Apple's iPhone Developer Crisis

David Gerard writes "iPhone development sounds closed-shop but simple — apply to be a developer, put application on the App Store, you and Apple make money. Except Apple can't keep up with the request load — whereas getting a developer contract used to take a couple of days, it's now taking months. Some early developers' contracts are expiring with no notice of renewal options. And Apple has no idea what's going on or the state of things. If you want to maintain a completely closed system, it helps if you can actually keep up with it." Reader h11:6 points out news of a recent study which suggests that "Android's open source nature will give it a boost over Apple's iPhone," and thus take the lead in sales as soon as three years from now. It will be interesting to see how they deal with the flood of proposed apps as their popularity rises.

Comments

I hope the article is right

[stokessd]

As an owner of an iPhone I am frustrated with what I can't have. What I do have is pretty darn sweet, but things like adblock won't ever come to my phone. And that's where it's needed most, where my bandwidth to the phone and inside the phone is the smallest. So in that regard I'm really rooting for android, but I can't help but draw parallels with Linux on the desktop.

Sure, we all know how great linux is for certain tasks, but it has missed that spark that makes it catch on in a big way outside IT infrastructures and embedded systems.

So that three years prediciton is sounds a lot like "the year of the linux on the desktop"

Sheldon

Re:I hope the article is right

[wisty]

When they start using tcl (or some other framework that lets gui and event driven apps get stitched together the UNIX way), *then* it will be the year of the Linux desktop.

Re:I hope the article is right

[Anonymous Coward]

Well that is your fault for buying a faggy apple product. It's not like you went into the agreement no knowing what it entailed.

And by buying the phone and the apps you are voting "Yes please, for of the same, up the arse"

Re:I hope the article is right

[Nerdfest]

I recently abandoned my Palm OS device for a new phone, and one requirement was that it be able to run Android (there are no native Android devices in Canada yet). I'm hoping it's not too late in the race to stop the iPhone doing to the mobile market what Wintel did to the PC market.

Re:I hope the article is right

[Corbets]

Yet I have an application on mine called, go figure, Adblock, and it does just what I want to do.

Are you sure you've searched the app store?

Re:I hope the article is right

[Morlark]

Honestly, I'm quite surprised that the suggestion is as long as 3 years. Personally I don't see what the fuss about the iPhone is at all. The hardware is really nothing special. I'm sure the App Store is nice and all, but as the article says, Android's more open nature gives it an advantage there. I really don't see what's so appealing about the iPhone. As far as I can see it's all marketing and no substance. I've not once been even remotely tempted to get an iPhone.

Re:I hope the article is right

[rho]

I hope the article is right

This article is full of hope. Android is going to sweep away all competition "in three years"; Apple is having trouble, and due to the inherent nature of closed systems, will never be able to fix or improve it; a band of merry gnomes is going to dismantle all of the nuclear missiles in the world and turn them into slides for orphans.

I'm completely in favor of Android developing into a viable competitor, as it will improve both the iPhone and Android platforms. But since we only have ONE phone and a whole lot of enthusiasm, I think reserving judgement isn't such a crazy idea.

Re:I hope the article is right

[NevermindPhreak]

I just searched the app store with no luck. Could this be under a different name?

Re:I hope the article is right

[David Gerard]

The year of the Linux desktop was 2008, when netbooks gave Microsoft actual OS competition for the first time.

Re:I hope the article is right

[hattig]

Well considering the iPhone is a 2 year old hardware design (with a minor 3G upgrade since) it's not surprising that the hardware is nothing special now. The rest of the market has been catching up massively since the iPhone was pre-announced over two years ago. Microsoft are at sea with a UI that is stylus centric and outdated, putting a fancy launcher on the front won't help. Android can benefit from all the mistakes the iPhone made because it is more recent. The Palm Pre has the fancy interface but they're clearly behind, hence the HTML/JS web apps rather than native (for 3D games) which will surely come along later.

The iPhone has the central app store problem - a glut of rubbish that would never have been released in the past that bloats the listings, and a drive to cheap poor quality product in some form of lowest common denominator and the risks are too high for anyone to release anything significant that isn't a game. 15,000 apps, great statistic, but if 14,500 of them are tosh, and the other 500 are hard to find, or not even written...

Re:I hope the article is right

[Anonymous Coward]

jailbreak required...

Re:I hope the article is right

[BobReturns]

Is GPs iPhone Jailbroken?

Re:I hope the article is right

[NJRoadfan]

15,000 apps, great statistic, but if 14,500 of them are tosh, and the other 500 are hard to find, or not even written...

Or require a jailbreaked iPhone since they are "prohibited" by Apple.

Re:I hope the article is right

[Fusen]

Others may have already told you, but http://www.cocoamug.com/adblock/ Adblock is available for jailbroken phones and does what it says on the tin, uses the same filters your firefox extension uses. search for Quickpwn to find out more about jailbreaking.

Re:I hope the article is right

[molarmass192]

Look, I love and use Linux, I think it's excellent. However, even though Linux can be used on the desktop, I can tell you right now that 90% of people out there have absolutely no idea that computers can have a different OS installed on them than what comes out of the box. Slashdot is certainly not a representation of the "average" PC user. I seriously believe that Apple is Linuxs' best hope for more widespread adoption. If OS X can fracture the market to the point that devs have a vested interest in avoiding platform specific code then that removes the excuse for Windows specific applications. The biggest problem right now is that there are very few GUI frameworks with critical mass that are common across platforms. Personally, I wish Apple would release their internal only Windows Cocoa framework, or even better, open source it so it can be readily ported. XCode & Cocoa is the nicest GUI framework I've worked with and it would be a no brainer to cross compile.

Re:I hope the article is right

[Anonymous Coward]

You sir are of pure intellect and wise beyond our greatest imagination.

If I had mod points I'd mod you up.

Re:I hope the article is right

[andynugent]

Was the hardware ever anything special? The original came out a year and a half after the Nokia N80 that included a higher res camera, 3G, video, etc. Add in GPS, which various phones did before the the original iPhone was released, and the iPhone 3G spec sheet is still lower. Perhaps Apple (correctly) believed that the touch screen UI was enough of a selling point, and decided to have inferior hardware in order to allow them to make large leaps forward every 12 months. What's the bets on a big deal being made of the iPhone v3 having a better camera with video recording in summer 2009?

Re:I hope the article is right

[yttrstein]

All I can imagine when I think of everyone and their pothead kid being allowed to drop anything they want into Android is Rasterman porting Enlightenment to it, turning it into what enlightenment turned all my computers into in the late 90s; beautiful devices that didn't actually ever work.

Re:I hope the article is right

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

There's an adblock app for Safari in Cydia, I believe.

Re:I hope the article is right

[mdwh2]

I'm unclear on your analogy - because Linux has failed to catch on, therefore, any new product that isn't already popular will fail to catch on?

I guess the Iphone's going to be a flop then. It's not the major player either - indeed, on that note, comparing Iphone v. Android seems rather odd to me, and seems typical of the pro-Iphone bias in that it paints a picture where the Iphone is the only phone around, except for a new niche contender. Which is completely unrealistic - the phone market is dominated by major players like Nokia and Motorola, who have sold probably billions of phones. Saying the Iphone will be better than Android is like saying ... well, to use your Linux analogy, that OS X is doing well against Linux. Great. And AmigaOS is doing well against BeOS.

The Iphone is playing catch-up to the rest of the phone industry, so the "ready for the desktop" analogy is equally valid for the Iphone.

Re:I hope the article is right

[mdwh2]

Well considering the iPhone is a 2 year old hardware design (with a minor 3G upgrade since) it's not surprising that the hardware is nothing special now. The rest of the market has been catching up massively since the iPhone was pre-announced over two years ago.

3G was years old when the Iphone added it - the rest of the market has not had to "catch up" to the Iphone.

Sure, the Iphone had some nifty features like multitouch when it was first released. Just about all phones are cutting edge when they are first released - that's because products are always getting better! There's nothing special about the Iphone here, and it doesn't mean anyone else is playing "catch up", unless you want to reference everything in terms of the Iphone, which is a common pro-Apple tactic that people try to subtely use.

You might as well brag about a high end PC from any random PC manufacturer as being "best on the market on the day of release" - that doesn't mean it makes sense that the rest of the market is now playing catch-up, because all companies are continually improving. That's how technology worked - and how it worked in the phone industry long before Apple decided to enter the market late.

Re:I hope the article is right

[mdwh2]

Indeed, I am in full agreement. The claims of Apple firsts are usually simply that those people haven't seen it in a phone before ("OMG, I can access a website on a phone! I wasn't aware that almost every phone on the market can now do this, because I've lived under a rock for the last five to ten years!") When questioned, they'll retreat to using vague subjective and undefined qualifiers such as "but it does it better, it just does, I can't explain why because it's impossible to explain it". They'll then speak of the phone market in an Iphone-centric manner, such as referring to companies "catching up", or claiming companies copied the Iphone just because the Iphone does a particular feature, or talking as if the only phones on the market are the Iphone and Android phones (presumably to make the Iphone look more popular in comparison).

They might then point to one thing that the Iphone was better at on the day of release, but this ignores that most high end phones on the market are going to be the most advanced phones on the day of release. It only lasts until the next phone is released a few days later. This is just as true for other phones, if not more so - as you note, it lacked many features that were commonplace even on cheap bog-standard phones (video, 3G, Java etc).

Re:I hope the article is right

[Idaho]

This article is full of hope. Android is going to sweep away all competition "in three years";

Exactly. "2012 will be the year of the Android Deskto^H^H^H^H^H^HCellphone".

That said, I do hope so, but at this point it's not much more than "hope".

Re:I hope the article is right

[Anonymous Coward]

I just searched the app store with no luck. Could this be under a different name?

It's not on the official app store, you have to get it through Cydia.

Re:I hope the article is right

[Wovel]

Until of course frustrated users returned their netbooks and forced all of them to begin offering Windows..I have been using Linux since before the first release of SLS, it still does not have the mainstream application support for mass market appeal.

Re:I hope the article is right

[SleepingWaterBear]

Sure, we all know how great linux is for certain tasks, but it has missed that spark that makes it catch on in a big way outside IT infrastructures and embedded systems.

Yes, and that spark is called a marketing budget and either lucrative anti-competitive agreements with computer makers, or its own computer making branch.

Re:I hope the article is right

[despisethesun]

I think a big part of it is how things were in the American/Canadian phone market when the iPhone was released. In Europe and Asia, smartphones and featurephones are a lot more common. The iPhone sells respectably in those markets, but it never exploded like it did over here, mainly because it doesn't really do anything new. But over here, where dumbphones rule and the Razr was the hottest phone to come along in ages, it was like a revelation. Smartphones were mainly blocky business phones when the iPhone came along, and there wasn't really a market for high end featurephones when so many people would just get whatever decent looking LG or Moto came free with their contract. The iPhone is very much like the iPod that preceded it; nothing special in terms of features or hardware, but it's stylish, and the UI is fairly intuitive. It's so successful here because it was the first to convince North American consumers on a broad scale that they needed these features. And just like the iPod, those features were on preceding devices, and the ones to come out since have improved even further, but people will still make vague and undefined excuses for why Apple's product is superior.

Re:I hope the article is right

[MrCrassic]

Which is precisely why I swapped my iPhone for an iPod Touch and a simple Nokia phone. In my opinion, the iPhone is a very advanced music player, but a very lacking smartphone.

Re:I hope the article is right

[Anonymous Coward]

I have never seen this app on iTunes. You must have a jail broken phone.

Re:I hope the article is right

[hitmark]

not going to happen, because wintel (or more like dostel back when it started) could be slapped on any gray box and run the same apps as any other wintel gray box.

the iphone is closer to what ibm hoped to do with their pc before compaq reverse engineered the bios and managed to get it past the courts.

however, phones are still not on par with a desktop pc in terms of freedom of the user to slap any old "firmware" on it.

Re:I hope the article is right

[Anonymous Coward]

> The year of the Linux desktop was 2008, when netbooks gave Microsoft actual OS competition for the first time.

But the Linux share of netbooks is dropping fast. People don't want them, they want "real" windows that runs all their software.

Re:I hope the article is right

[intheshelter]

The fact that all naysayers of the iPhone try to compare spec sheets as a way to build their case against it shows that they just don't get it. It's the total package. Hardware, software, integrated together to work seemlessly and intuitively. No one else is doing that. You don't have to have bleeding edge hardware to build a great device, you have to make it usable by the masses, and Apple has done that very well.

I don't root for Android one way or the other, but I fail to see how it can surpass the iPhone in mass market appeal because they will never have the synergy between the hardware and software. Open source is all fine and dandy, but it doesn't necessarily mean better.

Re:I hope the article is right

[NineNine]

It's also not going to ever happen because of price. Apple is always the most expensive in whatever market they're in. The mobile market is no exception. Very few people both want and can afford an iPhone. I happen to like most Apple stuff, but I'm not willing to pay their premium or deal with their extreme lock-in (as the previous poster suggested).

Re:I hope the article is right

[echeola]

Accessing the web on most phones blows. How do I quantify it? 60% of mobile browsing is done on iPhones! Before my iPhone I gave up on browsing the web. I'm sure that this has changed with Android and even maybe Win Mobile 6.5.

Re:I hope the article is right

[Herschel Cohen]

> Linux share of netbooks is dropping fast ...

But still in the thirty percent range.

> People don't want them,

Really, based upon the assertion of one vendor and sales people that know only Windows?

> they want "real" windows that runs all their software.

Like the assertions above, based upon flimsy "factual" foundations. Most vendors assert their returns are approximately equal. Moreover, your last interpretation shows you are ignorant of the limitations of the design. Netbooks are limited functionality devices with marginal hardware specification, not small laptop replacements you presume them to be.

Re:I hope the article is right

[hitmark]

that pretty much seems to echo the mac faithful...

Re:I hope the article is right

[Anonymous Coward]

No, The problem is windows is a very awesome developer friendly platform. If you don't believe then you wont understand why people dont like to write code for linux. Most of the API's - networking, sound, filesystem, gui have no cohesion and are basically duct-taped together. It does not have .NETs simplicity and ease of use. Since .NET ties in the client, server and web through various technologies, that makes windows a win. right now.

Even the Mac was a horrible platform until OS X. If you read John Carmack's .plan file from 1999, he says something to the effect of "I rebooted Mac OS more times in a weekend then I ever did all of NT machines that I owned combined". And even OSX was buggy as hell until recently...

Cue fanbois ranting...

Re:I hope the article is right

[Anonymous Coward]

When questioned, they'll retreat to using vague subjective and undefined qualifiers such as "but it does it better, it just does, I can't explain why because it's impossible to explain it".

Well, can you point to a better mobile browser than Mobile Safari?

(Specially when it first appeared).

Also It's not "impossible to explain" âidiot.

We can do it in oh so many words.

â Accurate reproduction of a web page, not scaled down shit.
â Improved hands-on interaction with the page (touch scroll, zoom, etc).
â Vertical and horizontal viewing modes (automatically adjusting).
â Tap to zoom in to specific blocks of text "auto-magically".

(Oh, and about the lack of flash, no other phone browser supports flash, so it's a moot point. Mobile flash is not the same as the real thing and lack of flash is actually a *feature* considering how it's mostly used in the web).

Re:I hope the article is right

[Herschel Cohen]

> and forced all of them to begin offering Windows

Perhaps this should be reworded to more properly identify the "force" source. The buyers? Unlikely, since most vendors that have commented on return rates say they are about equal.

Where you may have some validity is to assert there is lack of mass market appeal. However, you miss a vital issue, most users will can care less what OS runs the device if the mobility applications are both functional and responsive. MS quick actions do not speak to the strength of its OS rather its vulnerability to competition in unexpected arenas.

Re:I hope the article is right

[Anonymous Coward]

> > Linux share of netbooks is dropping fast ...
> But still in the thirty percent range.

No, in fact it is about 10% now and dropping.

http://blogs.computerworld.com/study_windows_clobbers_linux_on_netbooks_with_over_90_share

It is expected to hit about 5% by the end of 2009. People don't know what Linux is. They don't want it.

Re:I hope the article is right

[Anonymous Coward]

Using Linux for years doesn't automatically mean you're correct. Return rates depend on the quality of the distribution, not whether it isn't Windows.

The following provides evidence that you're wrong: http://netbookboards.com/dell/mini-9-netbook-running-ubuntu-returned-less-than-xp/

Re:I hope the article is right

[XxtraLarGe]

I just RTA, and didn't see anything to back up the claim. It's based on a study by a research company, but they didn't give any numbers or trends, so what good is the claim?

Re:I hope the article is right

[Nick Ives]

On a flight from Gatwick to Helsinki about a month ago I saw an Eee PC running Vista. It beggars belief that the user thought it was a good idea to do that, but they did.

Re:I hope the article is right

[onefriedrice]

I recently abandoned my Palm OS device for a new phone, and one requirement was that it be able to run Android (there are no native Android devices in Canada yet). I'm hoping it's not too late in the race to stop the iPhone doing to the mobile market what Wintel did to the PC market.

There doesn't seem like much chance of that. The mobile market is already quite established, and Apple only has modestly good sales.

Re:I hope the article is right

[Anonymous Coward]

They might then point to one thing that the Iphone was better at on the day of release, but this ignores that most high end phones on the market are going to be the most advanced phones on the day of release.

Windows Mobile excluded.

Re:I hope the article is right

[Lars T.]

