you want to start something?

Nick commented on my earlier post claiming that the cost of a development machine (a Mac) is simply too much to sway him to develop for the iPhone. This mentality ignores the principle that good apps on the iPhone MAKE money.

CONNECTED DATA writes about why they develop for the iPhone:

When the pitcher releases the ball a batter has to decide where they will swing. If they wait too long the ball will be in the catcher’s mitt before they decide. The same logic is why we are developing for the iPhone.
…
In learning about development for the Blackberry platforms, we have to create a build for each phone and each network. As a developer, I just can’t afford it. Most of my customers right now have Blackberries. I think that in the next year or two they will have an iPhone.

Thing is, this problem already exists for Symbian devices and it will become an issue for Android devices as well. (It’s less of an issue for Windows Mobile because the UI is so generic ,and meaning that in the negative sense, that it doesn’t matter. It would be on a refrigerator and still be crap!)

David Pogue’s recent and damning review of the new BlackBerry Storm has the internet all a-twitter about the shortcomings of the device.

He writes:

“A light touch highlights the key but doesn’t type anything. Only by clicking fully do you produce a typed letter. It’s way, way too much work, like using a manual typewriter.”
“Remember: To convert seconds into BlackBerry time, multiply by seven.”
“Freezes, abrupt reboots, nonresponsive controls, cosmetic glitches. Way too much ‘unexpected behavior.”

Why do developers prefer the iPhone?

Developers aren’t a tricky breed. They like to code cool applications and get paid for it. The benefit of coding for the iPhone/iPod Touch is that the specs are the same and aren’t likely to change anytime soon. Coding across platforms takes more time, energy and money, and if the payoff isn’t there, then developers aren’t likely to adjust their code for the varying screensizes and hardware/software features specific to a particular phone.

Mark my words – it’s simple to develop for Android now that there’s a single hardware specification (in the form of the T-Mobile G1). It’ll be entirely different when there’s five competing hardware manufacturers.

Moving on…

Tags: Commentary by mj
5 Comments »

About a hundred years ago in 1995 I was being taught Modula-2. And I loathed it.

One thing I took home from it was to somewhat intelligently name your variables.

This is why the Hillegass Cocoa bible is causing some upset for me. They use terms like ‘tableView’ and I’m never sure if these are reserved keywords or if they’re variables. This means you’re groping around in the dark a lot of the time in the hope that you can figure things out. i.e.

-(NSInteger)numberOfRowsInTableView:(NSTableView *)taskList
{
return [taskStore count];
}

-(id)tableView:(NSTableView *)taskList \
objectValueForTableColumn:(NSTableColumn *)tableColumn \
row:(NSInteger)row
{
return [taskStore objectAtIndex:row];
}

took me an hour to figure out that where I have ‘taskList’ the book used ‘tableView’ which makes it just harder to understand. The code above still uses one ‘tableView’ but it works. If I replace that with something else, it breaks.

Yes, I am stupid. And a n00b. Sue me.

Tags: Code, cocoa by mj
12 Comments »

I was forwarded this link by @surfsofa:”Chief executives still don’t get the web“.

A recent Heidrick & Struggles poll found that 56pc of senior business people had never logged onto Facebook. Clearly there’s a generation gap issue, as most CEOs are in their 40s or older. CEOs who got burnt in the financial fallout of the dotcom bubble in 2001, or over-invested in preparing for the damp squib that the Y2K computer bug turned out to be, typically have deep reservations about investments in technology

This isn’t surprising, really. If you’ve been burned or lost a lot of money you’re going to be sceptical and it’s going to take a while before you can seriously consider that sector again. It’s also not surprising that the older generation has not logged into FaceBook (or even LinkedIn) because they may need convinced of the value. I’ve seen the value of LinkedIn this week with replies from some major media companies that would have been almost impossible to find elsewhere. Likewise with Facebook – it tells you not only what a person presents but also a lot more qualities about someone, for example, whether you’re more or less likely to get on and, frankly, whether they spend a lot of time fighting werewolves and zombies online.

We’ve heard of the effects of Facebook in hiring: make sure your profile says the truth about you, you never know who is looking.

Visionary business leaders hope that Wave Three will include businesses waking up to and fully embracing the true potential of the internet. Narayana Murthy, CEO of Indian IT services group Infosys, states: “Web 2.0 has been focused on social communities, on individual relationships; things not focused on the office. I would like Web 3.0 to be about more interaction between customers and vendors and competitors, on making life better for the customer.

*deep sigh*

I’m sorry, Narayana, Web 2.0 is already about interaction between customers and vendors and competitors, it’s already about conversations, it’s already about improving the experience of individuals online. When someone trots out “Web 2.0″, I think that they may be telling me something about some new social / interactive / conversational / user-generated internet phenomenon. Web 2.0 is simply a way of saying “Not Web 1.0″, “Not static pages”, “Not one way communication”.

In contrast, when someone trots out “Web 3.0″, I think they’re an idiot.

Tags: Commentary by mj
7 Comments »

ITNews Australias writes:

What do you get if you take an iPhone, remove the clean UI, user friendliness, nice industrial design, battery life, cachet, functional OS, and in general everything else that makes it worthwhile?

The new Microsoft phone, powered by Nvidia.

I’m sceptical of the truth of this but it does essentially show that life is going to be difficult for Windows mobile licensees.

Tags: Made me laugh by mj
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Raven Zachary on the Inside iPhone O’Reilly Blog writes:

I love talking with entrepreneurs and people passionate about their ideas. It’s one of the things I look forward to most in my week. Unfortunately, we are at a phase in the growth of the iPhone ecosystem where there is a significant gap between individuals with the ideas and those who are actually capable of turning the ideas into iPhone applications. This gap is almost entirely financial in nature. The demand for iPhone developers exceeds the supply and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.

This is a good thing. We have a situation where it is realised that while ideas do have merit, they are worthless without execution and unless you have the ability to execute it, or the money to have that execution funded, then your idea has only merit going for it.

This is why I think xCake, though not fully formed, has some amazing potential as a way to increase the iPhone development skills in the province. The problem being that I don’t know anyone locally who has the expertise and the time to do justice to it. Stuart Gibson and I are meeting weekly and setting homeworks to improve our iPhone/Cocoa development knowledge but it’s not something that’s going to happen overnight.

How long does it take to become a Mac/iPhone developer? I’ve seen a lot of iPhone developers out there who have ten years of developing on the Mac and some with more (based on being developers for Mac OS 9 and/or OpenSTEP). It takes time.

Tags: Commentary by mj
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