Apple's insistence on secrecy meant that developers have been separated from their air supply: a large group of beta testers and vocal. Worse, Apple selection process means that every day should be checked by Apple staff.
The result: Although Apple shifted a staggering ten million applications during the first weekend, many of these applications were buggy, due to the absence of beta-test - Fixes and updates are held back by the Apple Pokey review process.
Frasier Speirs author of iPhone Flickr client Exposure has direct experience: "I have failed to 1.0.1 Exposure to the App Store last Friday, and five days later, [which] is a" review ".
Similarly, NetNewsWire developer Brent Simmons expelled from his five iPhone application updates free news reader since its launch on Friday, setting most of the problems I mentioned in my review. So far, none of them showed in iTunes.
We asked Brent on the App Store for iPhone and developing for the future of jailbreaking.
Wired.com 's
Gadget Lab: What was the hardest on developing for the iPhone. The platform itself, or the ultra-secret approach to Apple?Brent Simmons: The platform is wonderful. It's like what we are already accustomed to - Cocoa on Mac - but smaller and simpler, and, yes, tons of fun to work with.
The secret is difficult. For Mac programming, there are all kinds of resources - mailing lists, bits of code posted on the web, wikis, other developers - to help. This makes a difference. IPhone programming, no. Not supposed to talk about actually programming the iPhone with anybody - even if it could improve the quality of the applications.
The approach to secrecy and locked to beta testers on board pretty hard. I bricked one of my co-worker’s phones in the attempt. (He got it un-bricked a day later. Temporary brickage.).
Gadget Lab: Were you under pressure to get a 1.0 release of NNW out for the launch day? If so, is this where the performance troubles come from, or was that just due to a lack of beta testers?
Simmons: Yeah, I was under pressure - there was a lot of people wanted to see the first day. But under pressure from other people is nothing compared to the self-imposed pressure. Only the breath of mosquitoes is a skyscraper. The pressure was on me.
Performance problems are my fault, and I can be argued that more time would have been nice, or say that the opportunity to talk to other developers or beta testers have helped more. But in the end, it is my responsibility.
However, I could solve any problem quickly and get the patch 1.0 on the App Store. Well, I was partly right - I'm running 1.0.5 right now, which has improved the performance of over 1.0. So I really could solve problems quickly. However, the App Store review process is still at 1.0.2 and has been evaluated for several days. I do not know when it will happen, let alone when you see 1.0.5.
Gadget Lab blog says that he had problems to push updates from the App Store. Update actually appeared to me, but iTunes just re-downloaded v1.0 of the Get Info box. Have you heard anything more about this?
Simmons: I have not heard anything about it. All I know is that 1.0 is what is happening in the store, and no newer versions have not already.
Gadget Lab: Thanks to Newsgator (the online news aggregator and owner of the NOS), all versions of SSE is now free. However, for other developers, how do you think of the App Store will work? 10 million downloads and is a crazy number. Will it be a gold mine?
Simmons: Some people will make a ton of money. Some of the best applications, but will be iPhone customers cloud-based services. So long as the iPhone client does, develop server-side software and scaling and maintaining it is expensive, which reduces the profit.
It may be that people who benefit most are the people who make great games. Maybe. (Because art is too expensive.)
Gadget Lab: There is a lot of junk in the store already, but a lot of good Mac developers are experiencing. Do you think this will continue, or a different race from iPhone developers only grow to take over? And the experience of quality applications trying PC users to Mac?
Simmons: I'm beginning to see the iPhone only to developers, more and more - but I do not expect an experienced developer can get a Mac. Both have a great program.
Question, attractive PC users moved to a Mac: Yeah, sure.
Gadget Lab: The Last, any ideas for Jailbreaking? It seems that the iPhone Dev Team tool Pwnage is out soon. I need it?
Simmons: I do not know. I've never unlocked phones, especially because I'm paranoid about breaking something to expect. I do not know if necessary.
0 comments:
Post a Comment