The year of the Linux desktop was 2008, when netbooks gave Microsoft actual OS competition for the first time.

There has to be a joke in there.

Re:I hope the article is right

[hattig]

What's your point? I don't own an iPhone, I've been using 3G smartphones for years. Sony Ericsson P800, Motorola A1000, etc. Indeed the raw specification and feature list of the iPhone has never been good.

Raw Specification penis wavers will NEVER understand that isn't the point.

That A1000 had GPS, but no software on-board to use it and no web browser that could do Google Maps. It had front and rear cameras, but nobody uses video calling. It had a dire user interface (UIQ on Symbian) and a fiddly stylus.

The lack of 3G on the first iPhone showed how much Apple didn't understand the market, especially outside the USA. The fact that they didn't increase the camera quality in the next revision, nor have enabled MMS or video recording, or cut and paste, shows some rough edges and features that people will miss. However in terms of software platform and usability you can't claim that they haven't succeeded, nor that they didn't have the best interface at the time of launch, and up until Android launched (at least) and arguably still the best.

And as time goes on, the only thing that is going to be different between the platforms is the software and the features in the software, and how good the platform development tools are.

Re:I hope the article is right

[davester666]

Really? I find my iPod Touch to be the worst music player I've had (I own 3 other full-size iPods).

Simply put, the music controls can't be found without focusing your attention on the screen. I normally listen to my music on shuffle and:

a) if you hit pause, then wait (I'm not sure of the minimum time, but it's fairly short), then hit play, the Touch reverts to playing all your songs alphabetically
b) the controls appear in 3 distinct places when using it in portrait mode. 1) double clicking the button when the screen is locked, 2) double clicking the button when the screen is unlocked and 3) the controls within the actual music player application

And it has what feels to be a crazy long pause to begin playing a song from scratch. I always wind up pausing it because it takes so long I'm not sure I hit the play button.

I would LOVE it if Apple: 1) replaced the flash memory with a 160 Gb drive (I'm fine with it being thicker for the drive and larger battery) and 2) put the click-wheel controls from the iPod classic onto the back of the Touch (with the lock switch).

Re:I hope the article is right

[Belial6]

"synergy" really? That word is unlikely to convince anyone here. I would say that Apple in no way have built a hardware and software that are integrated together to work seamlessly and intuitively. The fact that iPhones are notorious for crashes and lockups shows that beyond a shadow of a doubt that they do not work together seamlessly, and the fact that you cannot or at least until recently could not download podcasts directly to your phone without first downloading it to a computer shows that it is clearly not intuitive. I have talked to several people who were definitely confused about why web sites didn't work with their phone. Particularly when they would get a button that says download Flash. When they would click on it, they would get a message saying that the phone couldn't do it. This is definitely not intuitive.

The iPhone is not a success because it is a great product. It is a success because Apple has great marketing, a fanatical generally well to do fanboy base, it is an upgrade to an existing popular product, it looks good, and it is a reasonably good product in it's own right, even if it has some major and obvious flaws.

Re:I hope the article is right

[Anonymous Coward]

Sometimes what you don't include is also a design decision. Java and Flash are good examples, java mobile development is a compatibility nightmare, and flash is extremely slow on OS X or Linux. Ofc people who doesn't know better just complain cheap phones have it and iPhone doesn't.

Re:I hope the article is right

[Anonymous Coward]

The year of the Linux desktop will be similar to the year of the CD in the 1990s. There wasn't one definite year that CDs took over as a part of every PC, they ended up being phased in over time.

Re:I hope the article is right

[Darkness404]

I think that the day that Android wins is whenever all carriers start offering Android phones. Right now, if you are in the USA and on AT&T the best application phone you can get is an iPhone, on T-Mobile the best you can get is a G1, and for Verizon, the best is a Blackberry. When the day comes that I can walk into an AT&T store and find a phone running Android, walk into a Sprint store and find one running Android, walk into a Verizon store and find one running Android, that is the day that Android wins. Until then, you are out of luck on Android unless you have T-Mobile or want to jump ship to a different carrier (Android jailbreaking/dev phone excluded)

Re:I hope the article is right

[hazah]

The problem is windows is a very awesome developer friendly platform.

As a developer that started out programming on windows, I whole heartedly disagree. There is nothing simpler than turning a text file's execute bit to "on"... chances are any unix system will just figure out how to do it with automagical consistency.

If you don't believe then you wont understand why people don't like to write code for linux.

I don't have to put my faith into anything. This is completely testable and repeatable by anyone.

I would imagine people that don't write programs for linux simply do not know how to in the first place. If the expectation is to simply jump ship and find yourself in the exact same ship, then you make no sense.

Most of the API's - networking, sound, filesystem, gui have no cohesion and are basically duct-taped together. It does not have .NETs simplicity and ease of use. Since .NET ties in the client, server and web through various technologies

What you're failing to mention is that networking, sound, filesystem, gui... have nothing in common other than being API's. They've been in development for about 40 years now (obviously some longer than others), redesigned and re-factored over and over again. I'm pretty sure most of the usability kinks have been implemented already, and what we have today is the aggregated result of that process. You mention .NET but often times its like swatting a fly with a sledge hammer. The problem simply isn't big enough.

Even the Mac was a horrible platform until OS X... And even OSX was buggy as hell until recently...

So... until it became a unix system?

What OS, in your mind, does not contain rather large flaws?

Cue fanbois ranting...

Oh the irony...

Contrary to the parent's quote that the only motivation would be fandom... I think I'm only doing this cause I'm bored and maybe for the benefit of anyone who wouldn't know better.

Re:I hope the article is right

[Darkness404]

Oh please, take a look at the iPhone app store and tell me how great the quality of software is. There are several *paid* apps that crash all the time, not to mention that at most there are 4 different hardware revisions each with approximately the same basic specs (accelerometer, touch screen, etc) so there are no excuses. All the while interesting, useful stuff gets filtered by our overlords, err... the app store approvers because it might be slightly competitive to Apple (why? when you bought the phone should Apple care whether or not you use Safari or Opera Mini to browse the web???) or "obscene", or in the worst cases no feedback.

With the Android Marketplace, the worst that could happen is a few crap apps start appearing, however, due to the community nature of the Marketplace, they will almost always be near the bottom in ratings, etc, I would much rather have a few crap applications at the bottom of some lists then for some puritan organization telling me how I can use my phone.

Re:I hope the article is right

[gbarules2999]

I stopped caring about whether there will be a "Year of the Linux Desktop" or not. I'm using it. It's good. And if the computer-orientated economy is filled with these ignorant, computer-illiterate people who don't even know a free alternative exists, much less its merits, there's something deeply, fundamentally wrong with the industry. I don't bother hoping anymore.

Re:I hope the article is right

[gbarules2999]

Source?

Re:I hope the article is right

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, can you point to a better mobile browser than Mobile Safari?

Opera Mobile.

Re:I hope the article is right

[Anonymous Coward]

Linux has caught on in at least one "area" outside IT infrastructures and embedded systems: academia.

Re:I hope the article is right

[mdwh2]

Raw Specification penis wavers will NEVER understand that isn't the point.

I'm not the one claiming that the Iphone is better, or that other phones are having to catch up. It's not up to me to prove the claim, with specifications or otherwise.

However in terms of software platform and usability you can't claim that they haven't succeeded, nor that they didn't have the best interface at the time of launch, and up until Android launched (at least) and arguably still the best.

I don't know if that's true - every time I ask for an explanation on how it's better, I never get an answer. I just get evasive claims such saying things like "it doesn't show up on a specification sheet". Well, I'm not asking for specifications, I'm asking for how it's better. I'm not sure that anything that lacks basic fundamental UI features such as copy/paste can ever be a contender for best UI.

And as time goes on, the only thing that is going to be different between the platforms is the software and the features in the software, and how good the platform development tools are.

Perhaps, but as you state yourself, the Iphone differs from a hardware point of view, so this isn't true now. And even if the Iphone did have the best software, there is no reason to assume that manufacturers won't learn from each other on this, so by the time the Iphone catches up with the market on hardware features, there's no reason to think that software differences will be anymore so than hardware differences. I'm also not sure that's true anyway - software can be standardised across all models easily, where as hardware features will be more likely to be the differentiator. Look at computers - the big difference in pricing is all about things like CPU speed, hard disk size, graphics card, or things like support from the manufacturer, or reliability of the make. No one really cares about the OS version (outside of Slashdot).

Re:I hope the article is right

[obarthelemy]

Mee too, but I'm perpetually trying to switch to Linux, and failing:
- none of my 10+ installation attempts on various PCs have worked, due to hardware installation issues. These are very simple PCs (last one: intel i815, no addin card), on which XP runs flawlessly. Fixing problems, especially boot problems, is too hard for a total linux noob.
- I'm down to buying a new PC, and looking for a list of well-supported "current" hardware, but can't find any (AMD vs Intel ? ATI vs nVidia ? Soundchip ? Wifi card ?). Advice requests in the forums have resulted in.. nothing of value, but a couple of "learn to read" trolls.

I think the "linux on the desktop" part is failing because a desktop = a user, and users like me can't make heads nor tails of even installing linux.

On the Smartphone front, the issues are a bit of the same. Hopefully Linux will come preinstalled, but I think what makes the iPhone's succes is marketing, design, ergonomics, and the App/Tunes store. I'm not sure a plethora of "hacker" apps quite counter that.

Re:I hope the article is right

[mdwh2]

The AC suggests Opera Mobile, and there are others around, so the job now is to show why Safari is so much better.

Also It's not "impossible to explain" âidiot. We can do it in oh so many words.

What, with an ad hominem?

And that was my very point - yes, it's certainly possible to explain, if it really is better. However, it's common to hear the cry of "It's better, it's just not something that can be explained!" from the Iphone fan. I had hoped the usage of quotation marks would make it clear I was not referring to my own point of view.

â Accurate reproduction of a web page, not scaled down shit.
â Improved hands-on interaction with the page (touch scroll, zoom, etc).
â Vertical and horizontal viewing modes (automatically adjusting).

All of these things are possible with Opera Mini, the free browser that will run on any cheap old bog-standard phone (except the really cheap ones that don't support Java. And the Iphone). The only thing you list that won't work on all these phones is the touchscreen stuff, which obviously requires a touchscreen phone.

So, try again?

Re:I hope the article is right

[mdwh2]

I agree that a lot of it seems to be due to the US being so far behind. But as for the dumb-vs-smart-phone distinction, note that these days, the distinction is blurred - whilst "dumb" phones may not be platforms that allow you to run native code, they still do a lot of things such as web browsing, email, mapping software, and they have done for years. And these are the things that people usually claim the Iphone was first with (see my comment below about Opera Mini doing the things that the person claims is unique to Safari). My phone is a Motorola V980, an old non-smart-phone now that I believe predated the RAZR, but it's still capable of doing these things that the Iphone, years later, gets praised for.

From what I've heard, a bigger problem is that the US networks tended to cripple phones, even if the technology was up to it - for example, limiting or preventing Internet access, and not allowing international calls.

Re:I hope the article is right

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

Well considering the iPhone is a 2 year old hardware design (with a minor 3G upgrade since) it's not surprising that the hardware is nothing special now.

If you have a look on ifixit.com, you'll see the 3G is quite different underneath.

Re:I hope the article is right

[mdwh2]

Citation needed? Web browsing just works on my bog standard old phone. I'm not aware of it "blowing" on high end phones, and nor has it done for years.

It's something that most people don't do, because most people don't care full stop. It's a fallacy to assume that if more people browse on an Iphone, it must be easier, because you have a bias in your sample selection: people who spend hundreds of pounds on a mobile device are presumably going to make more use of it than people who buy a cheaper phone.

Re:I hope the article is right

[BlackCreek]

I seriously believe that Apple is Linuxs' best hope for more widespread adoption. If OS X can fracture the market to the point that devs have a vested interest in avoiding platform specific code then that removes the excuse for Windows specific applications.

I sort of hold the same opinion, but I imagined that it would be along the lines of: if OS X takes too much market share, it could lead vendors like Dell, HP, Lenovo and Acer to challenge MS grip, and start shipping Linux pre-installed for real (instead of just a handful of models in a handful of countries).

Re:I hope the article is right

[kwertii]

You're thinking about this from an engineer's perspective. Logic and facts and such.

The key thing to realize is that in the commercial world, THAT DOESN'T MATTER. Perception is everything. Facts are a distant second. Having a good platform is necessary, but not sufficient. The spin and marketing are everything.

It's ALL about the public opinion. How many cool technological innovations have lost because of poor marketing?

Look at Apple's own 1980s experience with the Macintosh versus Windows. They've learned their lesson, and now they're marketing experts. They have successfully trained the public to believe they invented cool features.

And, incidentally, their phone really does work better compared to every other clunky phone web browser I've ever used, including Android.

How about some non-subjective reasons? The UI is designed intuitively - to adapt to human thought processes, rather than forcing the user to adapt to computer programming conveniences, or the convoluted thoughts of a semi-autistic KDE developer. If you need a painfully detailled explanation, check out http://developer.apple.com/documentation/userexperience/Conceptual/AppleHIGuidelines/XHIGIntro/chapter_1_section_1.html

Re:I hope the article is right

[mdwh2]

It's the total package. Hardware, software, integrated together to work seemlessly and intuitively. ... they will never have the synergy between the hardware and software.

I just love how you proved my point.

Nowhere am I comparing "spec sheets". I don't care what explanation you give for it being better, but please, give me one based on evidence and facts, not claims of "it's integrated better" that are not backed by evidence or meaningless buzzwords like "synegy". If I wanted that kind of explanation, I'd read the unsolicited Iphone spam that Apple keep sending to my inbox.

Re:I hope the article is right

[mdwh2]

java mobile development is a compatibility nightmare

Well that's an issue for developers, not for the user.

And even with compatibility issues, any Java-supporting phone is still going to be more compatible with a Java application than the Iphone is. I don't buy the argument of "less is better" here - I can always choose not to use a feature if I don't want it, but I'd rather it be my choice.

Re:I hope the article is right

[aliquis]

Well if Sony-Ericsson and Nokia and such jumps in and not just dip their toes it will go fast.

Anyway, how many of those apps are "web widgets" and such crap? Or are many really useful? One can understand why they aren't in a hurry if most things are crap.

Sucks to be locked in in any case and have someone else decide which applications you want or not and so on.

As always with Apple:
Nice user-interface but crippled, expensive, locked in and with limited configuration options.

Personally I would never buy an iPhone after the conditions Apple put on the sales (unlocked with no subscription would be another story.)

Re:I hope the article is right

[Anonymous Coward]

What's wrong with synergy? I happen to like it ;)

Re:I hope the article is right

[mgblst]

So much rubbish. Don't believe me, check out this loser:

http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewArtist?id=290031857

40 apps, all the same thing. Daysto Valentines day. Days to xmas.

Apple should ban this guy, and people like him.

Re:I hope the article is right

[Raenex]

As I recall, when it came out the iPhone was the only phone that had a full screen touch display. I think lots of people were sick of messing with tiny buttons and small displays.

Re:I hope the article is right

[mgblst]

Mate, I have used all the phones pre-iphone, and their browsers were shit. If you find this a difficult concept to understand, then that is your fault. The iPhone has the only useable browser on a mobile phone. That simple.

Windows Mobile always had the worse browser, the screen would look nothing like the actual webpage. Or maybe you like it like that? Is that too subjective?

You people don't get it, and never will. You hate the iphone, we get it. YOu have no basis for doing so, but go ahead, run with it.

Re:I hope the article is right

[OrangeTide]

I gave up on caring about the ignorance of 90% of people. There are a lot of things 90% of people have absolutely no idea about. If 10% of people bought linux, that's enough market share to ensure that I have easy access to new devices and good driver support.

The local tile & carpet store doesn't have 90% of the market share, yet hundreds of people fine them useful and they have been in business since the 1970s. This idea that you need to dominate a market to success is a myth.

GNUStep runs on Windows, and it's about 90% compatible with the Cocoa API. I think there is a demand for Apple stuff, not a demand for their unusual API.

Re:I hope the article is right

[aliquis]

Linux has been ready for the desktop for years, now it's just that people prefer to use different things, and that's fine.

Re:I hope the article is right

[aliquis]

So, tell me, how many people use a Netbook with Linux on it compared to mac users?

Though you speak about Linux but then mix it up with OS competition, and about desktops and mix it up with Netbooks.

Re:I hope the article is right

[aliquis]

The biggest problem right now is that there are very few GUI frameworks with critical mass that are common across platforms.

Do you really need more than one? QT.

Re:I hope the article is right

[David Gerard]

I use my laptop as my "desktop" and did as soon as I could afford a sufficiently powerful laptop. MacBooks are Apple's biggest seller, much bigger than towers or iMacs or Minis. The distinction is artificial.

Re:I hope the article is right

[GaryPatterson]

My wife gave me an iPod Touch for my birthday last year, and I love it *except* for the two things you mentioned. The first is just inexplicable to me, but the second was overcome with a pair of better headphones that included a remote control.

Finally I can move back and forth through songs, or just pause them, without having to get the Touch out of my jacket pocket and unlock it. On top of that, the headphones are better quality and don't fall out of my ears.

It's galling to pay for functionality that really should come with the device, but at least it does exist.

