Am iWasting my time writing iPhone apps?
A week ago, Apple introduced the iPhone SDK to us mere mortals. It was a wonderful gesture by Apple to allow us to write apps for one of the best phones ever made. However, the SDK’s limitations and other issues are killing my enthusiasm for developing for it.
The $99 entry fee doesn’t bother me. I understand why Apple’s charging that much for it. You need a digital signature so that malicious code can be traced back to the owner, and technical support from Apple was never free. Also, Apple will be hosting the app for you.
The problems come with what the SDK is incapable of doing. You can’t interface with the dock connector, you can’t record audio, and you can’t record video. This is a serious detriment to what I wanted to develop, and I’m sure there are many people working on social networking apps such as seesmic and qik that are pretty ticked off about this as well. If you wanted to post audio to utterz, you have to use the dial-in method, but you still can’t post video. There’s also no GSM on the iPhone which makes geotagging impossible.
One other issue that bothers me is that when the phone rings, your app has to quit right then and there. Now, what if I don’t want to answer the phone? Granted, I don’t expect the iPhone to be running mission critical apps, but the user should decide if they want to answer the phone or not.
There’s one last issue that’s been gnawing at me. I signed up to be an iPhone developer a week ago. I have this app that I’ve been writing for Mac OS X using Cocoa which will port very easily to the iPhone. However, I haven’t heard back from Apple yet. Now, let’s say you’re an independent developer and want to write some freeware apps for the phone. You get all excited to write for it, you hunker down and start coding like a madman, and what if Apple thumbs their nose at you and says “sorry, you haven’t been selected”? So far, I don’t know anyone that’s been selected, but I’ll bet there are a lot of people out there that are expecting to be. This would be a serious slap in the face to the developer community and really needs to be addressed very soon. Apple needs to start sending out developer approvals 10 minutes ago.
Still, I feel bad for the developers that Apple refuses to make the iPhone more social media capable. Maybe iPhone 2.0 with 3G will be what we always wanted, but in the meantime, I’ll have to use my Nokia N95 for social media.
As for the iPhone vs. the N95, that’s a different post.
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Comments
How can I “do what I like” when Apple won’t approve people and cripples the API? Did you actually read the post?
Nah, it’s not a waste. You’re just temporarily discouraged at the limitations you’ve encountered.
Hey, the features you want aren’t available on every phone, are they?
Cater to the iPhone audience. You can make some money and keep planning for the day when you *can* do the kind of iPhone app you want. And by then, you could be a better coder too.
Chin up!
Mike,
It’s that, but mainly that Apple’s been strangely quiet about approving people. I wish they’d do it faster before we get discouraged.
[...] I just got DENIED Apple iPhone Developer status. I’ve been working on a killer app (yes, really) for a few weeks now on the Mac and wanted to port it to the iPhone, but now I can’t because I can’t put the f’n app on the iPhone. Funny that I blogged about it yesterday and I predicted this would be an issue. Starman’s Blog
Hey Mike,
Just let me say this, AT LEAST YOU HAVE iPHONE! Here in Canada, we are still waiting. How about you develop a cell phone company that will carry iPhone.
Then we will talk!
Miranda
I haven’t spend much time with the SDK yet, but it sure looks like you will be able to record audio. I even remember a line in the documenation that says something about if a pair of headphones is plugged in with microphone capabilities, then the build in mic will be disabled. Actually, on the home page of developer.apple.com/iphone there is a “How Do I… Record audio…”
Its probably a little premature to say that you can’t access the doc or record video yet. They might still wash out too.
Ed: you’re right. I was going by what another developer said about the SDK and I must have skipped over that point on the dev site. Still, you can’t seem to record video.
Miranda: Move to the U.S. 
A Vote Of Confidence For You… Read-on.
After working with Apple for 10 days over an error message I was receiving (when trying to upgrade my iPod touch to v2.0), I finally got the software installed. (had to accept the error and get on with my life, Apple never solved it -6972)
The only application in the entire App Store collection which I felt was worth having is Michael Gaines’s, “WarcraftStat”.
Reading the reviews of hundreds of applications leads me to believe the whole App Store thing is a silly game Apple is playing with it’s customers. Most of the applications are nothing more than web-apps, re-packaged into “local” programs. The programs are trivial, many are written in great haste, and there are even a few the developer’s themselves admit are not usable! (why those are still on the site is nothing but pure greed on Apple’s part, less Apps means less visitors, and less revenue)
There are no Database applications (other than task list and note-pad apps)
There are no Spreadsheet Apps.
There are no PIM Apps. (My Palm TX is safe from obsolescence, sure you can use “Contacts”, and warped “hacks” in Photos as well as pre-record your own audio… sloppy)
There are no applications that use the accelerometer other than as a tilt-sensor (games) or as a simple low-frequency sound recorder, where are the 1/4 mile acceleration apps? How about an application that uses the accelormeter to measure power output from a vehicle? (weight of vehicle, force of acceleration, time = horsepower)
And still no cut-n-paste!
Ok, I’m sorry, I got carried away… using Michael’s bolg as a platform to vent my frust.
Good job on WarcraftStat!
Keep it up guy!
You should read http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2008/03/13/iphone-20-sdk-the-no-multitasking-myth/
And then you should also know that “can not” is only ‘legal speak’, it really means; “you must ask, and/or pay”.
SUN will be allowed to run interpreted code, if they ask and/or pay.
The Adium team will get to run in the background, if they ask and/or pay.