Anyway, the SDK release.

This is, to be honest, much sooner than I expected and I think there must be quite a few happy people around who are loading apps onto their phones and enjoying the novelty. I’ve been fighting for some time at lunch just to try Interface Builder but something has always come up for the last 7 days. It’s frustrating and when I mention the frustration, the helpful response is ‘Well, if it mattered to you, you’d find time.” Brilliant.

I don’t know what sample code will work on the iPhone with the latest beta and I don’t know whether or not it’s safe to load my iPhone with the beta firmware and still want to use it as a phone. And there’s no way to check because Apple still have an NDA on all discussion on the technical aspects of the SDK and firmware.

As this is very much still a learning experience for me, it’s slow and boring. I’ve kinda decided to strike out and work on something else in order to maybe build some momentum. I would like a cashflow-type application for the iPhone.

As you can see, it’s a work in progress.

Why is this book relevant when we have a proper (beta) SDK available from Apple’s Developer Site. Because, gentle reader, it looks at the system from a different angle and I think it will help me better understand how things fit together. It goes into a lot of detail in the construction of an application and the bits and pieces that are needed. This reinforces that there’s no ‘magic’ here. It’s a system with components.

I’ve only got a couple more chapters to go through in the Cocoa book I’m working on. Then I’ll attack the iPhone book as well as the BigNerdRanch Cocoa book.

• support for the camera
• support for conversations
• support for locations!

Looking forward to June!

“…the case for Code Signing on a Mac - in the service of its administrator/owner - is very compelling. In a sense, the Mac is living on borrowed time - viruses and worms and other nasty bit-critters will surely come our way, and going to an all-signed environment is one the most potent weapons we have to keep your systems from being overrun. I realize this capability *could* eventually be abused in various ways, and I trust you’ll all keep Apple honest about it. But it can also be a powerful force *for* you.

Oh, and to put that to rest: I do work for Apple, and I designed and implemented Code Signing in Leopard. If you think it’s going to usher in a black wave of OS fascism, you have every right to blame me - it was, pretty much, my idea.”

Like some, I see code-signing as a necessary neutral. It’s neither good nor evil but it could be used for evil purposes (where evil is really just a shade of ‘not good’).

It’s all about trust again. When we first heard of Intel’s Palladium, there was an uproar. When we heard about processor serial numbers on the Intel platform, there was an uproar (despite the fact they had been quietly present for years on PowerPC).

The other commenters on the blog put forward scenarios where corporations will use this facility for evil and point to Apple’s DRM’ed music (using FairPlay) and also Apple’s odd restrictions within DVD Player.app on Mac OS X as an example of how the company is ‘evil’.

Of course it’s bollocks.

It took FairPlay to get the media owners (record labels) to start to play ball. Now we have DRM-free music available from multiple sources. Similar Apple’s DVD Player is compliant with the law because they want to avoid litigation. You can get round it by using other DVD-playing applications but Apple plays it safe. They’re not interfering with other third party apps.

It may be blind and stupid faith but I know enough people within Apple and I’ve read enough accounts of people working there that I trust them to do the right thing. Individual end users do need help in discovering which applications are bad and which are good and Apple, in order to reduce the amount of legwork required, is bound to have a review process where they solicit information from users of iPhone applications. This will have the dual effect of speeding up the eventual distribution of applications and also making sure there’s a peer review process.

I’d like to hear more from Perry on this debate as individual security on computing devices is important to me from the point of view of working in the IT business. There’s always a considerable difference in working with Macs and PCs - the latter is always slower in my experience (considering that my day job gives me a Core Duo machine running XP and my home machine is a Core Duo machine running Leopard) due to the need to perpetually run AV and firewall software and if not running them, due to the amount of malware that has been picked up.

Not enough people hear the reasons for design decisions and this is an Apple fault. They don’t make individuals publicly known. Every time there has been an outcry, I’ve always managed to speak to someone within Apple and they’ve given me the reasons for this and that. And yeah, in the wake of their spin doctoring I’ve always agreed.

For the average end user there needs to be a helping hand, an additional way to reduce the contact they have with malware. It’s something that will piss off some people who for political reasons want to have 100% access to their devices but I’m confident that the jailbreaking crowd will cater for them adequately.

The rant this week is that he reckons in 2008, the perfect machine is a big old clunky desktop manufactured from the cheapest components. He rails about others who use laptops (and who can’t keep a cup of coffee from landing on it) or PDA/Smartphones (and who can’t remember not to drop it in the toilet bowl).

There is a difference between portable and mobile computing. Using a laptop is certainly now portable computing. You port this device from location to location and when you stop moving and find a seat, you work. Because the device is portable, it is possible to leave it in a cafe, forget to pick it up out of the taxi, have it lifted by some larcenous scumbag. There’s definitely a liability with it but the convenience outweighs the dversities. Conversely, using a phone/PDA is what I call mobile computing. You can reply to email or update your blog while standing in a queue. Unlike a laptop, the smartphone likely even follows you to the toilet (which is why some people have dropped theirs in the bowl). Now, I’m not advocating ‘plogging’ (though Twenty is about a decade too late to have claimed to have invented it), but there’s definitely a difference between using a smartphone and a laptop.