Re:I hope the article is right

[despisethesun]

That's all true, but most people never used any of the capabilities of their dumbphones, save for music players and cameras. Another part of the distinction between the NA and Eurasian markets is that until fairly recently, anything you wanted to do with your phone besides talk&text cost an arm and a leg. It still does compared to Europe (the situation in Canada is especially bad), but it has improved as of late, and the iPhone has had some role in this. For example, I had a browser on my old Moto, but at around $5/MB, I was in no hurry to use it, and the screen on it was small and low-res anyway. The iPhone was obviously not first to do most of the things it does, or even the best, but when you consider the market it came into, it's not hard to see how it gained such slavish devotion. There just was not any real competition here in the consumer market at the time, and the big carriers were happy to keep it that way.

Re:I hope the article is right

[davester666]

Finally I can move back and forth through songs, or just pause them, without having to get the Touch out of my jacket pocket and unlock it. On top of that, the headphones are better quality and don't fall out of my ears.

What did you get with these remote controls?

Re:I hope the article is right

[bluephone]

OMG, I can access a website on a phone! I wasn't aware that almost every phone on the market can now do this, because I've lived under a rock for the last five to ten years!"

Being able to access the web is a far cry from being able to USE it. I can access the net via a text only terminal and a 1200 baud modem, but I sure as hell won't get much done.The web "browsers" on phones SUCKED HARD. For years millions of us were waiting for a day when phone makers stopped trying to whittle the web down to phone screen size and instead scaled up the screen and juiced up the browser's power. I'm not an Apple fanboy, the last Apple product I had was an ancient black and white Mac from the dawn of time, and I got it free, played with it. However, one thing Apple did right, if not perfect, was the Safari browser on the iPhone. There is nothing close to the usability and agility of Safari on the iPhone. Fennec has potential, but it's slower than molasses in January right now.

We've seen "get the Internet on your cell phone" for years. People are surprised because now it's actually usable.

Re:I hope the article is right

[shutdown -p now]

Most of the API's - networking, sound, filesystem, gui have no cohesion and are basically duct-taped together. It does not have .NETs simplicity and ease of use. Since .NET ties in the client, server and web through various technologies, that makes windows a win. right now.

For Linux (and others) there's always Java, which, when it comes to libraries, offers pretty much everything .NET does, and then some.

(and I say that as a .NET dev who much prefers it to Java!)

Re:I hope the article is right

[mdwh2]

How does Safari do better than say Opera Mobile, or the browsers that have been on various smartphones over the years?

The only ones that suck are those on cheap bog-standard non-smart phones, and even they can run Opera Mini and do it fine. I've known people do real web browsing on higher end phones for years though. It was impressive in, ooh, about 2003.

For years millions of us were waiting for a day when phone makers stopped trying to whittle the web down to phone screen size and instead scaled up the screen and juiced up the browser's power.

Smartphones with large screens have been around for years. I'm not sure what you mean about whittling down? I hope you're not thinking of WAP - when I say browsing of real websites has been around for years, yes I'm talking about accessing full blown websites.

Re:I hope the article is right

[hattig]

The basic user interface interaction mechanism is simply well designed and works well? The entire user interface is designed for touch input? It's won numerous awards? Just using it is intuitive and pleasant compared to any other mobile interface? Despite having a small marketshare it makes up over 50% of mobile internet access, because it's not painful? What it does, it does in a very usable manner.

All irrelevant to me. I ain't paying that for a phone.

I think for mobile phones the hardware will eventually combine into an application processor (multi-core ARM + PowerVR graphics) and a communications processor (Wireless, Bluetooth, 4G/3G/2G, GPS) via integration. Phones will differ by some physical aspects - screen size, storage capacity, battery, design, etc. All the different operating systems will get to a similar level of capability, even Windows Mobile 7 might be okay. Will Apple's in-house application processor design with PA Semi give them a processing advantage?

Re:I hope the article is right

[bluephone]

Most people don't want to spend $500 or more for a phone. And the plans were outrageously priced. You could have had a nice sized LCD display in 2003 too, but it was quite expensive. You could have had a 20megabit fiber connection to the internet in 2003, it was very expensive.

You're confusing existence with commonality. Most people had none of those things three years ago, now you can get any of them for $100 or less.

Re:I hope the article is right

[Tony Hoyle]

Not by a long shot.. I was using a full screen touch display on a P800 in 2001.

It wasn't as sophisticated as a modern phone, but for its day it was pretty good.

Re:I hope the article is right

[Tony Hoyle]

Are you kidding? Phones are free are nearly free with the plans, and have been for as long as I can remember. They were more expensive a few years ago (especially compared to today where the companies are cutting each other throats to get new business) but they were more expensive across the board - you'd have paid a lot for a bog standard phone as well.

Browsing on opera mini was pretty good back in the day.. only let down by the lack of 3G which didn't become ubiquitous until about 3-4 years ago.

The only reason people didn't have phones with large screens and browsers was the same reason most people don't now - they don't want or need such a device.

Re:I hope the article is right

[Tony Hoyle]

No there aren't.. don't make shit up.

There are a couple of frontends to Safari. Apple will *not* allow a 3rd party browser on the iphone.

Re:I hope the article is right

[intheshelter]

"I would say that Apple in no way have built a hardware and software that are integrated together to work seamlessly and intuitively."

- I would say you're wrong. The iPhone UI works better than any other phone I've ever seen, used, or heard of.

"The fact that iPhones are notorious for crashes and lockups"

- Good point. . except it's not true. But hey, don't let facts get in the way of your blind hatred. I know tons of people who have iPhones and NONE of them have ever complained of lockups or crashes and they ALL love them and they ALL said they'll buy another iPhone in the future when it comes time to replace their existing one. About the only thing notorious is your penchant for making things up in your attempt to trash the iPhone.

"the fact that you cannot or at least until recently could not download podcasts directly to your phone without first downloading it to a computer shows that it is clearly not intuitive."

- I would disagreee again. I have never, not once, ever had a desire to do what you just described. Nor have I heard of anyone else have the same complaint. Maybe your fringe expectations do not represent the desires of the bulk of the buying public. And just to clarify a little deeper, the fact that you can't download podcasts directly does not "show that it is clearly not intuitive". About the only thing it shows is that you have a desire to do something that most people do not, and that hardly makes the UI non-intuitive.

" I have talked to several people who were definitely confused about why web sites didn't work with their phone. Particularly when they would get a button that says download Flash. When they would click on it, they would get a message saying that the phone couldn't do it. This is definitely not intuitive."

- I haven't seen one site that doesn't work with the iPhone. Flash would definitely be nice in the future, but even your own explanation proves you wrong. They click on the download Flash link and they get a message saying the phone couldn't do it. That seems about as straightforward as it can possibly get. What else do you want, a dozen roses along with that explanation?

"The iPhone is not a success because it is a great product. It is a success because Apple has great marketing, a fanatical generally well to do fanboy base, it is an upgrade to an existing popular product, it looks good, and it is a reasonably good product in it's own right, even if it has some major and obvious flaws."

- The iPhone is a success because it is a great product. It doesn't have the highest or most advanced spec in any one area, but as a product it is integrated well and offers a superior experience. It definitely has some flaws, but nevertheless it is a great product. Your attempt to marginalize its success by attributing it to voodoo marketing, or the tired old argument of fanboys shows that you're grasping at straws. RIM, Palm and MS stock all took a bit of a dive on the day the iPhone was announced because everyone could plainly see by the DEMONSTRATION (note that is not marketing, but a walkthrough of the phones features) that Apple had managed to leap ahead of everyone else. And to add one more point to this, if the iPhone is so bad why is every manufacturer trying to copy it now? . . . I'll give you a hint, it's because they knew the iPhone was what the people would want, so they'd better get a similar offering.

Your made up reasons (false claiming crashes and lockups, web sites don't work with the iPhone, etc.) sounds ridiculously desperate. While the iPhone is not perfect, it is head and shoulders above any other phone in terms of UI design and usability. If you want to blindly hate them and swallow the "hater" koolaid then have at it, but you'll have to come up with something better than the rants you've served up here.

Re:I hope the article is right

[oakgrove]

Safari on the iPhone is indeed impressive. However, you obviously haven't tried Opera on the G1. It's blazing fast. At least 3 times faster at rendering pages as the built-in Webkit browser that comes with the phone. It browses in Edge faster than the stock browser does in 3G. It's even faster than Safari on the iPhone. Furthermore, it has all of the cool usability perks you get with Opera like keypad scrolling, etc. I'm very happy with it.

Re:I hope the article is right

[Anonymous Coward]

Web browsing just works on my bog standard old phone.

On your phone, feature X might work, but people don't use it. When you understand why, you will understand the grandparent's argument.

It's something that most people don't do, because most people don't care full stop. It's a fallacy to assume that if more people browse on an Iphone, it must be easier, because you have a bias in your sample selection: people who spend hundreds of pounds on a mobile device are presumably going to make more use of it than people who buy a cheaper phone.

ROFL. You just keep believin', bro'.

Re:I hope the article is right

[intheshelter]

"Nowhere am I comparing "spec sheets""

- Really? How about we take a quote from your original post . . "it lacked many features that were commonplace even on cheap bog-standard phones (video, 3G, Java etc)." Gee, that sounds like a spec comparison to me!

I just love how you proved MY point. . . YOU just don't get it!

I've got evidence though if that is what you want. Customer satisfaction ratings for the iPhone surpass ALL OTHER PHONES by a HUGE margin ( http://seekingalpha.com/article/50765-apple-s-iphone-builds-huge-lead-in-customer-satisfaction )! Is it because the iPhone has the most advanced camera? . . . No. Is it because it has the most memory out of any other phone? . . . No. It's the EXPERIENCE, and you can't measure that except through customer satisfaction ratings.

Your attempt to use specs alone as a measuring stick shows you don't understand why the iPhone is so successful and appealing to people. In fact you purposely attempt to negate any argument other than spec sheet comparisons because you can't make the mental leap that the iPhone's appeal has more to do with the overall experience and enjoyment of using the phone. But thankfully I tried to help you by providing the evidence you asked for, but I have no doubt that you'll find some way to try and disqualify the customer satisfaction results as proof of my point.

Re:I hope the article is right

[aliquis]

Well, while true many people prefer laptops in Apple case the fact that their desktop options suck may help.

Though 24" iMac is quite ok, but way too expensive for most people who just want a desktop machine.

Re:I hope the article is right

[Raenex]

This thing? No, by full screen I mean there are no buttons so you get more screen real estate. What phone was doing this when the iPhone came out? Give them credit where it's due. Their design was innovative for the time.

Re:I hope the article is right

[tsa]

I'd like to add to that that big changes usually are sparked by few people who KNOW there is a better way to do/handle things than the established way and are willing to fight for it.

Re:I hope the article is right

[Anonymous Coward]

the Pxxx series! you can remove the keyboard and just use the touch screen on all devices, from 2001 onwards p800 p900 p910 p990? p1 etc. also iPhone does have a button on the front.. fanboy much?.

Re:I hope the article is right

[Snocone]

The local tile & carpet store doesn't have 90% of the market share, yet... ... yet it sells fungible at point of use goods with no associated network effect, so it has no relevance to a developer-consumer ecosystem.

This idea that you need to dominate a market to success is a myth.

It's a myth only unless you actually do need to dominate the market.

A particularly striking example of need for 100% dominance would be the power transmission Tesla wars. What non-dominating technology has success in the power transmission market? Hmmm, let me look around ... why, "none at all" is what I see. Funny, that, looks like what you call "a myth" is actually a pretty perfect description of reality.

Whilst the operating system-developer-consumer market isn't up to the 100% need for dominance of the power transmission market, it's a hell of a lot closer than a carpet store.

Re:I hope the article is right

[andynugent]

I'd say it was more of a "stopping any other software distribution method" decision than a design decision.

Re:I hope the article is right

[Anonymous Coward]

"I would say you're wrong. The iPhone UI works better than any other phone I've ever seen, used, or heard of."
Have you used the Android OS at all? Ever? Heard of it maybe?
"Good point. . except it's not true. But hey, don't let facts get in the way of your blind hatred. I know tons of people who have iPhones and NONE of them have ever complained of lockups or crashes and they ALL love them and they ALL said they'll buy another iPhone in the future when it comes time to replace their existing one. About the only thing notorious is your penchant for making things up in your attempt to trash the iPhone."
Ah, OK, none of your fanboy friends reported any problem with the device they spent lots of money on in order to look good for their friends. Every phone they had MUST have worked perfectly. Mmhmm.
"I would disagreee again. I have never, not once, ever had a desire to do what you just described. Nor have I heard of anyone else have the same complaint. Maybe your fringe expectations do not represent the desires of the bulk of the buying public. And just to clarify a little deeper, the fact that you can't download podcasts directly does not "show that it is clearly not intuitive". About the only thing it shows is that you have a desire to do something that most people do not, and that hardly makes the UI non-intuitive."
OK, so you and most people you talk to are dumb? Who the hell says, "I feel like listening to a podcast on my internet-enabled phone. First, I'll find a computer..."? If you're intuition adds unnecessary steps to simple actions then perhaps it's YOU who is unintuitive.
"I haven't seen one site that doesn't work with the iPhone. Flash would definitely be nice in the future, but even your own explanation proves you wrong. They click on the download Flash link and they get a message saying the phone couldn't do it. That seems about as straightforward as it can possibly get. What else do you want, a dozen roses along with that explanation?"
OK, so you HAVEN'T used Android. The browser on my G1 displays a large question mark when it detects plugins that aren't supported (such as flash). It doesn't pretend the phone might be able to use flash until you click the link.
"The _______ is a success because it is a great product. It doesn't have the highest or most advanced spec in any one area, but as a product it is integrated well and offers a superior experience. It definitely has some flaws, but nevertheless it is a great product."
I'm going to take this out of context and put a blank in it to prove a point: you just described most phones released in the past three years. Most of us bought and used phones BEFORE the iPhone came out that did most of what it did and MORE. So why did people buy the iPhone? Because it's shiny. Because it's Apple.
"And to add one more point to this, if the iPhone is so bad why is every manufacturer trying to copy it now? . . . I'll give you a hint, it's because they knew the iPhone was what the people would want, so they'd better get a similar offering."
I'd say it's less "trying to copy" and more "fixing". Once again, use an Android phone. The iPhone won't seem like anything special.

Re:I hope the article is right

[sporkmonger]

GNUStep runs on Windows, and it's about 90% compatible with the Cocoa API. I think there is a demand for Apple stuff, not a demand for their unusual API.

As someone who's developed for Windows, Linux, and OS X, I think it's reasonably safe for me to say that this is true. There are a few people out there who genuinely do like the Cocoa API, but they are a very small minority, composed almost exclusively of Apple fanboys.

I should probably qualify that a little bit, though. Cocoa isn't terrible, and neither is Objective-C. I would much rather write GUI code with Cocoa/Obj-C than with C/C++. However, both Java (either SWT or Swing) and C# are (slightly) more pleasant to write code for. That said, you can't write iPhone apps in Java or C#, and neither Java GUI toolkit gives you a sufficiently native feel on OS X unless your app is extremely simple.

If given the option, I would happily switch to another language/toolkit if it gave me full equivalency to everything I've got in Cocoa, but without the pain of manual memory management and the arcane syntax of Obj-C.

Re:I hope the article is right

[Anonymous Coward]

Wishful thinking much? If there is *any* money to be made and it is open at all then sock puppets and spammers will own it. Sure, it is depressing to see the ratio of garbage to gem at the apple store, but an open one will be awash in garbage.

Just go to any "free software" site and try to wade through the garbage. The apple store, Amazon, NewEgg, etc., reviews are full of sock puppets -- but at least with most products there is a fairly established minimum bar for entry. In the Apple apps store (and presumably some day in the android marketplace) you will have garbage that should never have been written or simply doesn't work. The lower you drop the barrier for entry the more crap you have.

The real benefit (if there is one) to the Apple store is the content filtering. Unfortunately, despite assertions to the contrary, Apple approves d*mn near every application including ones "that compete with Apple's offerings." Whether the app works or is worthwhile in any way. Apple seems, unfortunately, to think that the value of their app store depends on the number of apps that are available for sale from it.

For android market place to compete it would actually need to be more stringent and apply strict filtering. This would severely restrict the available software, but would allow ratings to have some meaning and would be appreciated by the users.

Note: I own an iPhone and have a mac laptop, but prefer linux and my main workstation runs linux. The reason I have an iPhone is not that I love it (its more of tolerate), but it really is pretty slick and for usable functionality better than other offerings. When my contract expires if Android can offer compelling reasons to use it (stability, long battery life, quality apps that aren't drowned in garbage, speed) then I will switch.

The iPhone is *far* more stable than the Windows mobile phones I've used and is about as stable as the palm os based phone I had. The battery life is 2 to 3 times better than the Windows mobile phones I've used (instead of charging every day it is every 2 or 3 days). There are *some* good apps in the apple store, but the ratio is getting worse every day. The iPhone isn't very fast and takes quite a while to load an app.

Most of the foregoing are give-and-take items, but for now the iPhone simply has the best balance. I hope that changes.

Re:I hope the article is right

[Tharsman]

Although I do not agree with most the stuff the quoted Mr. Anonymous Coward posted, I do have to say: Visual Studio's IDE is the most solid thing I have used to write code.

Thats about it. Wish I was able to use it to write code in other platforms. Some Eclipse lovers may disagree, but after working with it, I still prefer Visual Studio.

Re:I hope the article is right

[jeff4747]

How does Safari do better than say Opera Mobile, or the browsers that have been on various smartphones over the years?

