cards they have already played are still turning in a healthy profit?

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  12. I have to side with MDN (and Apple) on this one. It’s their platform. The phone and iPod features alone are worth the price of the device to most users. 3rd-party app development is icing on the case that most people won’t take advantage of. Doesn’t mean it won’t happen, but Apple wants to get it right.

    Many people doubted Apple could deliver a decent cell phone, having just entered a very mature market. They did that, and I think that counts for something. Let’s not overburden the device too soon.

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  15. Apple needs (and should have already) found a way to let developers create apps for iPhone, even if it involved Apple creating a testing program and only allowing those apps to be sold through iTunes. I tend to agree that no flash or java is not too bad, but some method for creating apps on iPhone should have been prepared for the iPhone’s release.

    Let’s be real – Apple hasn’t been working on this product for only 6 months. It’s been 3-4 years at least, and a well thought out developer plan with sufficient controls to satisfy Apple should have been done in time for the release.

    Apple runs a real risk of losing the marketing glory for the iPhone if developers are not allowed to create apps on the iPhone. This harkens back to the Dark Ages of the Mac, when the proprietary hardware and lack of support for developers drove developers to Windows. We don’t want to see that happen again, not when developers are coming to the Mac in droves.

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  16. Crabapple, I know this is weee bit off topic, that stuff goes on all the time in F1. The alleged stuff happened in march. Why is McLaren bringing it up now? Is this just preemptive to get at HONDA?

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  17. @ Ibuschjr What do you think the developers conference was for? Bananas? Leopard and Tiger are the real engine behind the iphone, the developers were not fobbed off with Safari, they were told that for now, in the early days of the iphone, safari was the quickest easiest and bullet proof way to write apps for it. Apps written for Leopard will be available for the iphone as a default because anything written for Leopard will be bullet proof (one hopes) and will be downloadable as an upgrade both for the Mac Pro and the iphone.

    Learn to crawl before trying to walk!

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  19. McLaren did not bring it up, Ferrari did when they fired their manager, it then transpired that he had spoken to a McLaren employee and the two of them had then gone to Honda to ask for a job. Investigations are ongoing so it is unwise for anyone to speculate.

    I mentioned that because alot of MDN authors are blogging without regard to the fact that there are a lot of dishonest people out there! Apple have totake that into account as they have already suffered seriously before from M$

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  20. It’s curious. I know about a dozen people or so with so-called WinCE ‘smart’ phones, and not one of them has ever purchased a third-party app for it.

    These are non-technical, non-computer oriented sales dudes and dudettes that are not at all interested in these things. They just want their email and built-in phones to work.

    I would hypothesize that the vast majority of ‘smart’ phone users fit into this camp. The loud noises you hear about the ‘locked-in’ aspect of the iPhone is coming from FUDmeisters and techno geeks entirely. I would bet some real money that 95 – 98% of all iPhone purchasers couldn’t care less if they had third party apps to run on the thing. They’ll be so freaking happy that they can finally email Mom and Dad their cell phone pix and get visual voicemail that they won’t even notice a lack of an iPhone SDK.

    Remember: this is a consumer product that bleeds into other territories. The Steve will reveal the SDK when the time is right. I agree with Eran at Roughly Drafted about many of his points concerning Flash, Java and develpment, et al. His one article points out that iPhone comes bundled with about $450 worth of “extra” apps you’d have to buy for a WinCE mobile.

    Let The Steve strangle Adobe Flash first, get them back onboard the Mac, and then worry about steamrolling business. First things first.

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  21. One of the major reasons for not having 3rd party applications for the iPhone is security.

    There are still major holes in safari that have yet to be uncovered or patched. I read somewhere that the user rights are admin for the iPhone which would pose huge holes in security. All this has to be fixed before opening it to the public.

    Plus, its only us geeks that want to add major apps to the iPhone.

