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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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 ?!
Sig (appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars)
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"...
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
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.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
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.
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.
This poo is cold.
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.
Jumpstart the tartan drive.
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).
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
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.
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
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.