1. Because the screen isn't so small that you can actually read the web pages you're surfing
2. The screen's resolution isn't so incredibly bad that you can actually ready the web pages you're sufing
3. Multitouch is a far better technology when trying navigate around a web page that's way to large for the available screen. (This is what makes it better than existing smartphones)
4. Doesn't require downloading & installing an app, which can actually be a difficult process on some phones.

Sure, these aren't unique to Safari, but your average iPhone user isn't thinking "I'm running Safari", they're thinking "I'm browsing the web".

That a knowledgeable user and find and download a work-around doesn't make that work-around a better solution. In fact, the need for a manual work-around means the product is crap. Once geeks en-mass understand this, we'll get Linux on the desktop and all the other stuff that has been predicted for years.

Re:I hope the article is right

[jeff4747]

I don't know if that's true - every time I ask for an explanation on how it's better, I never get an answer. I just get evasive claims such saying things like "it doesn't show up on a specification sheet". Well, I'm not asking for specifications, I'm asking for how it's better. I'm not sure that anything that lacks basic fundamental UI features such as copy/paste can ever be a contender for best UI.

Because it's extremely intuitive. Massively intuitive. As in my Mom picked up an iPhone and knew how to use it in 5 mins without reading a manual/book/website. And I don't mean just place a phone call & text. I mean app store, re-arranging the icons, flipping between pages, setting up her address book and so on.

It doesn't matter that it's lacking features that we geeks would like, because adding those features makes the UI less intuitive.

In fact, the more technologically savvy folks I know who have used an iPhone found it more difficult to use at first, because we're so used to having to train ourselves to the UI instead of the UI working for us. Once you get that out of your head the iPhone is extremely nice to use.

Re:I hope the article is right

[iamacat]

It does not have .NETs simplicity and ease of use.

Oh the irony. Windows.Forms is incomprehensible unless you were developing for MS products since Windows 3.1. A simple thing like a background thread setting enabled state of a button causes a deadlock.

Re:I hope the article is right

[Swift2001]

"I gave up on caring about the ignorance of 90% of people."

Wow, you must be the head of marketing for Linux!

Don't you realize, with one side of your face you're saying that everyone will adopt your platform, and on the other, you're saying that they won't because "90% of people are idiots." Wait a minute, you're fired from the marketing department.

As for the author of this piece of political spin, I nominate him for the position of press secretary for Rush Limbaugh.

Re:I hope the article is right

[robogobo]

insightful.....but OFF TOPIC

Re:I hope the article is right

[OrangeTide]

"What non-dominating technology has success in the power transmission market?"

They quit selling DC power service in 2006 in NYC. Is that a good enough example for you?

They still sell steam power services in many cities as an alternative to electric heating of commercial buildings.

Power transmission technology only needs to be compatible when you wish to sell power to other power companies, it need not be compatible to sell power to customers. In fact you are generally forced to adapt to your customer's needs in all traditional forms of business.

Re:I hope the article is right

[OrangeTide]

Just a side note. I thought they have Java Cocoa working on the iPhone now? (that's Java with Cocoa API for the GUI instead of a "standard" Sun APIs)

Re:I hope the article is right

[OrangeTide]

Don't you realize, with one side of your face you're saying that everyone will adopt your platform, and on the other, you're saying that they won't because "90% of people are idiots." Wait a minute, you're fired from the marketing department.

You sir, are a liar and a fraud.

I never said "90% of people are idiots.", that was you paraphrasing with artistic license.
I never also never even implied "that everyone will adopt [the Linux] platform", I only said that if 10% would use it that would be enough.

Also if you refer to the ggpp you will see the comment that I was replying to, "I can tell you right now that 90% of people out there have absolutely no idea that computers can have a different OS installed on them than what comes out of the box." .. my response was "I gave up on caring about the ignorance of 90% of people". my definition of "ignorance" is when someone has no idea about something. It's a very literal definition of ignorance. But it does not mean that I am saying people are idiots, you can be ignorant without being an idiot (but you would, I believe, have to be ignorant to be an idiot). One of those fine lines of a subset/superset that you chose to violate to apply your own inflammatory spin to the discussion.

When you put a little more effort into your points (I use the term loosely), and less effort into your attacks I will be ready to have a more meaningful discussion with you.

Re:I hope the article is right

[Swift2001]

"I gave up on caring about the ignorance of 90% of people."

I quoted you. It's one thing to be content with 10% of a market, because the open source solution is the one for you; in fact, it's a good percentage, given the difficulty of Linux -- much improved since I first became aware of it -- for the average joe. But the perspective of the article is that an open source phone will eventually overtake Apple. I'm saying, not likely.

As for a liar and a fraud, well, call names if that's what you think an argument is.

Re:I hope the article is right

[OrangeTide]

Just stating the facts as I see them. You open and close with person attacks, how else should I respond?

You quoted me, then decided that wasn't suitable for your manipulation and invented new quotes. Perhaps it was just an accident.

Re:I hope the article is right

[sporkmonger]

Kinda. You can use XMLVM to cross-compile, but the JVM isn't involved.

Re:I hope the article is right

[hazah]

What kind of consistency are you looking for? These concepts are fundamentally different. They are represented by different primitives and contextual language. I really do not understand what kind of overlap you are expecting.

Re:I hope the article is right

[hazah]

I do not disagree with that at all. I have played with VS of various versions and overall, its nice. Now, its real problem is being tied to that dreaded library. Although, my opinion is bias. I have not touched the platform since the MFC days when it came to C++ GUI development, and I know there have been improvements. But truth be told, the more I play with it, the more I realise that nothing comes close to the power of a bash script combined with a few other tools like make, sed, awk, and perl (not to mention the basic tools such as echo cat & grep). Since these were designed from the grounds up to tie your system together, I'm finding that I can script in any IDE I want using any component.

I have recently begun to seriously utilise autoconf and automake in my development, and have found myself to be almost on the same level as any IDE in capability. Again, biggest difference being really the interface (CLI) and the lack of code completion in the text editor.

HTTP 500

[Meneth]

Ars Technica seems to have a spot of trouble with their server...

Re:HTTP 500

[noidentity]

HTTP 500

Ars Technica seems to have a spot of trouble with their server...

Actually, it's because Apache's contract renewal team forgot to send them a notice, due to a backlog. Oh, wait...

IRONY

[drinkypoo]

Irony is seeing And Apple has no idea what's going on or the state of things. and clicking on it and getting a 500 error. Seems more like Ars Technica has no clue what's going on.

Re:IRONY

[jd142]

I got in just fine not 10 seconds ago.

Re:IRONY

[drinkypoo]

Congratulations, I can get in now as well. Shall we have a party? I will bring the chips. You bring the beer.

Re:IRONY

[hkmwbz]

Seems more like Ars Technica has no clue what's going on.

What makes you say that?

Android's open-source nature is irrelevant.

[argent]

Android might be open-source, but Android phones using Google's app store are completely locked and Tivoised, developers can't even download their own apps from the store using their unlocked phones. The fact that Android is built on top of Linux is as irrelevant as the fact that the iPhone kernel uses Mach and BSD.

Re:Android's open-source nature is irrelevant.

[drinkypoo]

It's not irrelevant at all because you can already run non-blessed software including an entire desktop on the non-Android side of your Android phone. In fact, it is entirely relevant, because you can do this to the phone already.

Re:Android's open-source nature is irrelevant.

[BlackCreek]

BS. Google sells a completely unlocked version of the phone. You can download Android's source, change it, compile and run.

If you bought a G1 and have the knowledge, you can turn it into a ADP and do just as you please.

Developers can

1. perform full backup of the phone image,
2. install a "consumer version" of Android, download, test and use any locked app.
3. backup the image
4. reflash the original iamge

   Does Apple has something like that? I guess not, since there are no developer versions of the Iphone.

   BTW, Where can I **legally** download the source to the Iphone OS?

Re:Android's open-source nature is irrelevant.

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually GP is partly right. Google block unlocked phones from downloading paid-for apps on the Android Market.

Re:Android's open-source nature is irrelevant.

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone blocked from seeing the paid apps are not missing anything. With the exception of maybe two apps the paid apps suck ass.

Re:Android's open-source nature is irrelevant.

[putzin]

While all that is true, it's not all that helpful to most, even many developers. I'm an iPhone developer right now, and hate that there are so many restrictions on my apps. But I have consumers for my apps, and to be honest, I can live with the issues (though don't always like them). The G1 is still a toy, so until there are more devices, all the openness doesn't mean as much. To some extent, it's open source nature is irrelevant to most. Unfortunate, but the phone is just a tool, not an ideology. It needs to work and be useful. And if someone makes money from making it useful, then so be it.

Yes, Android is more open, but Google still owns the platform for effectively everyone (not everyone will own a dev phone). The grandparent post is right, Google might not be all that much better than Apple when it all comes down to it. And I still don't know one person who is sporting an Android based phone.

Re:Android's open-source nature is irrelevant.

[BlackCreek]

Google blocks users running the ADP version of the OS from accessing paid applications.

However, as I mentioned in my previous post: if you have a phone running the developer version, you can fully backup the whole phone (the entire thing). Install the "consumer version of it", do as you will, backup your "consumer image", reflash the dev version.

If you are a developer, it is as simple as changing phone covers. I know that as I own a G1 running the development version of the OS, and have performed the described operations.

Re:Android's open-source nature is irrelevant.

[BlackCreek]

The open source nature of Android matters a lot. As it is an attempt to become a complete software stack to be installed into "commodity" handsets. No one expects that to be fully realized into 3 or 6 months.

So it is actually more of a direct competitor with Symbian than with Apple. (it is just that people in the US love to talk about Apple). While Symbian has millions of units sold, AFAIK writing apps that actually use "fancy" functionality (GPS, camera, maps, calendar) is not a "write once, run on any Symbian phone" deal. They also do not demand a high level of platform homogeneity. Both things Android aims to offer. Nokia/Sony control Symbian, so you can also bet that *all* their competitors (using Symbian) would rather use Android.

I do agree with you that the real game will only begin when (& if) other vendors start releasing other models. But working as a enterprise developer, I understand that it does take time between deciding to produce a unit and actually releasing it. Take a look at how long it took for all the netbooks to start appearing, after the first EEE initial success.

The G1 is still a toy, so until there are more devices, all the openness doesn't mean as much. To some extent, it's open source nature is irrelevant to most.

Seriously, in which sense is the G1 a toy?

Re:Android's open-source nature is irrelevant.

[BlackCreek]

Dear Apple zealot with mod points,

Would you please be so kind to stop modding posts you disagree with as troll?

I mean, everything in my post is factually correct:

1. Backup and restore of Android phones: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=459830
2. Android source code is available: http://source.android.com/

Re:Android's open-source nature is irrelevant.

[Anonymous Coward]

What is not helping in your post, is that your anti-iPhone zealotry feels as bad as the pro-iPhone zealotry. There are calm and collective ways of making your point. Your post is informative, but it is the tone you put at the beginning and at the end that destroyed it.

Just my 5c.

Re:Android's open-source nature is irrelevant.

[BrokenHalo]

Prefacing an otherwise valid comment with "BS" is not a good way to endear yourself to those (perhaps few) of us who come here for informed discussion. If you care enough to want moderators to respond well to your post, you might want to consider moderating yourself before you click that "submit" button.

Re:Android's open-source nature is irrelevant.

[putzin]

I won't argue the open source nature, but to be honest, most people just don't care. If I were to ask 10 of my friends what they know about how their phone does what it does, 9 of them wouldn't even understand the question, and the 10th wouldn't care. Sad, but true. This also makes distribution and platform ownership so important. How easy is it to use, and do things work the same across different implementations? This is where Apple and Google may be much different. That's my point.

I hope Android does make a go. Motorola is making a big Android push, and same for other vendors I know less about. But letting vendors make many implementation decisions could be a big negative. I give Apple credit in that even though there is only one way to do things, it's a very streamlined and easy way focused on the user. If Google can force certain common design paradigms on vendors, then Android stands a very real chance. And, since it's open source, then development takes a pretty interesting turn for the users who are what really matters in the equation. But there are a lot of ways Google can fail here. And simply relying on being "open" is one of those ways.

OK, so toy might be a bit harsh, but really, the G1 is a non factor for 99% of the worlds phone users. Again, to almost everyone, it doesn't matter what ideologies went into building the platform, but

1. Does it work?
2. Can I install interesting apps?
3. Does it pique user interest? Is it cool?

I guess it can do 1 and 2, but it hasn't really cracked 3 yet. And this is where my point from above comes into play. Google is the platform provider, and owns the app distribution channel. But it doesn't own the implementation. Will device vendors make the implementation of the platform common enough? Will a really cool app for the G1 also work the same and well with Motorola's new wiz bang Android flip phone? Or for FTC's mini slide out keyboard phone? I'm not convinced you'll get all the phone vendors to *do the right thing*.

Re:Android's open-source nature is irrelevant.

[Anonymous Coward]

In the same sense that the iphone is a toy, in the same sense a blackberry is a toy, becuase having an feature beyond the ability to CALL OTHER PEOPLE is not a neccesary feature for phone.

Re:Android's open-source nature is irrelevant.

[BlackCreek]

The open source does not matter to most users, but my point is that it will matter to mobile phone manufacturers.

As I mentioned in another post (not in this thread), IMO the real "killer" application is not available to both the G1 and the Iphone. That application being Skype. Another one would be out of the box & easy to use tethering. In these cases, both Google and Apple have let telecom vendors call the shoot. So while I understand that Google has to avoid (further) crippling of Android. This is something that they and Apple already do (so I don't give neither that much credit right now).

I haven't really looked into it, but there are a fair set of specifications that have to be meet for a phone to an "Android phone". That Australian Kugar(?) phone got axed exactly due to violating the minimal screen definition. I just don't know how far that goes.

> Can I install interesting apps?

You can. Android just lacks the applications :-S but that is to be expected, as the platform is only a few months old.

> Does it pique user interest? Is it cool?

Google has enough mojo, but I agree they should have released a more fashionable phone together with the G1.

Your point with platform providers sound US centric. In Europe, many buy their phones unlocked (outside of a contract), and these phones are normally much better phones (as far as software goes).

Re:Android's open-source nature is irrelevant.

[tyrione]

That speaks volumes to either the ignorance of the developers or the myopic altruism of the developers. You take your pick. Do you want to leach off your family and never make money, thus guaranteeing yourself a life of obscurity or do you want to make money and help your family out by paying your own way?

Then again, you can always live in obscurity through being a perpetual grad student moving from one Masters/PhD to the next. Even then you eventually have to do research and generate income or you're the biggest overeducated douchebag battling Stallman for who has the biggest beard. Even he gets paid for his work, though he'd give you the impression that he's a charity case and this [GPL] is his Magnum Opus to the World.

Re:Android's open-source nature is irrelevant.

[putzin]

Yeah, my view is US centric, but I can tell you that Motorola will tailor it's UI's for any vendor who asks. In the US, Verizon and Sprint are the big abusers here. Motorola's inability to say no to anyone ever means that a Sprint RAZR looks and acts different than a AT&T RAZR and a Verizon RAZR. The service providers still have a lot of pull both here in the US, and maybe to a lesser extent, in other parts of the world. But for me, the big problem is still the apps. Does Google have enough muscle and the desire to make sure it all just works out? I'm not so sure.

Skype is a good example, but I wonder if Skype won't make a bigger difference for small MID's running a WiMAX/LTE stack or something. They would also likely not have as big a problem with tethering (hopefully). I think things will change quite a bit for service providers when mobile wireless internet service isn't tied to a cellular connection. My hope is that this means the device becomes the most important piece of the connection, not the service provider.

Re:Android's open-source nature is irrelevant.

[Anonymous Coward]

and you're doing that ~50 times a day when you're developing anything that should go hand-in-hand with something existing?

Re:Android's open-source nature is irrelevant.

[BitZtream]

Yes, apple does do that. At least they used to, that was how developers ran apps on their phone before the app store was public.

Download developer build, upload to phone, do whatever development you needed.

Can you change the OS on the iPhone and recompile it? No. Why the hell would I want to? Sure I could fix some bugs that may bother me, but no one I'm giving my app to is going to run my custom mods, so its pointless to me as a developer. Big whoop, I can't screw with the OS, good thing for 99% of the developers on planet there is no reason to.

Re:Android's open-source nature is irrelevant.

[Anonymous Coward]

zing!

Re:Android's open-source nature is irrelevant.

[Anonymous Coward]

Perhaps you got modded troll because of the insinuation you made rather than the facts you used to back it up.

Does Apple has something like that? I guess not, since there are no developer versions of the Iphone.

Sure, you can backup and restore an Android phone and there's source code available, but your comment about whether an iPhone can do that is ignorant. For instance, at this very moment, my iPhone has been converted to a developer iPhone. There's no developer versions of the iPhone because it's trivially simple to convert a stock iPhone into one. And I'm running 2 apps that I've written myself and around 20 or so apps that I've downloaded from the app store. Backup and restore then becomes somewhat irrelevant since you can use both apps from the store and test your own apps on the same phone without having to re-install anything. But if you really have your heart set on backing things up, you can hardly get any easier than iTunes. And if you've got year heart set on installing a particular version of the iPhone software, the developer tools make that trivially simple as well.

In short, you might know more about the Android platform than the people modding you a troll, but they're modding you as a troll because you don't know shit about the iPhone and, by extension, don't know shit about the comparison you're making. If you want to talk about Android phones, that's fine. But confine yourself to talking about Android and leave the iPhone commentary to people who've actually taken the 10 minutes it takes to learn the the basics of iPhone development.

