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.

    Reply

  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!

    Reply

  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….

    Reply

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