His main attack on portable and mobile computing is with regard to backups - both of data and of a workable machine and the relative cost of replacement.

Backup Your Data

“They drag the machine everywhere, and if it gets lost or broken, they’re toast, since they never perform any kind of backup. (Nobody backs up much these days.) Even if people do back up, though, they’re likely still SOL since the restore function typically doesn’t work well when a new machine is involved.”

Backups do happen, especially for smart folk that use Mac OS X along with Time Machine or Time Capsule. The backup argument is well made but it shouldn’t be singled out against laptop users. Everyone should backup. It’s not hard to do, it’s not expensive. Unless of course your laptop doesn’t hold your Data. James at Eirepreneur has been torturing himself with an eee PC for a week or so and keeps all of his documents in the Cloud (Google Docs, GMail, etc). The downside to using web services is that without Internet coverage you’re screwed. Is this a bad thing? Not really. It’s widespread and cheap. Similarly with a smartphone it’s likely that your documents on the phone are backed up to your ‘main’ computer so your data will not be lost.

Dvorak’s whine that restores don’t work well. Well. That’s just him. He uses Windows you know.

Backup your hardware

“And these devices are poised to become the next desktop replacement platform? Splash. Splash. Splash.”

This needs reinforced. If you work for a living and your machine gets toasted, ideally you should have a new machine pronto because the cost of being out of action will quickly offset the cost of getting the new machine. Every business should keep at least one spare machine. It doesn’t have to be the latest and greatest. Even a low end MacBook at £699 is a great machine for a spare. How long would it take for your worker to make back the £699? A day or three? And after his usual machine has been restored to full working order, you still have the spare for the next time (or as a loaner to a staff member who really wants to work from home). The cost is easily made back. So buy a spare already. Making your livelihood (whether you’re a sole trader or an employee) depend on a single machine is simply stupid. Or, if you don’t want to plonk down the readies for a machine that will gather dust, make friends with your local AASP as they’re likely to be able to supply you with a loaner or machine to rent in the interim. You will have to pay for the privilege but again, how many days before you’d make it back?

His page 2 arguments are easy enough to defeat. He mentions ten reasons to keep using desktops which are all ‘easier’ or ‘harder’ and none of them are absolutes. The one advantage of laptops and smartphones is an absolute however. There are desktops that are more expensive than laptops. There are laptops with immense amounts of internal storage. And they can also use USB drives too, John. But there are no desktops which are as portable as a laptop or smartphone. Period. Or that can be used for a couple of hours on a train journey. Or while waiting for your partner to finish browsing in a shop. Portability is an absolute and that’s why these devices are popular.

This article is not about refuting Dvorak because that could quickly become a full time job. This is about establishing behaviours for the next generation of knowledge worker.

• Take the ’stupid’ out of backups and use Time Machine
• Have a spare machine handy to receive your backup
• Have some friends who may have a spare machine just in case
• Take care of your laptop and smartphone

“Don’t be a Jackass”

…would be a last point that needs underlined. Dvorak’s wisdom extends to any uses of Smartphones or laptops. But he made the title of the article “The iPhone is no desktop” which shows a couple of things.

1. He thinks you’re stupid.
2. He writes his articles at a cheap desktop, running Windows, in his underwear
3. He’s whoring for links by mentioning the iPhone (a media darling)
4. He mentions ‘Apple laptop’ where the wisdom could apply to any manufacturer

Cheap tricks designed to lure people in to view his ads and get more revenue.

But take what I say on board. Don’t think the right method is the Dvorak method - “go back to using a cheap desktop”. The right method is to back up your data. To have a spare machine. And to be careful while plogging.

“I started working with the audio toolbox on the iPhone today. This morning, I added sounds to the little dice rolling application I’ve been writing. I recorded a total of fifteen sounds, five of a single die being rolled, five of two dice being rolled, and five of four dice being rolled. I let my kids roll the dice while I recorded the sounds, which they thought was cool, although they can’t understand why I can’t put the program on my iPhone.”

I’ve never really used computers in my gaming. Recently it was useful because Google Maps helped us visualise the countryside in Arizona where we were travelling through.

Jeff LaMarche is developing an iPhone Dice Roller for us gaming geeks and I, for one, think it just the tip of the iceberg for the iPhone/iPod touch-carrying gamer geek. Okay, Jeff, get this app out and we’ll see what we can do about Apple giving us a Certificate to install. I’d like to see “dice sets” myself. I will need all sorts of dice for Runequest, only d10s (but a lot of them) for Godlike and everything in between. Get to work (because it looks gorgeous). In planning to play Godlike, we’re going to be using a lot more than one pair of d10s which means that the possibility of using a DiceRoller application has great interest to me. I don’t know if Jeff LaMarche will develop it but it’s inspired me that I’ll need it. Do I need it to just roll a number of d10 or do we need to provide matches? What about dynamic rolls? That would rock My battery will need to be replaced however - to help make sure it lasts a game session and also gets my email. I’ll get in touch with my local AASP and get that sorted.