Re:Android's open-source nature is irrelevant.

[shutdown -p now]

Google blocks users running the ADP version of the OS from accessing paid applications.

From the recent /. story I've read, I've got the impression that it's not intentional blocking, but rather a delay in software upgrade for the dev phones which is required to access the (also updated) app market.

Re:Android's open-source nature is irrelevant.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Android zealot,

Please stop shouting to everyone how open Android is. We all know it's true, but the way you deliver the message, somehow attacking people who doesnÂt fully agree with you, isn't very pleasing.

Thanks.

Re:Android's open-source nature is irrelevant.

[pizzach]

Huh? I think this is actually a clash of the slashdot zealots personally. There is always software for backing things up regardless if the software is closed source and the company doesn't include an official means.

Norton Ghost anyone (Windows)
CarbonCopyCloaner (Mac OS X)
iBackup (iPhone)

iTunes backs up your data anyway and a firmware flash will restore the system software. I seriously think the only point real of your post was that Android is open source and iPhone is not.

Re:Android's open-source nature is irrelevant.

[IamTheRealMike]

Sure they can, if they disable the forward locking. The DRM on paid apps is optional and is implemented by using filesystem permissions, so obviously a rooted phone and such apps don't mix. By the way, you don't need a Developer Phone to develop apps. You only need to use such a phone if you want to reflash a custom OS build.

Re:Android's open-source nature is irrelevant.

[BlackCreek]

The Google developer that answers questions in the Android development newsgroup said that *DRM* apps are not going to be supported in the ADP images (as they can just by pass the DRM).

My understanding is that what will be fixed in a next update is the ability of seeing/installing non-DRM paid applications.

Re:Android's open-source nature is irrelevant.

[BlackCreek]

Yes, but being able to reflash the same firmware doesn't actually gives you any other advantage other than backup. The whole thread is about whether the Android openness is relevant or not.

My point about flashing firmwares is that with Android, you can actually compile the dev branch and install it http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=462512 if you don't like it you can just revert the process.

Or you can make your own changes to the OS, compile and try it out http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=480582 if you don't like what you get you can revert it.

My point being: the ADP is open enough for "regular" hacking. You have the source, you can change stuff, test, revert, try again, and when you are happy you can send it to your friends.

Re:Android's open-source nature is irrelevant.

[BlackCreek]

Go read this post http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1153123&cid=27132101

The point is whether the Android openness is relevant or not, when compared to what the Iphone offers.

While I should have modded the tone of my post, my point stands: the openness is relevant because you can hack the OS. With the Iphone, you cannot.

Re:Android's open-source nature is irrelevant.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Android zealot,

Please stop shouting to everyone how open Android is. We all know it's true, but the way you deliver the message, somehow attacking people who doesnÂt fully agree with you, isn't very pleasing.

Thanks.

...which is the problem with most supporters of open source software / operating systems. They are dicks.

Android vs. Apple?

[drolli]

Did we not forget a little mobile OS, outselling both? Did we not forget that Nokai still sells probably more phones per month than apple and android per year? Did we not forget that j2me and symbian programs do not only run on nokia phones but on a lot of other phones?

This does not mean that i done believe that android is not a promising and cool platform, nevertheless hundreds of millions (more likely well over a billion) active j2me compatible phones, for which everybody can develop would derserve to ben mentioned, when comparing the iphone to some competitors.

Re:Android vs. Apple?

[Rakshasa Taisab]

I've dabbled in j2me, and now programming for the iPhone. All I can say is; yes, we're forgetting Nokia and J2ME.

But there's also a reason for it. The iPhone dev kit makes me happy in my my pants compared to what Nokia offers.

Re:Android vs. Apple?

[rollthelosindice]

Did we forget that Motorola is the ultimate power in the cell phone industry because they make the best selling phone the RAZR.....oh wait...

Re:Android vs. Apple?

[siDDis]

Not to mention PyS60 which is Python for Symbian 60 based phones.

Nokia has developed a Python API which give access to GPS, Camera, Internet, Native GUI, Canvas based GUI, SMS, Phonecalls, Phonebook, MMS, accelerometer, OpenGL and a lot more.

And just to show how easy it is to program a SMS application with PyS60:

import messaging
messaging.sms_send("number", u"message")

But it's not only Python, you can still write software in C/C++ and J2ME. Though C++ applications requires a signature from nokia to be able to run.

Re:Android vs. Apple?

[drinkypoo]

J2ME is crap because phones are only required to implement small portions of the specifications to be able to claim J2ME and practically no code of any complexity can make it into J2ME without heavy reauthoring. Once again Java lives up to the promise of "write once, debug anywhere". The real problem is with phones like my RAZR V3i which has a camera but no Java support for it, meaning you can't use any of the cool Java applets (like QR code readers) on my phone - but the point is that the specification should have demanded that these things be supported when the hardware is available on the phone. The lack of this requirement is confusing for consumers and developers alike.

Re:Android vs. Apple?

[David Gerard]

Dude. The GNUphone is the way to go! The only phone any righteous Slashdot reader could use!

Really, weâ(TM)re not out to destroy Apple; that will just be a completely unintentional side effect.

Re:Android vs. Apple?

[wisty]

But, where are the objects? Where are the interfaces? Where has all the programming gone? It's like you are just telling the computer what to do, and it's doing it. Where is the skill in that?

Re:Android vs. Apple?

[hattig]

There is also no need for J2ME today when you have 500MHz CPUs in phones, 128MB or more RAM and gigabytes of storage - you can run a full version of Java quite happily, no need to leave out parts of the platform. Indeed Android is all that but running on their own Dalvik VM instead of a JVM.

JavaFX may go some way to fix this, but Sun really needs to get off its arse and make a Java Mobile Specification for modern mobile devices.

Re:Android vs. Apple?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mod parent up pleassssse.

Brilliant linked article

Re:Android vs. Apple?

[AlXtreme]

But it's not only Python, you can still write software in C/C++ and J2ME. Though C++ applications requires a signature from nokia to be able to run.

I haven't done any C++ programming for S60 (have done so in Python), but isn't it so that you need a signature if your application wants access to certain phone functions? For example, if your application is simply a game you wouldn't need a signature, but if you want to access the contact list you do. Last time I checked this was how it was done with PyS60.

Anyway, I'm hoping Nokia releasing Symbian as open source will revive the S60 for development. With Google having Android quite locked-down and OpenMoko muddling along, S60 will be the real open source mobile platform.

Re:Android vs. Apple?

[Anonymous Coward]

Egads, more drivel from the Nokia fan.

Nokia makes some great devices, but 99% of what they sell are - get this - are extremely underpowered compared to the G1, the iPhone, and even the BlackBerry 8000 series. Slow CPUs, not enough RAM working space, and scant little polish or consistency in the applications.

It's a mess.

No one in the US cares about Nokia in the smartphone market, because they have completely failed to wow either the public or the service providers. Their hardware and Symbian OS software is awesome. But they fail everywhere else.

In contrast, the G1 and the iPhone are complete platforms. The G1 is great. The iPhone is great. But Nokia? Not yet. They need to try much harder.

Re:Android vs. Apple?

[Anonymous Coward]

And what is supported is often locked down by the service provider. (Eg. no non-web socket connections unless you're an AT&T Partner.)

Of what I've seen, J2ME has/had the best _potential_. It's nominally platform independent, has lots of APIs for all the cool hardware, and you download something to the phone by just copying a file over or letting a user download from any web site (the app store concept is not very compatible with F/OSS or for in-house apps...things I just want to write for my own use). But yeah...optional implementation and requiring official code signatures hurts. A lot.

Re:Android vs. Apple?

[siDDis]

Not exactly.

Quake 3 runs better on Nokia 95 than the second generation iPhone.

Quake 3 on Nokia 95:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEdf6Wq-x5w&feature=related

Quake 3 on iPhone:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WFQGpRAhwGU

The hardware in Nokia phones doesn't suck as much as you think.

Re:Android vs. Apple?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's alright gramps. The phones aren't going to hurt you any more. You can go back to your room now.

Re:Android vs. Apple?

[AbRASiON]

Having now delt with Nokia's support people for their products, I can assure you their phone could shit gold in to the palm of my hand and I wouldn't want it.

Fuck that company, they've entered my permenant shit list, I will tell friends and family to avoid them as much as possible and I myself will also, I doubt it will amount to anything but those scumbags do not deserve my cash.

Re:Android vs. Apple?

[0xdeadbeef]

Everyone who enjoys developing for Series 60, say "aye". Everyone who considers J2ME useful, say "aye".

*crickets*

Yeah. There's the relevance of your billion smartphones.

Re:Android vs. Apple?

[David Gerard]

Thank you! Here's the text. Link.

DEFINED FREEDOM, Gnuisance, Monday (NNGadget) - The Free Software Foundation (NASDAQ: RMS) has announced the Free Software alternative to the evil, DRM-infested, locked-down, defective-by-design iPhone: the GNUPhone.

The key technical innovation of the GNUPhone is that it is completely operated from the command line. "What could be more intuitive than a bash prompt?" said seventeen-year-old Debian developer Hiram Nerdboy. "The ultimate one-dimensional desktop! Just type dial voice +1-555-1212 -ntwk verizon -prot cdma2000 -ssh-version 2 -a -l -q -9 -b -k -K 14 -x and away you go! Simple and obvious!"

The phone will also serve as a versatile personal media player. "I can play any .au file or H.120 video with a single shell command! The iPod could never measure up to this powerful ease of use." Video is rendered into ASCII art with aalib. "If blocky ASCII teletype softcore pinups were good enough for 1970s minicomputer operators, they're good enough for you. Respect your elders."

The KDE project will be bringing its next-generation KDE 4 desktop to the GNUPhone. "You can flip, twirl, dice, blend, fold, spindle and mutilate your terminal windows to your heart's content," said developer Aaron Seigo. "Look at that cool effect! Any complaint that basic functions don't actually work is ignorant of the intrinsic beauty of the Plasma API and is just more FUD spread by haters like Stevie Ray Vaughan-Nichols and Novell Corporation."

Actual successful voice calls are expected by 2011 to 2012. Regulatory approval is proving problematic in the corrupt, corporate-captured US environment. "The FCC said that if we dared switch on this, uh, 'piece of shit' in a built-up area in its present form, they'd break all our fingers with a fourteen-pound cluebat," said Nerdboy. "They're obviously shilling for Apple, Nokia and Microsoft."

The second version of the GNUPhone will run EMACS on the HURD kernel and be operated by writing eLisp macros on the fly. "It's the clearest, most elegant and natural operating environment anyone could conceive of," said Nerdboy. "Really, we're not out to destroy Apple; that will just be a completely unintentional side effect."

Re:Android vs. Apple?

[Anonymous Coward]

If, I am forgetting Nokia and that junk OS that is Symbian, and I do it intentionally.
J2ME is a JOKE, because you can't do anything with it. Plus, in many of your beloved Nokia devices, J2ME runs inside another application shell, with no ability for an application to remain running. Also, J2ME given almost zero access to the platform, unless you start relying on extensions, whose support is very much device dependent.
And this to not even start talking about that beauty that is Symbian. A piece of $hit of gigantic proportions, with a brain-dead pseudo-C++ API, a super UGLY development environment and tools, and an horrible decumentation. And, do we want to start talking about their permission model and signing/certification? Better not.
Gee, I wonder why they have a ZERO size development community.
Bottom line is, it matter nothing if Nokia/Symbian has a lot of junkware devices around, when developing for the environment keeps developer running for cover at the idea. Symbian is dead. Nokia still has a chance to get its share of developers, if they embrace a fully open Linux+QT solution.

Re:Android vs. Apple?

[Anonymous Coward]

I cannot agree more. The sooner J2ME dies a death the better.

For my job I have to write and maintain an application on J2ME based handsets, the android G1, Windows Mobile devices and the iPhone.

Of all the platforms the most troublesome is J2ME. The quality of the implementation from almost every vendor is appalling. It's also stuck on a java version from years in the past.

As an example a few weeks a back we got a complaint from a customer - they couldn't enter values into any of the text fields in our J2ME app. Must be user error I think let's get hold of the device and work it out.

Do you know what it was? The phone was a touch screen device with no hard keyboard - the manufacturer had decided to ship the J2ME implementation without a soft keyboard. No way to enter anything without using their own extensions to build your own keyboard!

None of the manufacturers bother to test the J2ME systems it's normally bought in from a 3rd party who couldn't care less. It's just there to tick the box that says "yes this phone can play games".

Developing for windows mobile devices, for the iPhone and so far for Android is joy in comparison.

Re:Android vs. Apple?

[Anonymous Coward]

j2me is piece of shit that's missing even basic functionality like seeking in files.

You also have to get your app signed (£££) to use many of the APIs.

Re:Android vs. Apple?

[Darkness404]

...And how many people download applications for the RAZOR? Very few, how many people download applications for the iPhone and Android? Almost everyone. Not to mention that people download applications for BlackBerry and Symbian phones too. All Motorola has is a shiny piece of hardware that was popular. Thats it, they don't really control the software. On the other hand, Android has far reaching effects where it could be that ~25% of all phones could have Andorid on it, and if in that ~25% of phones, there is one as popular as the RAZR was, that is almost a monopoly for Android phones.

Re:Android vs. Apple?

[edivad]

And what about that joke of the Symbian Foundation, whose spokesman attached Google on the basis that Android is not open? While, their "open" idea, is to have you pay $1500 to get a VERY LIMITED source code access, with ability to customize and build your own.

Re:Android vs. Apple?

[edivad]

... with NO ability ...

Re:Android vs. Apple?

[mgblst]

One of the big problems with j2me, is that you would never be able to use all the jsrs, since they weren't supported on every phone. j2me was a huge mess. every j2me implementation was different as well.

It was a nice try, but needed to be strictly controlled.

Re:Android vs. Apple?

[shutdown -p now]

It's like you are just telling the computer what to do, and it's doing it. Where is the skill in that?

The skill is in knowing how many times you have to prefix statements with "PLEASE", of course.

Re:Android vs. Apple?

[bjourne]

Can you please tell us the name of the handset with the botched J2ME implementation? Because what you're describing is beyond stupid, wouldn't pass the JCK test suite and would be via a legally binding contract forbidden from being called "Java." I'd rather not just take your word for it, Mr Coward.

And it is not true that manufacturers buy J2ME from 3rd parties. Most build their own JVM:s which is the reason why there are so many incompatibility problems in J2ME land. Most manufacturers have very mature J2ME implementations and you actually can play very good games with them. iPhone may have a better SDK, but at the end of the day, there are 1 billion J2ME phones out there compared to a few hundred thousand iPhones.

Re:Android vs. Apple?

[bjourne]

J2ME isn't a subset of J2SE and hasn't been for a long time. It includes many JSR:s not present in J2SE. CLDC 1.1 and MIDP 2.0 which virtually all handsets support makes quite a well featured standard library.

Re:Android vs. Apple?

[ColdWetDog]

Most manufacturers have very mature J2ME implementations and you actually can play very good games with them.

Which seems to be the limit of what J2ME does. I've used several phones with various flavors of J2ME (Motorola and Nokia). Aside from a pretty, but really brain dead game or two, nothing useful has been done with it. Media apps? Music apps? Camera apps? Sure, they're around, range from awful to hideous and are annoyingly slow.

there are 1 billion J2ME phones out there compared to a few hundred thousand iPhones.

And the vast majority of them are just being used as phones. The J2ME apps just sit there, doing nothing except fill feature lists in some brochure or web site. As has been pointed out hundreds of times here, the iPhone is one of the first smartphones that people actually used for the "smart" part.

Re:Android vs. Apple?

[Tony Hoyle]

..and nokia doesn't care about the US, because they already have 50% of the worldwide smartphone market *alone*.

You seem to be comparing phones from 5 years ago with modern phones. Nokias high end phones are *way* more powerful than the iphone.

Re:Android vs. Apple?

[Tony Hoyle]

So you would rather code for 5% of the market rather than 80%?

Good luck with that. See you down the unemployment office.

Re:Android vs. Apple?

[geekgirlandrea]

I actually really, really want a phone like that, except for that paragraph about KDE. If I wanted Windows, I know where to find it.

Re:Android vs. Apple?

[Builder]

You were doing well until you fucked up the definition of 'market'

That 80% figure you mention consists largely of device owners who have never downloaded an application for their phone and never plan to.

The 5% figure consists largely of people who've tried at least 1 additional app and may try more.

Which is the more lucrative market to target ? To my mind, I'd rather write software for people who might buy it than for people who are almost guaranteed not to.

Re:Android vs. Apple?

[David Gerard]

OpenMoko. Project, photo.

Re:Android vs. Apple?

[Morky]

There are about 15-20 million iPhones now. If you count Nokia's smartphone market share, and not include their budget handsets, their advantage is not so marked, and quite vulnerable.

Re:Android vs. Apple?

[Herve5]

:-D really, I thought you described my OpenMoko phone...

Re:Android vs. Apple?

[drolli]

I am actually not really a Nokia fan. Nokia is getting their priorities straight, but they are by no way building the phone of my dreams.

a) Usage of the phone as a phone should be as before (yes. you may not believe it. the ability to operate my Nokia phone without thinking or looking at it (i dont have a touchscreen) sometimes is essential

b) Standby/talk time. Even with a worn down battery the standby time is usually more than acceptable

c) Phone should be stable against dropping

d) User interface is consitent across phones. What your leete flip-aroung-3d UI does not work out on a 160x160 screen of a smaller phone? Oh you say there is no iphone thich fits conveniently in your pocket? I am sorry that you can choose between only a single phone. thats what i call choice.

e) nice features which actually work. No fucked up 3G. No late 3G. Included backup on an SD card.

f) And then you can do some multimedia.

