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An App Store For iPhone Software
Steve Jobs demonstrated a new "App Store" that will be pushed out to all iPhones in June. It's available now in beta. This will be the exclusive avenue developers will use to get their iPhone apps, written to the newly released SDK, to customers. Developers will get 70% of the proceeds from sales of their goods on the App store, with no further charges for hosting, credit-card processing, etc. Jobs called this "the best deal going to distribute applications in the mobile space."
apparently it's free to use for iphone users, but ipod touch users will have to pay a fee.
Developers set the price of the app, and a 0$ price is allowed. Q&A answers are available from Apple Insider's notes page, including more information about developer registration, VoIP limitations and so on.
I am the one true god. However, as an atheist, I don't believe in myself. I guess I have a self-esteem problem.
The main question I have, is if John Carmack has anything to add to the discussion.
With his latest interest in portable gaming, I hope he could see some value in the iPhone/touch platform.
The screen on the phone is phenomenal (in terms of pixels/inch), touch gestures and accelerometers should add quite a few new exciting additions to the gaming world.
I hope he has an intel Mac and time to download the beta of the SDK and try it out.
With Doom, or even Quake on my iPod touch, I don't think I'd ever leave the bathroom at work. (80% serious, 20% joking)
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
The app store is news, as it the 70/30 split, but what about these submissions:
SDK features:
OpenGL Games:
MS Exchange:
Or mine:
It would appear the slashdot editor simply went with the submission with the most "Apple is teh EEEEVILL" slant.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
This sounds to me like it would be valid under the GPL v2, the v3 is tricky. There are two escape clauses:
1) Anyone can buy a certificate for $50, and then sign anything they like, including open-source programs they've downloaded. I think it's reasonable to require people to do this.
2) Apple will be providing a iPhone emulator, so people can still run your application, just not on their iPhone.
However, IANAL. I'm positive if there is a problem, the FSF can be expected to kick up a fuss before the final release of applications.
Combination - fun iPhone puzzling
Apple also will allow you to notify your purchasers and update your apps on their handsets through an automated system tied into the store; this was something that was really lacking on Palm IMHO. A new version would come out of some little helper widget and you'd never know since you'd never visit the site again.
Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
Yea. Apple takes care of notifying users of updates. Apple takes care of bandwidth and server costs. Apple takes care of anti-piracy. Sounds rather nice to me. I'd be willing to give up only 30% of my possible profit to avoid all those different headaches. If your application becomes popular, those things can get complex and expensive.
It will be interesting to see what some of the Mac Developer Bloggers think about this (Daniel Jalkut, John Gruber, and Wil Shipley for example).
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Hang on, hang on.
The SDK is free right?
So what is to stop the development of a site where people can upload their SDK-developed code for other people who have the SDK to download and install on their iPods.
The install might be a bit fiddly for non-developers, but nothing that a bit of Automator and Applescript couldn't make simple, I'd wager.
Apple, I am a fan, and most importantly, a paying customer. However, give up the MS-like control. Charging developers $100 for a cert then telling them that you are going to take 30% of the sales? Lame, freaking Lame.
Do you think so? I don't. For that 30% you get a distribution network, a way to notify your users of updates, and free advertising via the integrated download client. Seems pretty fair to me. And the IDE and SDK itself are free. IIRC Palm charges charges similarly, and you have to buy the IDE. (I don't know about RIM.)
Exactly. However, its a little nebulous when to apply the rule with regards to software. Some companies are more anal about it than others. So Apple can use that rule to increase its profits while hiding behind an interpretation of the rule that not everyone would agree with -- "to be on the safe side".
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Ever since Apple released Leopard, with its application signing framework, the writing has been on the wall. Most people expect Microsoft to make a similar move. I think Apple is missing being innovators on the correct side of an important trend. Application signing could be the best thing to come to PC and mobile security since firewalls. But will it be another walled garden?