According to TUAW, there are thousands of angry developers (online, select, premier, solo, corporate) who have been denied early access to Firmware 2.0 and the App Store and, more importantly, ability to load apps onto the iPhone.

Is anyone really surprised?

Only yesterday, Macrumors reported that someone had hacked Firmware 2.0. Obviously Apple is going to have to take extra steps to secure things down and rightly so. A few judicious uses of iPhone Remote Wipe (a feature of Firmware 2.0) would do the trick.

Plus, this SDK is a BETA.

Yes, a BETA. There’s no Interface Builder yet, for a start. Notice that? It’s likely they went through the thousands and thousands of applications and picked, say, a thousand of them (for a representative sample) and issued them with certificates. Anyone else is outta luck. We knew it was going to be limited, we knew this was an initial rollout.

So, you’re a developer and you got turned away?

Applications to the program weren’t even open outside of the United States so take your self-entitlement and put it in a box. Stop whining. So you didn’t get accepted. Tough shit.

I tell you one thing for sure. There will probably be twenty thousand applications ready for release on the day the App Store opens. Apple is going to take their time deciding which ones are actually going to be on there and that’s their prerogative. Out of those perhaps ten percent will actually be worth it, maybe even less and Apple doesn’t want crap proliferating on their new platform.

So take my advice. Don’t get angry. Just take a deep breath.

Despite the fact that the iPhone SDK terms explicitly state that “No interpreted code may be downloaded and used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple’s Published APIs and builtin interpreter(s)”, Sun announced that they plan to develop a JVM for the iPhone SDK. Eric Klein, vice president of Java marketing for Sun.

Now, John rubbishes the notion and, based on what we’ve seen, rightly so. An iPhone JVM would potentially permit individuals to bypass the App Store and populate their devices with inferior Java applications but there’s nothing in the SDK terms that would actually Sun Microsystems. They’re not going to start out by writing the code for the JVM using the SDK. They’d go straight to Apple and they’ll ask the hard questions.

1. Can we write a JVM and get access to the device to do so.
2. Will you allow the JVM to be listed on the App Store

I don’t think it’s impossible but it’s incredibly unlikely.

FWIW, John, we all call the iPod touch the ‘iTouch’ so cut them some slack. They’re just trying to get down with the hep cats.

1. Payfer Apps - you write your application, sign it, give it to Apple and they host it on the App Store and you get 70% of all proceeds.
2. Free Apps - you write the application, sign it, give it to Apple and they host it on the App Store for free.
3. Source - you write the application, give the code to someone else, they sign it themselves and then they can install on their own iPhone via XCode

The last method changes things. It’s no longer just a case of just releasing source code, there’s the signing too. You’re attaching your identity to the code. A bit more than just running ports or apt.

But it does mean that for the select few who can install apps (been accepted into the Beta program, paid their $99, uploaded their CSR, downloaded their certificate), there’s a method of swapping test code and with a bit of luck a community will build.

For my part, I’d like to play with Kalimba on my iPhone!

How much would you pay for:
a) no need to set up a web shopping cart
b) no need to pay for bandwidth and hosting
c) greatly reduced need for marketing
d) reduced need to ‘package’ an app
e) listing on a web store that will be in front of about 7 million customers at launch.

Apple wants thirty percent (though they’ll host your free app for free). For this thirty percent, they’ll approve, list, maintain a reviews database, process payments and send you the income monthly.

Some people think this smacks of greed but I’d counter that it smacks of reality. If you’ve spent a lot of time working in software but not in the retail side then you have probably very little experience of the costs. We are agreed that Apple is a publicly traded corporation and therefore needs to turn a profit. We’re going to have to agree that the App Store will be a hot trick for software distribution.

So let’s look at the competition. Who else hosts software for download like this?

The obvious candidate is Handango.

From Electronista:

Small developers who sell less than $250,000 in gross revenue will see exactly half of their income stripped from each sale — up from 40 percent, Handango reportedly says. More profitable firms will see even more money siphoned away, with all businesses selling between $250,000 and $1 million supplying 60 percent of their revenue and all larger outlets conceding 70 percent. The notice will be made public within a few days and should see the new distribution agreement take effect by March 15th, the alleged source indicates.

Handango makes Apple’s 30% seem like a bargain.

On the other hand, Mobihand gives developers 80%. What do we get for that extra 10%? I’m guessing we get placement on the device itself. Mobihand claims to have the lowest rates in the industry for application hosting.

MobiHand will pay to Content Provider 80% of Net Receipts occurring at www.mobihand.com and 60% of Net Receipts at all other channels.

So, Mobihand will charge you 20-40% of the cost of your software for hosting the sale depending on how and where they bought it.

Even at 30%, Apple’s deal is no strings, no nonsense and is going to have the advantage that every piece of software you see there will work on your iPhone.

And it’s shitloads better than Handango.