All in all: the question was about applications in general. would it have been about youtube/ surfing the web or watching movies, maybe you would have a point. I usually run four or more applications on my phone (e61) at the same time: sip, icq, email, opera mini, podcast downloader. I seldom collide with the internal ram limit or the computing power. (only skype is a cpu hog).

Re:Android vs. Apple?

[0xdeadbeef]

<Nelson>Ha ha!</Nelson>

I have to admit, I'm glad I'll never touch Palm OS or Symbian ever again.

Would Love an Android Phone

[dogboi]

I own an iPhone, and I almost bought the G1 just because of its potential. Now I'm waiting to see if an an Android phone ever makes it to AT&T. I love my iPhone, but I'm annoyed with its limitations. Lack of cut and paste and the inability to have background processes are the worst of the limitations, in my opinion. I like Android in theory. A friend of mine has the G1 and loves it. But I live in a rural area, and the only reliable cell service here is AT&T.

Re:Would Love an Android Phone

[Fusen]

I have copy and paste on my iPhone and I can even run background applications when I want. Over a million people so far have jailbroken their iphone, there is nothing illegal or wrong about it either. It simply opens up the phone to the sort of apps that we all want but apple won't allow. http://www.google.co.uk/search?&channel=s&hl=en&q=why+you+should+jailbreak&btnG=Google+Search

Re:Would Love an Android Phone

[peragrin]

Other than cut and paste which is the only feature i do miss, I don't see why people want background apps. I don't want the world to know that just because my phone is on they can IM me all day long.

The point is battery life. I can go two full days between charges with 3G on, calls, occasional bluetooth(it is only on when i am in the car ) and wifi when it is available. 3G 90% of the time, when i am home or at a place with wifi for a while I turn it on.

My other phones would last 3-4 days between charges, however I never surfaced the web or played games on them.

Re:Would Love an Android Phone

[Khuffie]

Using jailbreaking as a justification for the iPhone's limited features doesn't really work. I have an unlocked and jailbroken iPhone, but I almost never bother to install any jailbroken apps. Everytime Apple does an update, I have to re-jailbreak and reinstall the jailbroken apps I downloaded. It's annoying.

Re:Would Love an Android Phone

[Fusen]

afaik I never did try and justify it's closed nature, I simply gave advise to get around the fact apple severely locks down. Also why even bother to jailbreak if you don't use any of the applications that jailbreaking is there for?

Re:Would Love an Android Phone

[Khuffie]

Because I have to unlock my iphone to get it to work on my network. The one app I use that needs jailbreaking is one to disable the Edge on my phone, since I don't want to pay for data.

Re:Would Love an Android Phone

[sirambrose]

While I understand that people don't want to sacrifice battery life by running lots of background applications, not all background applications kill battery life. By default the iphone runs Mail, iPod, Safari, and Phone in the background. Together all these applications take up about all the memory on the phone. If users could install more background applications, the phone would frequently run out of memory. Even with the default set of background applications, loading a large web page can kill the iPod application.

I would like to see iphone applications be allowed to perform minimal tasks when not running. For example, I want my todo list to update its emblem every morning to show how many tasks are on today's todo list. I would like to be able to set alarms on tasks in the todo list. I want to listen to internet radio while I use other applications.

These kind of things were all supported on my Treo. Background alarms for user installed programs were even supported on my old Palm IIxe with 8mb of ram and a 16mhz processor. There really is no excuse for not providing these features.

While the palm os was designed specifically to allow calling functions of programs that were not running in the foreground, emulating those features with a modern operating system should be easy. For example background tasks could be implemented with small programs that would be executed with tight limits on cpu and memory usage. The system could start these tasks one at a time to avoid using too much cpu. Applications like an internet radio client could be split into a background task that just played the music and a user interface that could be unloaded when not in the foreground.

Re:Would Love an Android Phone

[Darkness404]

There are a few reasons, A) what about internet radio? It would be nice to stream internet radio and, surf the web at the same time B) IM. Ok, sure, you might not want people IMing you all the time, but there are a few times where I would just want to put my phone in my pocket and wait for an IM rather then keep it out wasting even more battery life with the screen on C) content downloading, for example, Tap Tap Revenge 2 has downloadable songs, it would be really nice if I could simply let them all download in the background.

Sure, I might not want every app to run in the background all the time, but there are certainly times where it would be a killer feature.

Re:Would Love an Android Phone

[Tony Hoyle]

So you jailbroke your iphone so now..

1. Everytime apple comes up with an update you lose everything
2. If the phone breaks good luck getting it repaired. Apple won't touch it.

Re:Would Love an Android Phone

[Fusen]

Creating a backup in itunes and using the program AptBackup to create a backup for cydia installed apps basically restores it to exactly how it was. Also, if the phone is broken to the point that it won't switch on then Apple wouldn't even know about it being jailbroken till it's been fixed, and if it isn't broken to the point it won't switch on then it's a very simple system restore process to get the phone to it's original state.

Re:Would Love an Android Phone

[Buck2]

ssh and tunnelling

"Can't keep up with the request load"

[jdigriz]

It's not like Apple could use its 20 Billion dollars in the bank to, you know, hire more people to handle the developer requests. That would just be impossible. Companies never grow by actually applying resources to a problem.

Re:"Can't keep up with the request load"

[itsdapead]

It's not like Apple could use its 20 Billion dollars in the bank to, you know, hire more people to handle the developer requests.

Apple may have 20bn in the bank but I bet that the iPhone developer support group doesn't have the keys to the vault, and the sharehoders and SEC wouldn't be too chuffed if it did.

Thing is, in any large organization, you have to prepare budgets and plans months in advance and get them approved by accountants - who rarely understand concepts such as "no one has done this before so we don't have a fscking clue how many developers per month will sign up over the first 3 years"...

Re:"Can't keep up with the request load"

[jdigriz]

While you are no doubt correct, the fact that Apple makes 30% of each sale on the App Store means that the application store is a source of revenue, and thus bottlenecks actually hurt revenue. How "chuffed" do you suppose the shareholders will be that archaic budget practices developed in the 19th century are preventing income growth? Perhaps large organizations are ill-suited to doing new things? And yet Apple somehow manages, most of the time.

Re:"Can't keep up with the request load"

[itsdapead]

How "chuffed" do you suppose the shareholders will be that archaic budget practices developed in the 19th century are preventing income growth?

I suspect you'd fine that the majority shareholders - big pension funds etc. - are right behind those 19th century budget practices. Slashdotters with a few hundred bucks worth of stock don't count for much.

Perhaps large organizations are ill-suited to doing new things? And yet Apple somehow manages, most of the time.

Pure speculation, but a certain turtle-necked evangelist running around kicking butt might have helped. Get well soon!

Year of Linux

[msgtomatt]

Yep and in three years will be the year of linux! I can't wait.

Android

[gEvil (beta)]

I picked up a G1 last weekend, but ended up taking it back yesterday. On the software side, it was absolutely beautiful. But the hardware left a lot to be desired (mainly the form factor/weight). I'm hoping T-Mobile gets access to the HTC Magic sometime later in the year, in which case I'll go ahead and switch back.

As for the apps, the open source nature of the Android really showed (in more ways than one). On the one hand, there were some very interesting and innovative apps in the marketplace (and elsewhere on the web). For instance, there were several cyclocomputer apps that take advantage of the GPS and mapping abilities of the device. I didn't get a chance to try any of them out, but depending on the quality, I could see an Android phone replacing a $300-$800 dedicated GPS cyclocomputer (hell, there's probably even a way to tie a cadence monitor into the Android). OTOH, there were also a whole ton of crap programs in the marketplace. But I think the ratings and reviews are doing a decent job of weeding those out.

Overall, I do have the feeling that the Android will become a pretty major player in the coming months/years.

Re:Android

[Khuffie]

Don't worry. A whole ton of crap programs in the marketplace isn't a symptom of it being open source. You should see the gems on the iPhone Appstore. The choice of fart apps is outstanding.

Re:Android

[Anonymous Coward]

Very OpenSource indeed. Nokia has had this for 2 or 3 years; sportstracker.nokia.com. Thanks to OpenSource for "inventing" this.

Highly unlikely

[jeffehobbs]

The article linked is incredibly vague and seems to presuppose that the trajectory of all open-source projects is up, up, up. While this is possible -- if Google puts the resources into constant improvement, Android certainly will improve -- it presupposes that Apple is going to be standing still. Not so. Apple's iPhone platform is now a moving target, and the year to two-year market advantage is going to be difficult for Android to top.

Google, as much as I love some of their products, has shown themselves to be a bit spotty with support and improvements to many of their initiatives. Everyone understands that mobile is a big deal, but if Google's decides that they can dominate search just as much on the iPhone than on their own platform, it's possible their drive to improve Android will wither.

The fact that the platform is open-source means virtually nothing to consumers, by the way. They simply want to make calls, surf the web and play games.

Re:Highly unlikely

[Tony Hoyle]

You forget the only changes to the iphone for months have in fact been upgrades to the google apps - apple haven't really done much but bug fix since the release of the appstore. Presumably they're writing for the new iphone (which is going to have to be *really* special to compete, since apple seem wedded to their contract only model most of their prime customers are stuck on contracts and can't upgrade until at least December).

Apple have past form on this, as anyone who's owned an ipod in the past will know. Eventually the updates stop and the only way to get new features is to buy a new device, even if yours would have been perfectly capable of it if apple pulled their finger out.

apple developer

[goombah99]

I just applied to get my iphone sdk. I clicked the box to be an iphone developer, and got the confrim e-mail in 1 minute.

am I missing something?

Re:apple developer

[foniksonik]

Have you payed your $100 yet? I think you're missing one step... which is not the 'become a developer' part.. it's the 'become a distributor' part... which is what the articles should say.

Anyone can become a developer without a license etc. etc. but to become a distributor you need Apple's blessing and a contract, which appears to be taking longer and longer to get.

Re:apple developer

[tyrione]

Have you payed your $100 yet? I think you're missing one step... which is not the 'become a developer' part.. it's the 'become a distributor' part... which is what the articles should say.

Anyone can become a developer without a license etc. etc. but to become a distributor you need Apple's blessing and a contract, which appears to be taking longer and longer to get.

It seems rather obvious that Apple has realized with the emergence of some 50,000 applications that they are re-addressing the store design to create a structure and ultimately make it easier to sift through what will inevitably become > 100,000 in less than a year. Application saturation will create a law of diminishing returns when trying to sift between great and mediocre applications.

Of course, its incumbent upon the developer to find their niche and not become one of countless similar functioning applications, if they want to make money and get faster approval. That requires them to sift through the categories and not just write a half ass application trying to ride the wave of iPhone expansion.

Re:apple developer

[cerberusss]

funny thing is, it seems the approval process is taking longer because of stupid processes. Example: create a corporate account. Wait two weeks. Then get the request to fax yoir Chamber of Commerce certificate.

Wait -- wouldn't it be smarter to create a webbased form where you can upload your scan? Or at least mention the requirement so I have it on file in time? Some things about the signup process are just not well thought out.

Re:apple developer

[drerwk]

You need the $100 sign up to get the code signing certificates to run your App on a (non-jailbroken) device. The emulator is very good, but does not fully emulate the OpenGL ES implemented on the device nor does it fully emulate multi-touch or the accelerometer. And, if you are going to develope you really want to take the app with you for testing. You can learn the SDK for free, but I would say you need to the $100 sign up to really do complete development.
----
Go buy Repton at the App Store - thanks.

In practice, it's not more open.

[argent]

Android's more open nature gives it an advantage there

If you want an open cellphone, get a traditional PalmOS device, a Windows Mobile device, or a Symbian device.

The Android phones, the iPhone, and as far as I can tell the Palm Pre, are all - in every way that matters to the end user - closed devices.

Re:In practice, it's not more open.

[Anonymous Coward]

The Android phones, the iPhone, and as far as I can tell the Palm Pre, are all - in every way that matters to the end user - closed devices.

So being able to go to a random website and download/install any arbitrary app on an Android phone is what you consider "closed"?

Re:In practice, it's not more open.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you want an open cellphone, get a traditional PalmOS device, a Windows Mobile device, or a Symbian device.

Or a blackberry. RIM has given away documentation and an SDK for years.

Re:In practice, it's not more open.

[Anonymous Coward]

The iPhone is pretty hard to program for, the Android is holy crap hard compared to the iPhone.

However if you're a mac developer already, the iPhone is easy.

The Android is Java, and not even standard Java. Most of it's still undocumented (yay they have the names of the functions, but NO DAMNED INFORMATION ON WHAT IT DOES for a lot of the Android API.) At least every single function is documented in the iPhone SDK, although apple needs more examples. Android has examples that don't even work.

Re:In practice, it's not more open.

[hitmark]

strange that a /. poster would forget about openmoko...
http://wiki.openmoko.org/wiki/Main_Page

Re:In practice, it's not more open.

[TihSon]

First, I was a huge Openmoko booster, so understand this comment comes with a dose of bitterness...

They did not forget Openmoko, they simply didn't bother mentioning a failed project. Has Openemoko actually got the PHONE part of their phone working yet? Or, as has been the problem all along, are they still doing the typical code diva thing of making the most arcane and limited geek functions work flawlessly, to the exclusion of something that might sell a few units to a normal grunt like myself.

For two years I talked of how I would get that phone when it was ready. Now I wait for Android, and screw Openmoko.

If Openmoko wants to get back in the game, call me when the phone works well, and don't forget to sell the 2002 hardware for a fair price ... let's say $75.

Re:In practice, it's not more open.

[tyrione]

If you're a newbie to any programming platform it's going to be hard. Your original comment about OS X iPhone being hard to program, followed up by if you already are a Mac developer it's easy to program for supports my statement.

The key is for seasoned developers who know C/C++/Java and have no moronic bigoted view regarding ObjC notation to comment on the simplicity or difficulty of Cocoa.

Having the experience of with or without Cocoa it's a no-brainer. Cocoa does the heavy lifting and learning ObjC is easy. It also clarifies the MVC paradigm immensely.

Re:In practice, it's not more open.

[hitmark]

i suspect the problem is of two parts...

1. people found that if they wanted the freerunner to work as a phone quickly, they could just slap qtopia on it.

2. the openmoko software stack have pulled a gnu kernel style move, starting the project over maybe 2 times. they had a somewhat working system with the 2007, then scrapped it and started over, only to run into all kinds of "forks" based of for example qtopia or debian, and for that reason deciding to turn the openmoko software into more of a LSB kind of thing that could go on top of all these distros and allow for a common pool of software packages.

at least, thats the impression im left with, sitting on the fence...

bascially, there have been to many projects in to small a pool of talent. everyone seems to turn the freerunner into their toy device for their own pet project rather then focusing on a community effort to lift things forward.

at the same time there is no UMTS or HSDPA available, not even EDGE is supported, so there is no really way to have always on internet going.

but the project is still there, even if it has gone from poster boy to dark horse. and i would say that failing to list it is a bad move, as what it needs to get back in the game is to get a UMTS/HSDPA enabled handset out, the software is sorting itself out (the modern linux distro was a evolutionary project, and so will this be).

one may even be so bold as to say that openmoko is working on something grander then a mere phone...

Re:In practice, it's not more open.

[TihSon]

Something grander, eh? Like perhaps they might one day arrive to the functionality of my now obsolete n800, with a marginally functional phone on top. Yeah, that will get my attention.

Openmoko is dead. They had their chance, and due to a lack of leadership they allowed the coders to play games when they should have been making a working software stack. If they had created a reasonably stable phone, with the potential for platform growth after purchase (as they had promised) they would probably be selling their millionth unit sometime this year.

Speaking of a stable phone with the potential for platform growth as the stack matures, does that sound at all familiar to you? Android perhaps? Android essentially IS what Openmoko said they would be.

It's too bad really, because although I like Google they are a huge corporation, and that always get's me a bit nervous. Android will probably be a lot of things in the future, but I hope the next MS it isn't.

Re:In practice, it's not more open.

[mgblst]

Disagree completely, the iPhone is very easy to program for. This is from someone who never did Mac programming, or objective-c, and has been programming Microsoft since dos4.01 days. I got my first application running in a few hours, was published in two weeks of getting my license. Apple provide a very easy experience to get up and going, free tools, great tool chain and ide.

Now, if they could just fix up the useless error messages, and the many problems of the certificate chain it would be fantastic. I spend a lot of my time just getting apps on the device, or ready for the store.

And google will become popular for developers when its handset does. I would love to start working on that beast.

Re:In practice, it's not more open.

[dysprosia]

What sort of whacked-out idea of "open" do you have? I don't have the source code to PalmOS, to WinMo, to Symbian, to the Blackberry OS, hell, even Android has closed-source components. I don't know anything about the hardware internals, so they're not open hardware either. What sort of crack are you smoking, and where can I get some?

Re:In practice, it's not more open.

[Daerath]

I don't see Apple's inability to keep up with demand to be a problem. Few people even know that Google has a telephone. Google is one thing to 99% of the population. A search engine. Period.

