Slashdot Mirror
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.
"And there's no charge for developers to distribute free applications"
Well... now I'm excited
Meh. My submission was better.
Apple revealed details of the iPhone SDK today. Apps will be developed using XCode and the new Cocoa Touch framework, and will be distributed by Apple either via an application on the phone or through iTunes. Developers set the cost of their applications and keep 70%, although "free" is also an option. (Not all applications will be distributed: "Porn, malicious apps, ones that invade privacy.") When asked about VOIP, Jobs replied: "We will only stop VOIP over cell networks, but not WiFi." Corporations can also privately distribute applications to their employees. AOL demoed an AIM client, and an iPhone version of the upcoming game Spore was also demoed. The iPhone is also gaining enhanced enterprise capabilities, including Exchange and Cisco VPN support, remote wiping, as well as certificates and identities.
It would be nice if Steve would add version control so that I've always got the most recent version of BrickBreaker. 70% of profits for a clearly defined distribution framework doesn't sound too bad.
Yep, free apps are allowed and even encouraged. You have to pay a $99 developer fee to get assigned a cert, so you have to sign your apps - but you can set any price, including free.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I have to pay for things I got for free before?
:)
:)
Oh wait - it's Apple. Carry on.
Full disclosure - I've been called an Apple fanboi before.
Yes, but Apple still takes 30% of the sales price.
Developers set the price of the app, and a 0$ 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.
When you get an app from the app store, you'll automatically be advised when new versions can be had and also what new features are offered.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Point your browser to the Apple Developer website in order to download a beta SDK (seems to be down right now because of web server poundage).
A few other notes:
1. SDK is free to download, but you'll have to pay $99 to be able to submit your App (regardless of how much it'll cost).
2. App Store seems to be the only way you can get Apps on the phone (you can download straight from the phone, or through computer).
3. VOIP will be allowed but only WiFi VOIP.
4. Spore for iPhone? Fuck yeah!
Comparison pricing:
I used to develop & sell software for PalmOS.
The IDE was $500, plus $150/year to upgrade.
The major reseller I used wanted 40%, for a lower percentage they'd shove you in the back of the bus. I had my own web store set up separately, but literally got zero (nil, nada) sales from it. Mobile users tend to shop at specific sites. Without their own reputation, the little guys have to lean on the reputation of resellers (i.e. it's credible b/c it's being sold by them).
30% off the top isn't great, but it also doesn't require hosting, fulfillment, or anything else. Just ship them a binary and they send you a check in the mail each month until people stop buying (or an ABI change breaks your binary). I don't know how refunds are handled (or allowed at all), or documentation or support either, really.
Still, any info on what we can put on our own devices? I'm not interested in going back into mobile space anytime soon, just looking for a phone I can hack on personally. The SDK here is nice, but I'm still leaning towards the new openmoko when it comes out.
Care about electronic freedom? Consider donating to the EFF!
The SDK is going to be HUGE for the jailbreaking community. They now have an official documented API and development environment. So there will be apps out there way earlier than 4 months.
IT sounds like the limitations on the SDK are not as drastic as I feared, but I strongly suspect that apple will limit ichat type clients though. Those would kill the golden goose that is SMS.
The more limiting the SDK is, the more vibrant the jailbroken app community will be.
I'm waiting for the Apple servers to recover from the melt-down and I'll be downloading the SDK. Looks like a geeky evening for me.
Apps the iPhone needs:
MMS: WTF apple? This was obvious...
A Calculator that doesn't suck: RPN and trig functions etc. No more Dollar store Calc.
Chat client that uses wifi AND wireless data.
Sheldon
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.
Just because there is a simulator, does not mean you cannot also load the app onto the phone directly - they showed a demo of an app being pushed to the phone and then also being debugged (from the Mac side) while it ran, including gathering profiling data.
It's basically the best scenario you could have hoped for as a developer.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Actually this could be a very sweet deal for developers.
... but it seems to me that even with Apple taking a 30% cut, the exposure that the App store gives could provide the developers with WAY more sales than they could manage to get going solo.
Now, I didn't read the details so maybe apple will prevent developers from selling their apps direct AND going through the App store
It's kind of like the Record Labels and Recording Artists. The only difference being that recording artists don't get to keep 70% of their sales and they usually take huge cash advances to record their albums that they have to pay back with absolutely no guarantee that they'll sell enough records to pay it back plus they're in a contract that promises the label X number of further records.
