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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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

[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.

HTTP 500

[Meneth]

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

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.

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.

[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]

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/

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?

[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?

[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?

[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."

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.

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.

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 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.

[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.

[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.

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.

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 ?!

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:"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"...

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: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.

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.

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.

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.