With respect to telephones, Apple is Microsoft and Google is the sum total of all Linux distributions. Apple has a massive lead in cool factor, publicity, and market share. People will continue to develop for Apple simply because the odds of selling their apps are vastly superior considering the much larger iPhone market.

Re:In practice, it's not more open.

[Anonymous Coward]

I would say that most of those other devices are also very closed. Perhaps you're thinking of OpenMoko?

Re:In practice, it's not more open.

[IamTheRealMike]

In no way is Android "holy crap hard". And the Java used is 1.5, doesn't get more standard than that. If you mean it's not using Swing then, well, yeah ... what did you expect? It's a phone!

Re:In practice, it's not more open.

[Anonymous Coward]

if you think that the iPhone's cocoa touch framework is hard to program for you should wait for the palm pre and start "coding" in html/javascript. maybe thats the appropriate level of spaghetti code for you ...

Re:In practice, it's not more open.

[batkiwi]

You don't own an android phone, do you...

The only way to get apps on is through their sandboxed, java based app store. Unless you bought a developer phone the G1 does not give you root (they've patched all known exploits).

Re:In practice, it's not more open.

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you completely ignore the facts that he stated? Lack of API documentation is why it's hard, not because of inexperience.

Re:In practice, it's not more open.

[BigJClark]

I have similar qualifications, and dare I say it, using the xcode/IB almost became intuitive after a few hours of usage.
Although, I am admittedly one of the ObjC bigots. Why stray so far from the beaten path?

I can't say the same thing about VS, and I've been using it for years...

Re:In practice, it's not more open.

[Anonymous Coward]

I have similar qualifications, and dare I say it, using the xcode/IB almost became intuitive after a few hours of usage.
Although, I am admittedly one of the ObjC bigots. Why stray so far from the beaten path?

Because iPhone runs the mobile version of OS X, and OS X is a direct descendant of NeXTStep, and when NeXTStep was originally designed (v1.0 shipped in 1989), there was no beaten path for object oriented languages or OO GUI libraries. At that time, Objective-C and C++ were both new languages vying to be the future of C. Java was years in the future.

Apple is hardly promoting it as a dev platform yet

[JCWDenton]

It's pretty interesting the way developers are almost falling over themselves (if you believe the summary) to start developing for the iPhone. Build an attractive product and not only will the customers appear but also the Developers! Developers! Developers!. As a developer you'll need to buy an Apple computer for the privilege, and probably start learning Objective C, not an easy language to pick up when you're used to Java/C#. It's almost contrary to the idea usually associated with MS of making it easy for developers and the platform will succeed.
I'd imagine Apple is shifting quite a few new machines to iPhone developers who would otherwise still be developing on Windows/Java ME.

Three Words

[shareme]

Three Words Android No waiting

Someone at Apple is in deeeeep doodoo now...

[Ralph Spoilsport]

Apple wants the iPhone to Rule The Roost. It's going to happen through apps, so they need to straighten this mess out RIGHT NOW.

Having worked there for several years, I would suspect someone's ass is already on the line and 4 months from now this will be "fixed".

Frankly, I think software isn't the iPhones biggest problem, but hardware. No photo, no video, etc. Panasonic has a phone that kicks the iPhone up and down the stairs.

RS

My Data Point

[superid]

I've been actively developing simple apps for the past few months. The submission process has been straightforward and acceptable. Nothing has taken longer than a week. Critical questions (banking, etc) have been answered in one day.

Would I like it to be faster? Sure. But right now I'm satisfied.

Re:My Data Point

[Anonymous Coward]

Except the article was about new developers not ones that had been approved months ago.

Re:My Data Point

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm, do any of your apps have any complexity? Mine plays radio stations and also can connect to a desktop server to access all of your itunes library on your iPhone.

I've had nothing but trouble getting updates approved (initial app had minor changes made to get approved).

Now I have had a critical update, and more functionality rejected (as updates) 2 times in 1 week. However, it was not the new functionality that was tested... they rejected it for a) an icon that was already in the app from day 1 (claimed that it infringed on their "podcast" trademark... no supporting documentation, referenced an "attachment" but there was no attachment)..

and b) "uses too much bandwidth, in apple's opinion"

with no information about "how much bandwidth is too much bandwidth" there are at least 20 apps that I know of that stream audio, probably 5 that stream video and they all "somehow" do so without using too much bandwidth, but mine is now rejected for this, with no info other than "here's how to detect using the cell network and disable usage on it".

Replies receive ZERO response...

IS that good for my customers? Is that good for developers? Is it really even good for apple? (they've made > $2000 on my app in one month... and now I have people pissed because of bugs I fixed 2 weeks ago, cause they can't get it updated!)

Re:My Data Point

[NeoSkandranon]

Sounds like you need to inform your users of the issue, so they can complain to apple, and also to AT&T (Because if not for the telco then WTF would apple care about bandwidth? AT&T is clearly pissed about the number of applications eating edge and 3G capacity)

3 years from now : AppStore is not even 1 yr old !

[AwaxSlashdot]

One year ago, the AppStore was not existing. Two years ago, the iPhone was not available.

How can someone make a prediction for "three years from now" ?

When the iPhone was launch every one called it doomed because it was closed, even if it was obvious Apple would sooner or later release a SDK for it. Now, the AppStore is not even 1 year old, people do not know how Apple will make it evolve (more staff, more open, ... ), and they are forecasting something for 3 years from now ?!

Bureaucracy

[damaki]

It really feels like Apple's iPhone store is being weakened by its own bureaucratic approach. Sure, it's great to have virus-free apps, but how about choice, diversity and freedom? The content validation works pretty easily for music, but apps are not the same business at all. If you've got to re-certify your stuff each time it's updated, to renew your damn certificate, how can you focus on doing good software?
I do not give a rat ass to open source stuff on my phone, but it could be an interesting approach to make it at least possible on iPhone. How about a common certificate for multiple developers and non obligatorily checked releases?

Re:Bureaucracy

[PeeShootr]

I think that the app store certainly offers choice and diversity! If it's freedom you want, don't buy an Apple product! If you want it to "just work" then buy Apple!

Re:Bureaucracy

[Anonymous Coward]

Very well put. You have the choice of buying any rat ass phone. So buy another phone and stop writing crap.

Re:Bureaucracy

[damaki]

Thanks AC for this insightless bullshit. I do not own an iPhone.

Re:Apple is hardly promoting it as a dev platform

[codepunk]

Actually all the stuff I have been programming for the phone has been in C#. Not that objective C is difficult to learn either if you can actually program, it took me what about 3 or 4 nights
to nail down the language. Just like every other language Objective C just has different syntactical sugar, nothing ground breaking just another language.

It's all about perception

[Anonymous Coward]

I bought the G1 instead of the IPhone because of Apple's bad reputation regarding openess.

It is true that the root account is locked and it is not possible to jail-break it (at least not in germany). But that's not the point. The point is that it has the potential to run any apps you want and that the source code of the base applications is completely open, so you can see how they've done it. -- BTW: You can get a devel phone w/o any restrictions, if you want to.

Regarding your comment that the base operating system is irrelevant; it is not. The micro VM running on top of the linux kernel is not an ordinary java VM. Instead each application starts in its own VM and can communicate with the other VMs or applications using standard Linux RPC. There's a ssh client and a shell available from the application store which lets you run familiar commands such as ls, top, cat /proc/version or cat /proc/cpuinfo.

It doesn't have the X11 stack, though. But there's a pure Java X11 server called WeirdX which lets you ssh to your Linux or Solaris machine and turn your phone into a thin client. I don't think this will ever be possible with Mach/OSX (VNC is too slow for that).

Jeff

Crisis? What Crisis?

[stiller]

I'm sorry, but isn't Apple not being able to keep up with developer applications the exact opposite of a developer crisis? Sure, it might be a crisis for the developers involved, but certainly not for the market or Apple itself!

With 15,000 available applications and over 500 million downloads, it sounds like a pretty damn succesful platform to me. With growth on that scale, it doesn't surprise me that they would run into some hurdles.

The connection to the android open source analysis completely eludes me, but I wouldn't hold my breath in any case. To most people, the term iPhone is synonymous to smartphone and being slightly more open isn't going to change anything about that soon.

Re:Crisis? What Crisis?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, clearly Microsoft will capitalize on this crisis, making this the year of Windows on the smart phone.

Re:Crisis? What Crisis?

[francium de neobie]

the year of Windows on the smart phone

Hey, maybe that's the thing that will come after the year of Linux on the desktop, right after the year the universe exploded.

My Data Point: Firewalled

[S-100]

I've had an application pending for some time now. I submitted (by fax, how 20th century) some corporate documents, and later I received a couple of unintelligible voice mail messages from Apple. They were sent at odd hours, and the all had the same characteristics: low volume, very high background noise, and a heavily-accented voice, which rendered the messages incomprehensible. Then I get an email telling me that I haven't submitted the documents that I had indeed submitted, and to reply as soon as possible. The return address for he email? do-not-reply@apple.com.

Android conquering the world?

[despisethesun]

If this story had come out at this time last year, I might have believed it. As it stands, I don't think Android is going to conquer much of anything. So far there have only been two phones to come from a major handset manufacturer. There are supposedly tons on the way this year from Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, and others but none of them have shown anything at all yet. And on top of that, the phones to come from HTC have been pretty uninspiring. I want to see Android take off, it looks to offer just about everything I want from a phone OS, but I'm not waiting forever for there to be a handset worth owning with it. Right now, I'm planning on getting an E71, and down the road I might grab either the Omnia HD or the N86 as a second phone. Symbian/S60 isn't perfect, but it's here now, it works, and the hardware it runs on is excellent. The members of the Open Handset Alliance can't say that yet, and that's a damn shame.

Re:Android conquering the world?

[Anonymous Coward]

So far there have only been two phones to come from a major handset manufacturer.

There's only one manufacturer making iPhones, and it's not a "major handset manufacturer."

Re:Android conquering the world?

[Uberbah]

There's only one manufacturer making iPhones, and it's not a "major handset manufacturer."

Batshit irrelevant to the subject of Android taking over the cell market.

Market share != doing well for Apple

[Anonymous Coward]

Nice idea, but as everyone's saying, it's totally optimistic. Apple goals are to keep large profit margins on their own terms. If they can do that with a large market share (iPod) they're happy, but they're not going to let go of tight control to achieve that share either (the Mac).

I would love to see the iPhone opened a bit more, but it's not going to happen either of the two things above are *seriously* threatened.

Of course this all could change if someone else takes the reigns over the next couple of years...

NO

[Snaller]

No, we didn't forget that - we ignored it since Nokia (and Erickson) have crap interfaces, and apparently will never improve on that - so the only way out are versions *we* can shape.

No Source for Research

[Wovel]

Keep in mind that the author of the report, "Informa Telecoms & Media" has a vested interest in people believing the key to the mobile market is an open source platform (This was in fact the key finding of their report). Informa runs what they call "ONLY Mobile Specific Open Source Conference and Exhibition in the World".

Be cool if the journalists of the world still looked into the motivations of their sources. Informa needs to send IBT, Businessweek and the rest of them a check for advertising fees.

Ah, but there IS adblock for the iPhone

[Anonymous Coward]

It's on Cydia, you pay the dev, he sends you a number, and viola, adblock for MobileSafari. Seriously... jailbreak your phone.

Re:Ah, but there IS adblock for the iPhone

[BrokenHalo]

and viola, adblock for MobileSafari.

A viola is a four-stringed bowed instrument tuned to C,G, D and A, one 5th lower than the violin. I fail to see any relevance to phones...

Re:Ah, but there IS adblock for the iPhone

[Builder]

Jeez, you whiny pedant...

Happy now ? :D

Re:Ah, but there IS adblock for the iPhone

[Builder]

Crap - the above post completely ate my fx: of the world's smallest violin.

This joke no punchline.

That'll teach me to use the preview button!

It's a systemic problem

[RogueWarrior65]

This doesn't surprise me a bit. Apple's own Radar bug reporting system is practically useless since you can't see what other people may have reported on a given bug, only what you have submitted. If people have posted work-arounds, you can't see them. Furthermore, Apple's developer website search is nearly useless too because you can't filter out duplicate results that happen to be in PDF and HTML formats nor can you eliminate Java results or Cocoa results if all you're interested in is Carbon. Beyond that is the very limited amount of sample code illustrating a given function call. When Quicktime VR was first being shown, I had to jump through a whole ton of fire-hoops to get to the product manager who reluctantly gave me access to the stuff. IMHO, Microsoft's developer website is far superior.

Beleaguered Apple too successful

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh noooooo, Apple is too successful with their iPhone and their App store that now they're having some bureaucratic trouble. Don't they know they're always supposed to fail at everything even when they are succeeding. Silly beleaguered Apple.

Good timing

[dimethylxanthine]

Cydia's appstore makes a rather well timed appearance.
That, having a special product with a high utility for customers, an excellent manager and a high rate of innovation almost puts it on par with the Worlds top business outlets.
My admiration for Saurik's work. Respect!

Yogi-esque

[Anonymous Coward]

"Nobody goes there no more; it's too crowded!"

Re:3 years from now : AppStore is not even 1 yr ol

[Anonymous Coward]

SSH! You will blow the global warming gimmick!

Hardware

[Midnight Thunder]

I picked up a G1 last weekend, but ended up taking it back yesterday. On the software side, it was absolutely beautiful. But the hardware left a lot to be desired...

I want to see Android succeed, for a number of reasons, but like many things it is a good as its weakest component. In this case it is the hardware. What could really hurt android is if the phone companies treat it as a silver bullet, hoping it will solve all their problems, only to fail to create hardware that presents itself as a sleek item that non-techies want to buy. For all its faults this is, IMHO, what the iPhone got right since your non-techie often goes for the feel of the solution, rather than the real technical merits. An example of this is seeing a woman in an electronics store more concerned whether a given camera was available in pink instead of grey.

As techies we are going to judge devices on their technical merits and their unfettered 'hackability'. This is fair enough, but the average consumer is more interested whether it can do the job, while either being affordable or elegant (it is this that makes them willing to spend more). They don't care whether the phone is open source, since what does it mean to them? Electronics companies need to spend as much time on the 'artistic' elements of the device as they do on the technical elements.

Don't underestimate the superficial.

Re:Hardware

[Tony Hoyle]

OTOH the marketing for the G1 is all over the place - you can't walk 10 feet down the high street without seeing adverts offering them free on various contracts - some of them extremely good deals (which is where the open nature shows - O2 can't offer the iphone cheaper than it is because apple won't let them, so they're at a disadvantage long term, as the price of phones normally drops quite quickly after release).

At the moment android feels like it's coming out of beta - no paid apps yet in the UK for example. Then again look at the iphone around version 1.1, which had no apps at all.. in a year things will be totally different.

Re:Hardware

[Midnight Thunder]

At the moment android feels like it's coming out of beta - no paid apps yet in the UK for example. Then again look at the iphone around version 1.1, which had no apps at all.. in a year things will be totally different.

Being a year late, when your ahead of the game may not be such a bad thing. In many ways it allowed Apple to understand where it should be taking things, to reduce the number of potential mistakes. Android on the other hand has the advantage of watching what Apple did and try to improve on it. Without sounding too negative, any positives that can be made by Android will still be negated if the hardware doesn't meld well with OS or the user expectations. Vista had much in the way of advertising, but that didn't help it, especially when you consider the "Vista ready" fiasco.

What I am saying in all this, is Google just can't sit idly by and hope the hardware companies do a good job. Microsoft has been there and while having the advantage of being ahead of the game suffered from what feels, in some cases, like clunky hardware, though in this case the OS wasn't helping much either. What I mean by this is that Windows CE / Windows Mobile, didn't feel like it was designed for mobile. Rather it felt like it was designed to bring the convenience of the desktop to a hand held, without necessarily understanding the particular human-interaction issues presented by hand held device.

Who will win the game is less of an issue than what people want to use now. For me, while companies are willing to innovate and stay in the game then we won't see a winner. Any winner is temporary until someone else understands what it takes to take the technology to the next level. Ironically the next level may actually be something that is seemingly superficial.

Only WinMo has skype (Symbian about to get it)

[BlackCreek]

Though I do own a G1, I have to reckon that, as far as expats are concerned, you are absolutely right.

The true deal breaker for expats and many other end users has a name and it is called skype. I hear Windows mobile has it, and Nokia plans to distribute a version for Symbian.

My personal problem is that I am allergic to Windows Mobile, and only now Nokia started talking about Skype support.

Android is the SDK for java developers

[Anonymous Coward]

I just bought a G1 and choose it over the iphone for 1 reason only - it uses eclipse. How many mac devs are there and how many eclipse/java devs ?

Android may be just on one handset now but a second will appear in april and there are more on the way.

Pretty soon the iPhone is going to look like it's going uphill.

Re:Android is the SDK for java developers

[Zarf]

You are right. But the iPhone is still technically superior. That will change in time. In the long run the majority of software developers will belong to the Android camp and its descendants unless iPhone changes strategy drastically.

However, you have to wonder if Apple cares about that. Their strategy appears to be to seek "premium" brand status. That means the relative scarcity would be seen as exclusivity.

Re:Android is the SDK for java developers

[Anonymous Coward]

Android doesn't run standard Java apps, it converts them to a proprietary and incompatible format (DEX). The Dalvik VM doesn't even support JIT so performance for all but the most trivial applications is terrible.

You switched because the IDE uses the Eclipse bloatware? I hope you're kidding.