No I don't have a problem with Apple's App store as long as they're providing a valuable service for the developers and on the surface it appears that they are. When they take the majority of the sales and lock the developers into contracts promising exclusive deals with the App store for years to come THEN I'll say the developers are better going solo. To me this seems like the high-exposure radio station of indie software marketing.
Nope. Just that whomever does the port/release will have to put up $99/yr to Apple.
After that, it's free for anyone to download.
Care about electronic freedom? Consider donating to the EFF!
I managed to get registered before the site took load, right now it's not working very well and you can't get to anything. Soon hopefully...
Of interest is that there is a separate Enterprise development program that costs more to join - $300 instead of $99. I could not reach the page describing the differences.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Direct sales don't come anywhere close to 100% in the real world. You have to pay for the distribution medium. If that is a box on a shelf, you generally pay for shelf space at the major retailers up front, and then make your money back after they take their cut.
If you sell via the web, you have hosting costs, bandwidth isn't free, web site development costs money and time, managing updates requires atleast half a clue. You also have to do marketing if you expect it to get popular, just putting up a page doesn't mean people will buy your stuff, reguardless of how great it is, they have to find it first. So that means some form of advertising, sometimes all you need is to have Google index your site, if people are looking for something that only you offer. But its unlikely you are the first, and certainly not the most popular with your brand new software, so you aren't going to be near the top of the list without some Google bombing, which isn't free since it requires work at the very least.
In this case, your 30% taken by Apple puts you on the definative list of iPhone software, and it makes you somewhat trusted, since Apple hasn't banned you yet. So if you think web distribution is closer to 100% then I say that you get 100% free marketing with the AppStore.
Pick any other form of distribution and you'll find that its never anywhere close to 100%.
30% is high. The company I work for distributes portable applications for U3 devices, on the U3 website, they charge 25% at the lost volume of sales. Of course, the also aren't Apple so its not suprising.
If you want to bitch that Apple is charging too much, fine that argument I'll listen to. Claiming that direct sales is going to be close to 100%, thats just silly once you consider all the real costs that go into doing it.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
As an iPod touch user, I will have to pay $$ for the privilege of paying $$ for apps in the App Store??? I don't think so.
IT sounds like the limitations on the SDK are not as drastic as I feared, but I strongly suspect that apple will limit ichat type clients though. Those would kill the golden goose that is SMS.
They demoed AIM on stage for goodness sakes! They are even allowing VOIP apps (though admittedly only over WiFi, not EDGE).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I suspect that it will be a monitor the app after the fact type of thing. Apple and AT&T know who you are as the app author. So if your app does something funky, then they pull the plug on it. There's no way the apple folks are going to scour source for all the apps that will flow in. I suspect they have a profiling tool that checks port usage etc and off it goes. Then if it's doing something sneaky, AT&T will catch it eventually if it's popular, and pull the plug. If it's not popular (IE you and your aunt berha are exchanging chat messages over the data network not SMS) then it's really not an issue.
The cost of putting actual eyeballs on code is so high that they would never do it. But some profiling tools would be cheap to use.
Sheldon
They do some basic testing of the app in an automated fasion and see that it doesn't do anything bad, release it into the wild.
A few users report that your app is doing bad things (or unauthorized) and apple revokes your key and removes it from the store.
Do not pass go without paying another $99 and making up a fake identity for your next time around.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
You confuse source code with tools to use the source. With the source you can do anything, including port something to Android...
The source is always more important than the tools.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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.
According to engadget you can send your code over to your device to test it. I assume that means you can write and use your own stuff without restriction.
My understanding (and IANAA) is that because Apple realizes the revenue from iPhone purchases over the course of two years, they can make changes to the product and it's no big deal. With the touch, they've already accounted for your purchase, so there's some arcane rule that says they can't give you additional functionality without charging you for it. I'm betting the "nominal" fee really will be nominal--like $2 or something.
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
Just set the price at 500 million dollars if you don't want anyone to have it. And if you get a buyer, well, who would you be to complain?