    But I do agree if Apple opens the platform up to 3rd party apps the iPhone would become a major platform
    – but I think Apple won’t do this. They’ll have a MacBook Mini that uses the interface but in a larger profile than the iPhone and smaller than MacBooks.

    my 2 cents

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  22. It’s not just development. I mean this phone is so freaking locked up and incapable. I can’t even play a .wav file on it. It barely plays freaking quicktime.

    The iPhone does the bare minimum of what your average $75 phone does, but it does it extraordinarily well. Step out into the world of existing smart phones though, and you see pretty quickly that the iPhone is a UI Savant, but with regard to abilities, it’s rather retarded.

    I mean…
    – no chat
    – no ability to copy and paste
    – no ability to even delete multiple items in a list
    – no gps
    – edge instead of 3g
    – no flash
    – I can’t even extract an attachment and save it in a folder
    – no push e-mail
    – syncs horribly minimally via iTunes. Can’t move files back and forth with my Mac.
    – The idea of having only Web based applications is repulsive to say the least.
    – CAN’T EVEN ADD RINGTONES!

    Face it. It’s a $600 proof of concept device.

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  23. The iPhone does NOT need to look like the Windows software section at Fry’s. Mostly pretty graphic packaging for junky, buggy programs. Get mad at Apple, but they don’t need or want to clutter up and bog up their iPhone with unthoughtout junky apps!
    I do think they could be picky and choosy and choose a top ten staff picked apps to be developed and approved like Google did. Gripe, gripe, gripe. Use your SDK to write an app for OSX and make it intuitive enough for Apple to have to choose it for the iPhone.
    I’m frustrated going through all the similar widgets. 70% are junk! Why should Apple let this happen times ten on the iPhone. Then people will gripe and blame the iPhone for not running their junky app well.

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  25. “The version of Safari that sits on iPhone doesn’t support Java or Flash, two of the most important platforms for current web development”

    Wow. Yeah… I can’t imagine my daily life on the web without all the awesome Java websites out there. Websites like… err…. umm….

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  28. What the iPhone is really, is an iPod. It’s the best iPod Apple has ever made with a telephone attached as an afterthought. It does not deserve the label “Smartphone.”

    What’s truly sad is that being supposedly built on one of if not the world’s most advanced general purpose operating system, the phone is beyond woefully inadequate for even the least demanding power user.

    If you expect the level of functionality you got out of a Windows Mobile or Palm or NOKIA or Symbian device, forget it.

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  29. Oh no Apple doesn’t let the whiny geeky minority do what they want to do on a mass-market device! It’s the end of the world! The iPhone will suck!

    Wait. The iPod is a remarkably closed device and it seems to have done well without geeks hacking it.

    Most people don’t screw with their phones anyways, so isn’t this just another case of geeks whining about being able to do something they wouldn’t do? What, you’re going to throw a fit because you have more freedom to do something you’d never do? Shut up.

    I’m so *(&*&ing; sick of these idiots complaining about marginalia like this. It seems that every time they open their mouth, they begin another FUDstorm that gets people in a dither and it all comes to nothing.

    Face it. Slashdot dumped on the iPod and they were WRONG.
    You’re dumping on the iPhone and you are WRONG.

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  30. I’m no expert on what Web 2.0 and Safari can or cannot do. But why should Apple “open” up iPhone more? Apple is selling as many iPhone as it can make. Users love it. Except for the super-geeks, users are not complaining about lack of support Java or Flash (or about third-parties not being able to put apps on the iPhone). So what exactly is Apple doing wrong here? Nothing.

    At some point in the future, Apple may find it advantageous to add support for Java and Flash, and possibly open up the iPhone to developers to put apps directly on iPhone. But that time is not now. Now is the time to keep tight control and sell millions of iPhones to happy customers. They are happy because iPhone works exactly as promised without significant glitches.

    This is a lot like the arguments for Apple “opening” up iPod and iTunes. But as a business, if the momentum is going your way, why would you want to make changes?

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  31. It’s Apple product yes? And they can sell it to whomever and however they want right? Show me the “right” that says if a company builds a product, devs. have a right to develope for it? Go live in Cuba if you want “equality…”

    If Apple sells lots of iPhones without 3rd party devs. why would they have any care to open it up? They won’t, and I doubt we’ll see it any time soon, because they appear on track to sell 5 – 6 million of them this year…

    When development does arrive for iPhone, it’ll be games-based development.