The Cydia iPhone App Store just launched

[kiddailey]

Just a day or so ago, Cydia (the awesome package manager for jailbroken iPhones used by reportedly more than 2million iPhones) launched a new app store of its own.

There have always been paid apps for jailbroken phones, but usually they would require you to go to the developer's or another web site to purchase the app. Now however, it appears that not only can you write apps that have full access to the device and without censorship, you can also use the Cydia store for a seamless shopping experience.

The Wall Street Journal and others have more information.

Granted, this doesn't give you exposure in the App store and there are issues with dealing with jailbreaking your phone, but it does provide iPhone developers and users with a choice.

Potential Buyers!

[Hailth]

The iPhone is a beautiful piece of hardware, but it is not the best hardware. Be mindful of the critical decision points when buying your next outrageously expensive phone!

There are many phones out there on par with Apple hardware, or even better! (Samsung Omnia HD tops it and a few from HTC tie it.)

The highlight of these purchases is not the phones themselves, but the potential in applications for them. Anyone who can get a new contract discount right now, I urge you to hold off on buying the iPhone or any rivals for the time being.

Until the iPhone's app store drama is resolved, it would be unwise to buy an iPhone. Until its competition sees as much enthusiasm for development, it would be unwise to buy it too. Remember, these are expensive commitments, like wives, so don't pick the wrong one.

In fact, I pray every night people have that kind of development enthusiasm for the Omnia HD. If not, I will be forced (by myself and my own advice) to buy an iPhone, which means I'm stuck with AT&T when I was hoping to browse other options for the best deal.

Allow me to summarize Slashdot's record

[bonch]

Allow me to summarize Slashdot's record when it comes to predicting Apple's success and failures:

"No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame."

Re:Allow me to summarize Slashdot's record

[spiralx]

Ah, I remember that article :)

Re:3 years from now : AppStore is not even 1 yr ol

[nEoN nOoDlE]

I was thinking the same exact thing. 3 years from now is a complete unknown, and the article writer's hope is that by the time that 3 years comes to pass, this article will be long forgotten - so you might as well get your article views and ad clicks in today.

OPENMOKO FTW

[Anonymous Coward]

IMHO as a geek the openmoko is the most free and open phone out there at the moment. It's not completely 'end-user' ready yet, but for people like me its well usable as a daily phone.

There are also several distros emerging around the hardware, hand in hand with the freesmartphone.org project. Or you just use your favourite distro of choice; gentoo and debian worked fine for me.

Just wanted to at least *mention* it ;)

(And btw. how long do you have to wait to post a second comment? This seems to prevent any real 'discussion' before it starts.)

Wha...? My recent signup took two days.

[bensyverson]

This is pure anti-Apple FUD. My application to be a developer took about a day and a half from purchase (it costs $99) to approval.

After submitting my app, it took three days to appear on the App Store. So I guess I'm not seeing the problem.

It's cool if you're jazzed about Android... I am too, and may develop for it. I just don't see the need to slam Apple. It's not one or the other.

An AppStore developer story: PozBook

[Kamerynn]

Apple is at risk of losing quality developpers for a quantity of inept amateurs who will spend a couple of hours a day to create crapware , hoping that the gold rush isn't over yet. Unfortunately the economics are clear - looking at an informal study made by comparing the top apps with the revenue per day, if you're not in the Top, you can hope to make 25$/day. Impossible to support any quality development at that rate - and it means the development companies are already consolidating with the ones who are taking the lion's pie hiring a lot of competent iPhone developpers to work for them. PozBook is a great application for the iPhone I have developped over the last 4 months - one of the few useful and feature packed but beautiful and easy to use applications that could rival what we have on the desktop, and it is universal in purpose: create geographical text audio, text and picture notes, and share them with everyone. Think kml or POI on the iphone, but super easy and beautiful. With a PozBook Share community website ala YouTube. It is not a game, it is not an iFart, and it actually costs more than 0.99$ - and all that make it very difficult to sell on the App Store - it seems people are just drowned in the number of crap applications and have stopped looking for quality applications altogether. Unfortunately good apps don't always get recognized and featured. Apple has to quickly find a way to sort out the applications better- they are at risk of alienating both users who do not find unusual and innovative applications without a long hunt and a lot of crap applications purchased that cannot do what they advertise, and quality developpers who cannot make a decent living making professional applications. PozBook - Your notes and guides on iPhone

Really

[Luscious868]

Reader h11:6 points out news of a recent study which suggests that "Android's open source nature will give it a boost over Apple's iPhone," and thus take the lead in sales as soon as three years from now.

You can find a study that will say just about anything. If Andriod sales overtake iPhone sales it'll be because it's a better phone that provides the average consumer with a better experience than the iPhone presently offers. The average consumer could care less about the development model of the apps that you can download on a phone. They don't even know what that means.

Apple's biggest weakness isn't it's app development model. It is it's exclusive contract with AT&T. As soon as that's over, watch out. I know a ton of people who want an iPhone but they either can't or won't switch to AT&T in order to get one.

Buy a machine with Linux preinstalled.

[jotaeleemeese]

That is how you normally buy any other machines.

And please don't buy a lottery ticket, I keep installing Ubuntu and normally I have no problems (WiFi cards are a problem, but not completely unsupported).

Re:Buy a machine with Linux preinstalled.

[obarthelemy]

No, it isn't, I buy parts, assemble and install all my PCs + lots for friends by hand.

I keep having problems, even on the most barebones and standard PCs, and cannot work my way out of any of them (while I'm quite adept with XP).

Android is going nowhere

[Anonymous Coward]

The hardware that has been released so far is a joke at best. The "open" Android SDK only works on x86 CPUs making it useless for users of other platforms. The Dalvik VM is a complete joke performance-wise and a very lame attempt at creating a non-standard platform. The only real competitor the iPhone is getting is the new Nokia N97.

Glass

It takes less than two days to sign up

[Trillan]

Back when I signed up, it took about a week to get enrolled in Apple's program. A coworker went through it about a month ago, and it's down to two days now.

If you want an open phone, get an open phone.

[argent]

Google sells a completely unlocked version of the phone. You can download Android's source, change it, compile and run.

If you don't mind reflashing your phone every time you switch from wanting to run the apps youre working on and apps from the app store. That's more hassles than the iPhone developer kit, which only requires you to sign your app with your key before you can install it on your phone.

The slightly greater potential in the Android phone is not worth it. Neither the iPhone nor the Android phone are open in any useful sense.

If you want an open phone, get an open phone. Microsoft, Palm, Nokia, and OpenMoko will be happy to sell you one.

Re:If you want an open phone, get an open phone.

[BlackCreek]

I think you completely missed the point (either that or I am missing yours ;-)).

The G1 allows you to directly install your own applications, and any "free" application from the "Android Market". So if you are talking your own apps, these can be directly installed in both the ADP and in the G1 without any problem.

The trouble starts when you need to install DRM applications from the market. If you are running a ADP and want see a DRM application running, you'll have to reflash.

I think Nokia is doing more than Google as it plans to allow VoIP applications in its next generation of smart phones (though not installed by default). However I have owned "unlocked" Nokia phones, and I would rate it as much more closed than the ADP (but perhaps it is because I never really installed paid apps in neither of them).

Re:If you want an open phone, get an open phone.

[argent]

So what is T-Mobile locking you out of?

Re:If you want an open phone, get an open phone.

[BlackCreek]

Did I say/claim T-Mobile was locking me outside of something? (I honestly can't see where I said that)

But since you asked ;-) T-Mobile asked Google for assurances that there would be no VoIP running on the phone (I believe I saw the interview with TMobile's US branch CEO on Engadget). Hence no voice support for Google Talk.

Year of the Android?

[Trojan35]

Reader h11:6 points out news of a recent study which suggests that "Android's open source nature will give it a boost over Apple's iPhone," and thus take the lead in sales as soon as three years from now. It will be interesting to see how they deal with the flood of proposed apps as their popularity rises.

Is this similar to the year of Linux taking over Windows I keep hearing about? Sorry, mod me a troll.

Dual flash your phone? Please...

[argent]

If you are a developer, it is as simple as changing phone covers.

I've flashed my iPaq to Linux and back to Pocket PC, and that was a relatively painless process... for a reflash. I doubt the Android is any easier. And that's not something that's useful to me, as a phone user. Here I am, sitting in an airport terminal, and I want to bring up a timetable app. Pull out my G1... hmmm, it's in developer mode. Ten minutes later, after I've reflashed my phone so I can run the app I want, I see I've only got five minutes to get to my gate.

No, you wouldn't do that. You'd just use the phone in one mode, all the time, or you'd carry two phones.

It was bad enough having to reboot my desktop between free UNIX and Wintendo mode that I got a second computer. I can't imagine doing that with a phone.

My handheld is running an OS that's actually *open*, not a Tivoised UNIX like the iPhone or Android.

Re:Dual flash your phone? Please...

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, the flash involved putting a specially named zip file on the SD card and rebooting. The most complex step was the magic key combination you have to press to initiate the flash. Oh, and you had to wipe your user data (installed apps and their data, SMS history, etc. You keep your contacts and important stuff). Kind of a pain, but yes you could in fact just keep the two .zip files on your SD card and rename them at will. The whole process would take maybe 5 minutes each time you wanted to switch.

Reality beats perception.

[argent]

I didn't buy EITHER phone, because the perception of openness is an illusion in both cases.

I've been modded down by Apple fans for pointing out that the OS X base of the iPhone is irrelevant.

I'm sure I'll be modded down by Google fans for pointing out the Android has the same problem.

I'm not immune to irony, but I'm really not happy that Microsoft is shipping a more open phone than anything based on UNIX.

Open systems require open APIs and access

[argent]

What sort of whacked-out idea of "open" do you have?

Oh, I really hate the irony inherent in the fact that, for the end user, the most open handhelds are all built on proprietary bases.

None of them are completely open, but at least Windows Mobile, Palm OS, and Symbian have stable, documented, and unlocked APIs.

Which means that you can take an open source program, no matter who it's written by, modify it, compile it, install it on your phone, and run it... without having to jump through hoops with developer programs, buying a second unlocked phone, or any other bullshit inherent in Tivoised hardware.

None of them are real open systems, there's no hope of having independent third-party implementations of WinMo or PalmOS competing with the original code base, but they're closer than what Apple and Google have produced.

Re:Open systems require open APIs and access

[dysprosia]

You are using the word "open" to describe a system that has a freely-accessible API. This does not mean that the system is an "open" device. Making this comparison is like saying Windows is "open" because you can write open-source applications for it.

Re:Open systems require open APIs and access

[ToasterMonkey]

You are using the word "open" to describe a system that has a freely-accessible API. This does not mean that the system is an "open" device. Making this comparison is like saying Windows is "open" because you can write open-source applications for it.

That IS the definition of open to many, and Windows IS an open system! It might not be the MOST open way, but sheesh, setting the bar that high means taking a lot of openness for granted. "Open systems" predates your intended meaning by a few decades.

Computers aren't as young as they used to be. There is already a lot of valuable history being forgotten and "reinvented" the next week. I'm only 26 but I can see that plain as day. The new open. Ugh, rub the grime off those old buzzwords but it's still just about money, crazy idealists.
The future will be interesting. Since the cost of "open" has raced to the bottom so fast, we'll get to find out what it's really worth and maybe temper all this idealism. Don't hate me, I'm only being pragmatic.

Re:Open systems require open APIs and access

[argent]

There are many kinds of openness, and many degrees of openness.

I'm not talking about "Open Source", but about "Open Systems".

UNIX was an open system over a decade before there was an open source implementation of it.

The only openness that matters, to the end user, is the openness that is exposed to the end user. A system where the average end user has no access to the API is not open in any meaningful sense.

The open source kernels in the iPhone and the G1 are irrelevant to the end user.

Re:Open systems require open APIs and access

[dysprosia]

Except an average end user doesn't *care* about an API, they will use a phone through the front end, they will never even think about writing an app for their phone; it's *developers* that seek APIs, that prefer and desire open source systems.

Alternatives

[Anonymous Coward]

Breaking Apple's Grip on the iPhone

Not new.

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not a new situation. This has been going on for more than a year. I work for a major corporation (think fortune 5) and spent 8 months trying to get an enterprise agreement setup. It took so long that I changed jobs internally and the application expired.

Now we tried to sign up again for a developer agreement, and again it has been months.

We're now ordering a Google phone.

a sign of the times

[commodoresloat]

This article is full of hope.

Can we get some change to go with that?

Re:Apple is hardly promoting it as a dev platform

[Anonymous Coward]

I dunno. Languages really aren't *that* much of a barricade for any professional developer. If students are able to make switches from Java to Lisp, I don't think any professional will have much issue going from Java to Objective-C. They are both OOLs and thus share many of the same principles.

Far more pertinent to developer is the APIs available, and iPhone has a pretty awesome API for a mobile phone IMO. There are still a couple bugs, but its pretty easy to get something up that looks nice. Now maybe I just need more experience with other mobile platforms, but I was quite happy with what iPhone offers - especially since you can easily drop in Apple's excellent UI elements that you don't find on other mobiles.

Why Wait?

[His Shadow]

I'll tell you right now. Three years from now, the iTunes App store will still be the one to beat, and everything else will be an exercise in trying to relive Play For Sures smashing success.

Android Market is a Developer Nightmare

[Anonymous Coward]

Currently if you are developing software for Android and try to sell it, you are in a shitty situation: YOU are the seller, meaning YOU have to figure out how the SALES TAX and VAT work in the WHOLE f***ing WORLD! And it is actually even worse, because it is not clear from the terms if participating in the Market essentially means the developer opened up shop in every state and country the Market operates in, subjecting them to said laws and requlations. Unless you have a big company backing you up, you will get a nasty contact from your (and maybe every country's) equivalent of IRS soon.

Combined with 24 hour (or maybe even longer it seems in practice) period of time in which customers can cancel paid applications, a class of apps will just not make it onto Android (think games and utilities that you will finish with in less than 24 hours).

Google Checkout is also not the smoothest buying experience to have on a phone, which will further deter customers from buying.

Google is basically a black hole about the Market; you can't get anything out of them.

To top it off, the number of users running Android is miniscule compared to other mobile platforms.

There are a number of other, smaller issues with the Market, like no automatic notification of updates are likely to be implemented and fixed eventually, but for the time being all this combines to make Android a pretty miserable platform if you are trying to make money.

There are a couple of things that Google should do to fix most of the problems:

* Make the Market responsible for all the sales tax and VAT issues, giving developers something back for the 30% cut the Market takes
* Start communicating

Re:Apple is hardly promoting it as a dev platform

[EvilIdler]

I found Objective-C easy to pick up. It's the Cocoa(Touch) API which is tricky. The differences between C and Obj-C fit in a page, and the garbage collection isn't even in the iPhone version of the language.

But yeah, the iPhone/iPod touch are the third portable device type I've wanted to develop for, and the second to actually be accessible. Sure, it costs money (Macbook+subscription+game engines are among my expenses), but Nintendo haven't yet done anything like Wiiware for the DS, and even that is not entirely open to the indies.

The iPhone OS is at least as cool as the Palm OS back in the 68k (pre-ARM) days, and easier to program. Once you get past the Apple approval threshold, that is :)

Bullshit

[theolein]

... And even OSX was buggy as hell until recently...

This shows that you have never used OSX or at least very seldom. OSX has never been very buggy. That is plain bullshit.

Which leaves me thinking that you're perhaps the fanboi, and that your post should be marked flamebait.

2009 - year of OS X on the desktop!!!!1!

[Anonymous Coward]

The year of the Linux desktop was 2008, when netbooks gave Microsoft actual OS competition for the first time.

There has to be a joke in there.

Netbooks use the desktop metaphor just as much as actual desktops computers you italicizing fuckwit.

Maybe 2009 will be the year of OS X on the desktop? I mean, it's certainly not there yet, but I feel really, really good about 2009.

The problem with this

[Swift2001]

is very simple. The App Store is, apparently, choking on its own success. Just this week I downloaded tv.com, so I can watch whole episodes and previews of CBS shows -- and it works over 3G -- and bought a book for the Kindle App.

Competitors seem to try to compete on what the company is doing today, without realizing that in a year or two, when you have your chance, Apple will have put more staff on the problem. Maybe even ended the exclusive contract with AT&T. Or given the App store its own app. Meanwhile the iPhone killer will have definitely gotten close to what Apple was doing three years ago.

BS

[Anonymous Coward]

I call BS; I renewed my Apple Dev license just 2 weeks ago in under 48 hours. Friends who are new devs and targeting the iPhone have received their licenses in under 48 hours within the past month as well.

This article is Linux Fanboy FUD.

Re:Apple is hardly promoting it as a dev platform

[Anonymous Coward]

As a developer you'll need to buy an Apple computer for the privilege, and probably start learning Objective C, not an easy language to pick up when you're used to Java/C#.

Well, I would argue that the language itself is actually very easy to pick up if you know Java/C# (at least I had no problem and I've been doing mostly Java and C# for the last 6 years). Maybe the tools aren't as good (at least compared to Java; I'm not a fan of Visual Studio). Debugging is harder as the error messages often don't give you as much information.

I'd imagine Apple is shifting quite a few new machines to iPhone developers who would otherwise still be developing on Windows/Java ME.

I think you're right. I hear of lots of people buying Macs to do iPhone dev. I already owned two desktop Macs (Mac Pro and a Mac Mini), but iPhone development was an influencing factor when replacing my aging Thinkpad T23 I decided to get a MacBook Pro instead of another Thinkpad running Linux.