Or you could wait until details come out, or read Engadget's report of what Steve said: "We think a lot of people will want to become an iPhone developer -- go to our site, probably in about an hour, and download the SDK. You can join the developer program to test your app on the iPhone and iPod touch and distribute your app -- to join the dev program costs just $99. If you have any questions about anything give us a ping at developer.apple.com." In other words, download a *free* SDK to write and test your app, then pay $99 to get the certificate to download onto your hardware, whether or not you decide to distribute it to the general public or not. The only 'going through Apple' is a $99 charge to get the key to the hardware. But waiting until you actually have the full details and know the facts before making a decision, that is obviously too difficult...
And presumably you could get someone in a generous position to offer free distribution of open source applications under a single "publisher". Ie, twenty free apps published by "FreeSoftwareInc", and suddenly its $5 per developer, not $100.
Thats a price thats easy to make back up with ads, etc, on the "application" website.
Actually the application is running on the iPhone, UI and all. The Mac is to do debugging and performance monitoring WHILE the app is running on the iPhone.
Well, you have a point from a business freedom point of view, it kind of falls apart in the real world. Realistically, a developer will easily lose 30% through credit card processing fees, the costs of hosting their own store and other related expenses. The only business reason not to like this would possibly be for a large company that already hosts its own software store and wants to keep all their products under one roof.
Other than that, I can see how some coders with a stick-it-to-the-man mentality might not be hot on the idea, but then again, I can't really see those people as big Apple developers in the first place.
You should actually go read the web page that tells you what the details are.
You have to pay and go through apple to distribute your applications. The SDK is a free download (registration required).
http://developer.apple.com/iphone/program/
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
But from the demo, you can clearly write your own software and install it on your own phone, and all for free. The SDK is free and at the announcement they demo'd loading an app from the dev box to the iPhone without using the store. So sign up as a developer, download the Xcode tools, and code away.
You only have to pay the $99 if you want Apple to distribute your applications for you.
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
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.
Wrong. Apps that are distributed for free are free.
They are free. You just need to pay $99 to be able to sign your application for distribution. Quite honestly $99 is actually cheaper than some places I have seen for a digital signature.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
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.)
I've had BOINC running for a while without a GUI on my iPhone using the hacker SDK.
Now that they've documented things, the roadblocks are gone from the GUI, and understandable battery and "on external power" notifications will let me know when not to run.
Woo hoo!
-- Terry
The license. It specifically has you say that you won't develop software to be distributed outside of the App Store. Do it and you're a liar, since you promised not to. You're also not likely to have much of a defense in court.
My Photography - http://ian-x.com
The Deathlings (comic) - http://thedeathlings.com
You could put up a free trial version, and have the full version for $ right next to it.
Or you could just put up a version for free that required a serial number, and direct people to your site for it. Although I imagine Apple might delist your app if you do it that way (that and they're providing the whole charge service for you.)
Also covers credit card charges so you don't need to worry about those either.
It's all fun and games until a 200' robot dinosaur shows up and trashes Neo-Tokyo... Again
I mean, if I can develop custom apps for my phone or DL GPL source from sf (or equivalent: is iphonesource.com avaliable?) and compile it and load it, what use do I have of going through iTunes?
You must be new, welcome to the Internet. Here on the Internet you are required to view any publicly held company as evil and any effort on their part to charge for a service as pure, unadulterated greed preferably attributed to their CEO or other high-ranking executive. Corporations should provide as many possible services for free, regardless of the time, capital, and human resources required to develop and run those services or products. Any efforts of corporations to charge money in voluntary exchange for their services or products is to be likened to highway robbery, extortion, or in the case of particularly large corporations, rape. I hope these guidelines have helped. May your future be full of forum discussions loathing corporations and their evil/greedy ways.
Steve's keynote slides explicitly show that Xcode can publish the code to your personal iPhone for testing purposes. This image from Engadget's coverage (see the 10:30am post for context) shows an iMac remote debugging on the phone using an iPod dock. Whether that means an end user can load an app without going through the store is hard to say.
======
In X-Windows the client serves YOU!
I used to think like you, but then it occurred to me that SMS messaging isn't going anywhere, because it has certain inherent advantages. Most importantly, it uses your own cell carrier as the "post office" for the text message. If your phone is turned off when someone tries to send you that SMS, no problem. Their system knows when your phone is communicating with them again, and can wait to deliver the SMS until you're ready to get it.
