Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Apple's iPhone Developer Crisis

Posted by Soulskill on from the mo'-apps-mo'-problems dept.

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.

1 of 315 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I hope the article is right by mdwh2 · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    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.