    As for flash, Apple’s got it’s own reader in the works. As for Java, its likely to come, it’ll just be a bit longer.

    A document application, folders, Excel editor, copy/paste, etc… Apple can do all this without 3rd parties getting involved (as getting devs. involved only makes the product less functional out of the box, while costing more, and not being as drop dead simple to turn on and use).

    Cry over iPod and get mad over iPhone – whatever. What to develope, make your own platform.

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  32. Listen you chowderheads, shaddup already! What I read above is pretty much all speculation. There is so much we don’t know. Could the lack of Flash and Java have as much to do with some political turf battles between Adobe and Sun with Apple as anything else? Could Apple be negotiating with them for more attractive terms? I would not be surprised. We are but railbirds making what at times are educated guesses at best. And lest you forget, this is Version 1.0 of the iPhone.

    If you haven’t noticed, Apple has done a pretty good job of doling out news and developments surrounding the iPhone in little droplets over the past six months. I have little doubt that this was deliberate, and the fact that many of you slept on the sidewalk for a couple of nights to get an iPhone is testiment to how the public responded.

    Don’t get your panties in a knot, but you’ll have to accept the fact that Apple won’t give you everything you want all at once. And don’t be surprised if that thing you got moist dreaming about in a future iPhone won’t be available until Version 2.0 which will be announced on (insert WAG date here). Such is life. I have a hunch that the things you want either missed the cut because they would not have been ready in time for the initial release, or were still under development, or were wrangled in negotiations between Apple and other companies, or more.

    Do I want more stuff? Sure. Am I realistic enough to know that whining on this message board will accomplish nothing? Absolutely. Do you? Probably not. So what will change all this? Time. Market forces. Competition. That’s life, kiddies.

    If you have ever worked around a software company, you realize that somewhere on a white board is a list of everything you want. But at some point, the company has to cut off what makes each release of hardware or software, tough decisions are made, and some really cool features get pushed off until the next big release. This is how the game is played. Sometimes, it’s because the people on a group responsible for finishing a specific feature are behind schedule, so their feature misses the cut. Sometimes, it’s because of budgets. Or because there aren’t enough people on hand to get things done. Sorry, but that’s the truth.

    So many of you ask why you can’t have it now. If any of you studied economics in college, you may recall that it’s about scarcity, and how to deal with it. Big though Apple may be, it has limits too. My advice: deal with it.

    I’d love to see more apps flourish for the iPhone as much as the next schmuck. Eventually, they will. But for now, I am amazed at what Version 1.0 of the iPhone is, warts and all. I hope that some of you are too.

    As for the rest of you, I can only ask this: pick two, you knuckleheads…

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  33. So you think there aren’t cool things to be had for the iPhone? Think again, bucko. Check out some of these:

    From boingboing.net: “Tart up your iPhone with these 320 x 480 crops of great works by legendary erotic photographer Steve Diet Goedde (produced on request by BB readers’ popular demand — evidently, a lot of Goedde fans read this blog). No full nudity here, just lovely, classic alt-cheesecake.”

    Here’s the link: http://www.stevedietgoedde.com/iphone.htm

    Or check out Google’s new Telekinesis for iPhone – you’ll be blown away! It’s a remote desktop for iPhone. You can browse your Mac desktop’s file system and view images and documents. Playing media files seems to be in their plans… but this is a pretty awesome taste o whats to come! Here are two related links:

    http://code.google.com/p/telekinesis/
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/tonx/732542457/

    Or check out the Hollywood Animation Archive for some amazing new wallpapers for your iPhone: http://www.animationarchive.org/

    And you thought there was no new development for the iPhone. Yeah, right.

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  34. Anybody else starting to feel like MDN’s take is just not worth reading since its essentially the same, every time the article is not in apple’s favor. I am a developer and I love apple, but not providing an SDK and then adding assault to injury by asking developers to drool all over themselves because they are letting us develop web apps is just ridiculous at best.

