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RIM Does Not Want PlayBook Devs, Complains One Potential Developer
fidget42 writes "It appears as if Research In Motion is trying to discourage people from developing for the PlayBook by making the process too darn complicated." This is a pretty serious rant; has anyone had a better experience with RIM's system? Sometimes the gap between developers and users (even when those users are other developers) can be more of a chasm.
Why would someone say up the night developing for a platform that is a PITA when they can go and develop painfully for "the King" ? (be it iOS or Android, whatever)
I would rather focus on making my app great rather than wasting time dealing with a hideous development environment.
Moreover, the author not just complains about time. Its about money, too:
"I do, however, notice that although it is currently free to register with App World, in the future there will be a $200 USD charge. Now just in case you’ve never looked in to competing developer programs, Apple charges $99, and Google charges $25. Considering you are by far the underdog in this game, how do you justify charging double the price of the market leader? Also, with the $99 or $25 charge, Apple and Google let you publish and unlimited number of apps on their stores. You, on the other hand, have decided that for $200, a developer should only get to publish 10 apps, and it will cost $200 for every additional 10 apps"
$200 vs $100 isn't a big deal, particularly if this thing is targeted towards businesses. And it's $0 today. Perhaps the biggest problem with the iTunes App Store (and Google Marketplace) is the spam apps -- shit that takes little or no time to build and has no value. RSS feed apps, wallpapers of images from other games, copy/paste a wikipedia article, "howto: guides for other games, etc. Putting a price on it should eliminate some of that shit.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Random whining programmer thinks process X is too complicated for him.
For me it was a non-issue. It took me exactly 2 hours to port my game (http://itunes.apple.com/app/sparkchess/id398133128) from iPad/Android to Playbook and test it, including installing the simulator. The signing process was a little more complex but really nothing fancy. If anything, on the whole I found the process faster and easier than publishing on iOS.
It took about one week for the app to be approved and it's now in AppWorld.