With instant messaging, delivery is far less reliable. Typically, I see things like the IM client itself offering an option to "attempt to redeliver when receiver comes back online", but that means if the SENDER'S computer is powered off (or they quit their IM software) before the receiver comes back, then the message STILL doesn't get delivered.
Additionally, cellphones tend to go in and out of areas where they can receive digital data reliably. This can happen very rapidly and often. (At my office, for example, I get a weak signal indoors and it varies from room to room as I walk around the building.) I'm no expert on SMS, but it seems to support some type of acknowledgment protocol. If an SMS is sent to my phone and it only receives part of it before losing signal, it seems to be discarded. Then the carrier retries, not having received confirmation from my phone that it was delivered successfully. IM clients don't seem to have this functionality. (I've often had people tell me they never got the last thing I typed, and I had to copy/paste it to manually re-send it to them.)
a) The hardware - some pretty sweet margins b) A nice cut (~15 to 25%) on the montly fees 3) A 30% cut on all software sold (except of course the free apps)
Contrast this to a Windows mobile phone. Microsoft gets paid a fixed license amount on each device sold and makes nothing on the hardware, the monthly fee, and any software sold to run on their OS. This helps companies compete on hardware, apps etc. I think Apple is gonna miss out on small companies(where the most innovation lies) which cannot afford the 30% overhead for their software sales. Also Apple being the gatekeeper of the software will hurt apps(even free ones) that try to fundamentally interact with the hardware in a non-approved Apple way. The iPhone is aimed at the casual consumers, most of whom don't read long forum threads dedicated to jailbreaking it.
As of now, this looks like a rerun of the 80s microcomputer war and we all know how that turned out to be. It's all about 'Developers, Developers and Developers'. Microsoft gets that and ships excellent development tools with no restrictions at all. Right now, Windows Mobile phones may suck, but heavy competition between handset manufacturers is going to make them better and Windows Mobile OS(look at 6.1 and upcoming 7.0) is heading towards being 'good enough'(like DOS and Windows 3.11). Already we see devices like the Sony Xperia (video ad) coming out which will give Apple a run for their money. Remember what IBM, Dell, Gateway, HP, Compaq did to Apple back in the 80s? Will Sony, Samsung, Nokia be their equivalent in this round?
I think Apple is missing the bandwagon again in their spirit to make money immediately and are killing the gold egg laying goose for their short term benefit.This space for rent.
First thing I'll buy: a rotary-dial interface that uses gestures to dial! No cop-out touch-sensitive numbers. It has to rotate with my finger as I pull it around, then snap back and enter that number.
Everyone always jokes about this, but it would be so frickin cool. Retro is the new black.
So I'm sitting in front of my computer whining that Apple's servers have melted down and I can't get the SDK and my wife says:
wife, "you'd think they would prepare for this sort of thing. "
me, "there's no preparing for the onslaught of demand"
wife, "then they should setup more computers for this, they make the f'ing things."
me: speechless...
Us Cocoa developers may well get the professional validation we've never had before. It would be nice for a change to have HR people and headhunters call us up and talk to us about our Cocoa development abilities, instead of saying "Cocoa, Objective-C, what's that?" and mentally cross us off the job candidate list.
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
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.
Even on Atari 800XL my excited developer friends knocked my door with a cassette tape, diskette to show their programs.
That's because the 800XL was too bulky to carry. I can knock on the door of my friends, iPhone in hand, and show them my cool application.
I'm perfectly OK with the 70/30 thing because the Palm model sucked. It was easy to write apps but very hard to get anyone to look at them. Now you have an AppStore - right on the phone itself! Is it worth 30% of your gross profits to have 1000% greater sales, along with someone else managing ALL of the infrastructure related to hosting and delivery? Hell yes!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The same is technically true with Verizon Wireless's Get It Now store.
But that's a per app fee, and no no offense to Verizon but who the hell actually uses the Get It Now store? And then what are you developing an app for, a tiny screen with pitiful graphics capabilities and the most primitive of input options at hand.
With the iPhone you only pay once and can develop a billion applications. Then you are distributing them on a platform that people have actually shown make use of the network and browser (via Google and online banking metrics).