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  35. There’s a lot of strawmen in this thread. Annoyed developers aren’t saying the iPhone sucks because they can’t develop real and robust apps. No one is saying Flash and Java are never coming to the iPhone (and really, only the invested care; fuck Flash and Java). And opening up the iPhone to 3rd party apps has little to do with increasing iPhone sales.

    Here’s my speculation on why Apple isn’t opening up iPhone to 3rd party developers: the iPhone user runs as root.

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  36. Apple: WE NEED FLASH NOW! It isn’t the web in 2007 if you can’t use flash. Like it or not, Flash is THE standard web streaming video format of the moment. I don’t want to just be locked into viewing Youtube on my phone. Youtube sucks now that the copyright cartels are all over it. Let me access DailyMotion, Yahoo Video, LiveVideo and all the other flash-based video sites, and I’ll be happy.

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  37. Or check out Google’s new Telekinesis for iPhone – you’ll be blown away!

    It is impressive for a tiny, tiny remote desktop, but Google only hosts the code. The very pages you link to point out the developers.

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  39. Actually, I have a wonderful app that I would want for my iPhone. I was thinking about “how to do it” this weekend and I came up with a pretty good solution:

    Write it as a Mac app in Cocoa and wait.

    There are some things we can assume about the iPhone. For example, don’t expect a file system in any way you can imagine. Use Core Data to store your info. You don’t have a menu bar. You should have one window sized at 640 x 480 pixels and have everything occur in that.

    Assuming you design it right, when the iPhone SDK comes out, you should be 75% of the way there.

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  44. Proprietary tech like Flash needs to die for open standards to move forward. Having components of the WWW tied to one vendor in any respect is a recipe for abuse and stagnation. The PC desktop is a classic example, having suffered under Windows for decades. Even the Linux world has suffered, obsessed as they are with making a copy of Windows so as to be familiar to the target demographic rather than force the improvement of the state of the art.

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  47. I agree with Apple on this one.

    This is a new direction in phones and portable palmtops. And it should be carefully rolled out from launch. Now, many yell about letting things happen, but quality is “job” one.

    I would rather have a stable iPhone and one that will open new directions in media content and the reduced reliance on flash, Microsoft, and others. This is one way to do it and to boot give a quality product, experience, and gain new mac users.

    So patience is better than problems.

    And to believe this has been out for such a short time and people are busting a nut trying to complain on Apple’s direction when the whole standard has just been revised!!!

    Hey, anyone notice that even youtube has transfered from Flash to H264 so they can be viewed on the iPhone??? And it is still not complete…. so chill and relax while Steve brings out the next level>>>>>> Peace to the over sprung!

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  48. Well I agree with MDN. Apple is a software and hardware company, the two have to work WELL together.

    I have heard all the “third party” stuff before, i.e. there are more programs for Windows than for Macs. Then when you have a look at the programs, well most of them are absolute crap. You might as well buy underwear with more skid marks on it with that kind of reasoning.

    You want that and high levels of geek functionality, buy another phone. If you want ease of use, a great interface along with what the iPhone is then go ahead. And the iPhone is a web browser, music player and phone tool. It is new and knowing Apple the apps will flow, if you have patience, remember this is a first release and the upgrades won’t cost you a new phone.

    The iPhone never promised chat, the ability to copy and paste, delete multiple items in a list. Putting a GPS on it would be useless right now, as it is only sold at the US, and most of the world knows that Americans learn about global geography through invasion. Heck if you can even get email that is a bonus. The biggest bonus is YOU CAN’T ADD RINGTONES. Ringtones are incredibly obnoxious.

    Not having Flash or Java will probably be temporary. Once again, third party Java apps, yawn and gag.

    Read the man’s lips, it’s a phone, an internet browser and a music player (iPod). You want a kitchen sink, go to the hardware store.

    Signed Road Warrior, the original, not to be confused with the gutless imp Road Warrior.

    Reply

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