One of the things that really strikes home is the ban on pornographic applications hosted by Apple. Historically, porn has been right on the leading edge of the software and networking fields. Apple's arbitrary restriction in this regard highlights a real issue with the way Apple, and probably everyone else will go about this. They're creating a signing system that only they control and thus they have all the responsibility and are a single point of failure (intentional or accidental).
Here is what I really, really would like to see created. How about an open application signing framework and protocol. Anyone can run a server that provides software downloads, manages updates, checksum/verification and assigns levels of trust and ACLs describing what an application should be doing. Combine the software with a good package manager for whatever platform, a good Mandatory Access Control system for a given OS, a registration and purchasing GUI, and a GUI for users to assign trust levels to servers/organizations.
Suppose if you wanted to buy an Adobe application, you could go to your computer and navigate to their Web site, click a link and it would add their server to your package manager. From there you could download packages, pay for them, register them, install them, keep them updated, pay for updates, verify the software on your machine was unmodified, automatically download an ACL to restrict the software from messing with your machine (run in a jail, or with some subset of permissions from running as root to running in a VM that resets itself every use and has no internet access), and decide how much you trust Adobe as a vendor. You could go Symantec's Web page click a link, pay them a fee, and get ACLs and whitelists/blacklists for software from their service, which you could decide if you trust more than Adobe. Any software vendor be it freeware or payware, open or closed could run a server or use a shared server (sourceforge). Ideally these packages you download would be something like GNUStep, expanded to include an ACL, optional source code, binaries for multiple platforms, and a reference to the authoritative server for updating that application. Apple could run their server and Macs and iPhones could subscribe to their server by default, but users could still add other vendors' servers so people could get any applications without Apple being held responsible for the consequences. Projects like ClamAV could host free ACLs and whitlelists/blacklists for those of us who don't want to pay. The best part is, you would not even need to rank servers individually, if you had multiple servers you could allow them to "vote" on how much to trust a given application.
Ahh, well. That is probably just my utopian idealism. In all reality Apple will host a server which has all sorts of restrictions and is completely closed. Microsoft will follow suit with their own closed system, and Linux will have no such system for another decade and will never make real inroads into the desktop space either.
It's not really all that unusual, I guess. But the knowledge that I just agreed to a document that says, in part, "Hey, Apple! Feel free to rip off this cool idea of mine!" is a bummer.
Yes, I know. I did agree.
I can't see how anybody who saw the demo of the SDK can say this. There's a whole new platform available. You can program an app to run on a fully-powerful platform, and game developers are going to go nuts. Did you see Spore? That space shoot-'em-up? The Sega game? Holy crap! It's like the Wii Remote.
Microsoft is taking a cut of the software on the Windows Media Phones only because they only have software. Except for their mice and keyboards, their ventures into hardware kind of suck, so far. Windows CE, Windows Mobile, etc., has been a gigantic money-loser to this day, and the iPhone blew past them in less than a year on the market.
Yes, you'll have to sell through iTunes, the second-largest seller of music in the US, and the one that works easiest with the dominant player on the market anyway. If you are a freeware developer, you pay NOTHING. If you want to charge for your software, you control the pricing, and Apple takes 30%, with which they pay for a huge server farm, credit-card charges, bandwidth, marketing -- you're in the most popular e-store already, and you'll be listed prominently, and if your app gets Apple publicity, that's better than most could ever afford. Does Apple make money on its 99c tracks? A penny or two, is the most common response. They will take a cut on software, but so do theatrical agents, and a good one is worth his weight in gold, because they keep your money flow going. In fact, software developers now have roughly the same terms as the record labels. Not bad, I say.
Value to the consumer to being able to buy an app from the iPhone, and to be pretty sure someone has gone through it enough that there's no virus or malware or incompetence there? Priceless.
Will other platforms catch up to them eventually? Yeah, probably. That's called competition. But they'll be, as was made clear today, a very moving target.