I had looked into doing J2ME development (some free stuff, some commercial), but for the ideas I had the infrastructure and framework was just not advanced enough for what I want to do. Now, we have something that can offer a great UI and realy make it easy for users to find applications they like.
You are going to see a TON of free apps right out of the gate.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
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.
Quoting yourself as an expert on what Apple should do is pretty egotistical, especially when the ideas are not there to back up your cred.
You have no idea if Apple's signing program will have any of the problems you lay out. Furthermore, for most applications why on earth would you want or need to run as root?
As a developer myself, I am THRILLED with what was demonstrated is it went far beyond what I thought they would have right out of the gate. Why would you want or need XCode to run ON the iPhone when you can run an app on the iPhone and debug it remotely (along with monitoring performance) from your desktop? That is the perfect development setup for small devices. The emulator is nice as well for quick things, but really running your trial app on the phone is key and Apple allows for that. As for how you could do pinch - I don't know how the emulator works but it should be just as easy as selecting a gesture to apply and clicking the mouse on the simulator screen (though again, you can just test on your real phone).
I too would like to see a bluetooth keyboard driver, but that's a totally separate issue from the dev kit stuff. Unhappy you can't do system work on the phone? You are by far in the minority on this, because most people just want to be able to write applications.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Dude. Who said the iPhone isn't ready for business? You can write apps for it using the SDK. Anything it can't do yet is only a matter of writing a check to an iPhone programmer and voila, it does it. Not ready for business... Bah, humbug!
What good is having the source if you have no way to install it on the device after you modify it and compile it? How do you test your modifications? Do you compile it, buy a $99 cert for yourself and then "distribute" it to yourself through Apple?
Yeah. If only there were a way to know the answers to these questions. Apple really should have said whether or or not you could debug and test on your iphone in the development kit. Ideally, they would have covered this around 10:30 am and had a 6 foot tall slide to accompany it.
I know that's a little bit unnecessarily sarky, but you're asking questions that were answered at the event and on every website reporting on the event and then drawing a conclusion based on your assumption of what those answers are without even a superficial attempt to find out if they are correct.
If you questions had been "can the sdk be used to compile and install apps for general use on the phone? do apps installed via the sdk work normally when not plugged into a mac for development?" you would have had good questions that aren't definitively answered already (at least, i don't remember there being anything about that).
Would Apple allow a single organization with a single cert to proxy for an unknown set of developers?
You mean like a corporation?
Seems like that woudl kind of defeat the purpose of signing the apps. Presumably it is to provide security and accountability, no?
I would say it provides the same security and accountability. If you publish an app under your cert and it is a problem, they'll probably revoke your cert and all of the applications under your cert will probably be removed from the store. I suspect all of the developers publishing through you will hold you accountable for that.
There's fundamentally no way for the store to know that your publishing organisation isn't publishing applications it created or were created by its employees or contractors if you don't tell them.
I bet we'll continue to see hacks to open up the devices to free software.
I also have no doubt that this will continue.
Darth --
Nil Mortifi, Sine Lucre
In addition to that, XCode will NOT build your app for deployment unless you have the key in your Keychain already. So, in effect, you cannot test on the actual device without a developer key. Period. The only thing you can do without a key is run in the simulator.
This is based on actually trying to build a test app for deployment without a key, by the way. You actually get a build error.
Culture is more than commerce
The app disappears when you unplug the iphone.
I don't think it actually runs it on the phone, only uses it as a display/touch screen.
btw. Don't take much from the slides... having played with the SDK it's nothing like what was demoed - the stuff they were talking about probably won't hit until June.
Got this far, and stopped reading. EDGE is far far faster than dialup (which maxes out at ~56kbit/sec).
reference: a blog not particularly kind to Apple, which contains: which links to engadgets tests verifying the speed.
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
I don't think it actually runs it on the phone, only uses it as a display/touch screen.
I've not gotten that far yet (still trying to figure out how to submit a cert so that I can get the app deployed to the phone) but what you say here is very unlikely. Think of how much work it would be to build a whole application that would forward every possible input from the iPhone, including all sensor data, back to an application really running on your computer?
Given that GDB has been doing remote debugging for decades now I find it way more likely that it pushes the app to the phone. I would rather they not remove the app after you've deployed, I hope that's not the case if you've compiled a release version and you want a longer field test...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley