Apple leaves would-be iPhone developers hanging for the moment - Page 3

My previous statement was general in reference. It wasn't intended to be linked directly to the iPhone SDK.

Except for right before/after MacWorld.


Microsoft's, Intel's, etc., stock didn't drop like Apple's.

That's just how iTards behave!

I was under the impression that Apple will only accept enterprise application to test their network settings and custom made applications on the iPhone. I don't think Apple will give access to anyone yet because they really don't want to see their iPhone 2.0 software being distributed via torrent just like Leopard Beta.

I don't see why everyone is rushing, still long way until Jun. In my opinion Apple released this Beta SDK to meet the deadline and familiarize developers with the SDK, specially those who never used xcode, before the actual release of the App Store service.

Sounds like whining to me, another case of "Apple won't do what I want them to." Apple haven't "ditched" him, they've just not chosen him for the beta-test programme - he'll be able to use the SDK like everyone else when it's released.

It's not our business how Apple chooses it's beta-testers, and this isn't the first beta-test in history to be limited - I've applied for several in recent years and never received a reply from any of them.

Perhaps you should look up the words "liar, slander and libel."

I challenge you to support your accusation. Not with hearsay, not what you think you know or not what you would only say behind his back, but what you would say to his face, and with substantiated proof. Either that, or just shut up.

cc: moderator

You make incorrect assumptions. do you know if any of that will work if you had access to ver 2 of the software?

No.

Hmm. Last time this was brought up, it was 80+%. Interesting trend.

Besides, Symbian is too limited. Even Nokia is moving to Linux for its more sophisticated systems.

No problem with trust.

Just some people being a bit naive about the way misdirection works in business.

That's because those companies are much less tied to consumer sales. Both have sales that will continue to rely on government an large business, both of which don't change their plans as much during a recession as consumers do.

Can you elaborate? What do you mean by misdirection?

True. I didn't think of that...

I shut up. I worded my original response badly.

Consumer companies in particular are dependent on a very fickle potential clientele. Whereas business and government buyers know what they need, and will pursue their plans for years, the consumer will change plans in an instant if something cooler, or cheaper, or prettier shows up at the last moment.

New ideas are also hard to come by, as are better implementations of current ones.

Often consumer companies that telegraph their intentions are caught up short by their competitors who can come to market with a copy before their own product comes out. This is more true today than ever in the past, as Asian companies come out with knockoffs rapidly.

Jobs attempts to get around all the speculation about Apple's plans by misdirecting those who try to anticipate them. Unfortunately, Apple has become the most watched consumer company of all time. Every day, pundits are speculating about any new products Apple may come out with. This continues here, on the rumors sites.

By attempting to mislead other companies as to the direction Apple is going in, he hopes to gain a few precious months.

Remember the surprise engendered by the necessity of announcing the iPhone six months in advance? There was shock. There was also speculation that it would give competitors too much of a leg up. Fortunately, the OX is at the heart of the system, and that can't be duplicated so easily by others, though they have tried to copy the physical product.

So, jobs says that people aren't interested in portable video players. He gives good reasons. He shows that they don't work well. That there isn't a good business model around for their profitability. He points out that they aren't selling. All of which is true. Then he says that Apple isn't interested.

A year or so later, he comes out with a much better product than the competition, with a much better business model, and the products sell.

Misdirection. And it hasn't hurt anyone except Apple's competitors. The advantage is to the consumers.

MODERATOR NOTE:

To clarify, personal insults/attacks on non-AI-members, such as Mr. Jobs, are in general allowed as long as they are not excessive or gratuitous.

I point this out to emphasize that the same attack/name-calling directed at posters/members in the thread or elsewhere on this site is absolutely forbidden and will not be tolerated.

Translation: call Jobs a liar, call Nixon a liar, call Michael Dell an asshole, but do not call any of the posters here a liar. Or any other derogatory term.

Exactly! You make my point! The Simulator is supposed to fill the void until the version 2 software (ability to test on the real devices) is generally available-- allowing the "unaccepted developers" to begin writing and testing code, now, on the simulator; and later, on the device, when the ver 2 (or 1.2 beta) software becomes available.

To better understand, I suggest that you:

1) Register for the SDK so you have access to the following (not the same as applying for acceptance)
2) Download and install the SDK
3) Download and view the 10 SDK videos.
4) Review the online documentation
5) Download the Sample Programs
6) Try to Build and Run all 27 Sample Programs-- to familiarize yourself with XCode differences for the iPhone, the Simulator, see examples of working programs and examine the code (invaluable for learning, IMO)
7) Create/build/run/examine a new app using the Cocoa Touch "List" template (no coding required)
8) Create/build/run/examine a new app using the Cocoa Touch "Toolbar" template (no coding required)
9) Create/build/run/examine a simple new app, from scratch, using the Cocoa Touch "Application" template-- here, you will need to write code for the app and for the UI components (Interface Builder is not yet available for the SDK)

Finally, after many hours, you are ready to start coding some apps that take advantage of the neat features that make the iPhone unique.

You can't! The Simulator doesn't support them!

Worse, because of the Widget-like structure of iPhone apps (everything in your face), you can't even partially-test your app (avoiding testing of not-yet-supported features). XCode iPhone won't compile the app, or the Simulator won't load it!

About the only thing you can do is break the app into pieces so can test the UI navigation with an empty screen/stage for the app to do its thing... ...useful... eh, maybe.... ...but not very productive.

So, after all your time spent reading docs, reviewing videos, dissecting program examples, etc. you have all this pent up "new knowledge" and the compelling desire to put it to use. But you really can't... ...you're left with scraps. Disappointed! Frustrated!

Apple went to a lot of effort and expense to encourage (court) prospective iPhone developers... There are doubts that "disappointed and frustrated" is the mindset they were shooting for!

Again, my issues are mostly with the Simulator deficiencies and the missing Interface Builder piece. They have nothing to do with availability of the 1.2 beta of the 2.0 iPhone software.

I haven't coded for almost 10 years, so whether I want to bother with that is something I haven't decided yet.

I just find it interesting that reports from developers in general don't seem to have mentioned all of your problems. Unless you're saying that all of them have somehow been accepted by Apple.

The pieces that are missing for you are likely missing for everyone, even those they have accepted. The only difference is the ver 2.0 software.

Even so, I don't think it to be a problem. Apple will start accepting more requests, and everyone will be happy..

I sent a note to Steve Jobs public email address asking about when we can expect to get certificates. I got back a reply within a few hours:

Obviously it is not either/or. There is an open beta segment that allows any dev access to part of the SDK using the simulator.

Then there is the closed beta (the topic of the letter) to which fuller access is given.


LOL. Riiight. Let's compare and contrast with the MS Surface SDK non-Beta.

Dick, buy a clue. If you were a Tier 1 dev you'd be in the closed beta. You aren't. Deal. There isn't likely a single important Apple partner that couldn't get into the closed portion if they wanted to by making a phone call.

At least you HAVE a SDK and simulator to play with. And of the missing features, you can spend your time getting proficient with the SDK and platform access you have until you get into closed beta.

In fact, I am "Deal"ing... You are correct, that we, Tier n developers, have the SDK and Simulator to play with.

However, as one who has spent many hours with the SDK-- I think that my opinions, based on actual experience, should be given equal credence with those who merely pontificate on how good/bad the SDK is, after watching a preso and reading a few articles.

With all due respect!

With all due respect, you still haven't shown any differences between what you received, and what registered developers have received, other than the beta ver 2 software.

That is a straw-man, I cannot describe how an existing product in-hand differs from a product unseen.

But, some seem to be able opine on both, unseen!

You don't have a clue what you're talking about.
First, please show us where Apple says the SDK will work fine for a generic off the shelf phone, without any upgrade towards 2.0.
Second, please explain how the SDK doesn't take advantage of, or rely upon, all the neat stuff that iPhone 2.0 will have but yet allow developers to build towards THAT version of the phone?
Third, please show us ANYTHING from Apple that says that the SDK was released to fill any void between now and the June release.

Get real, stop making stuff up.
The SDK will show you how to do a lot of things, but it won't be as good as it gets, if you're not in the program.
In the meantime, do the best you can and quit bitching like babies.
They didn't have to go as far as they did, so enjoy what you to.

Mmmm... I want to write a game that uses the accelerometers and Open GL ES. Neither of these neat features* are supported by the Simulator. You can't even compile the program and deploy it to the Simulator... so, you can write the code and look at it, but you can't see if/how it works and performs.

* or the camera, microphone, locator

Those are facts, not opinions!

I didn't say you couldn't write something that use the hardware in the phone.
Try splaining how the new features that are added in 2.0, that are NOT in 1.0, will be useful to you in the SDK.

Can't?

Thought so.

Move on.....

What does that have to do with anything?

The title of this thread is:

AppleInsider > iPhone > Apple leaves would-be iPhone developers hanging for the moment

I happen to be a would-be iPhone developer who is hanging at the moment. All of my posts have tried to expain why.

This is the point I'm trying to make. You don't know if there is any difference. It's quite possible that those who are registered have about the same problems at this time.

This is an early look. It's possible the ver 2 beta software helps, and it's possible, that it too, being in beta, is in the same shape as the simulator. Apple could very well have not yet finished the kit.

I'm not responding the the "thread".
I responded to your post.

You seem to indicate that you think the SDK should work without you getting any upgrades to the phone.
In other words, the SDK (even though the S stands for software) should work with the current hardware even though you can't upgrade the software in the phone to the level it will need to be, in June.

Think about it.

The iPhone 2.0 will have very different SOFTWARE in it, in June.
The features we all saw, the mail, the other stuff pushing and polling and other game playing features with the acceleromter require that something MAY need to be upgraded in the OS running on the hardware. (the 2.0 version of the iPhone is a software upgrade, NOT hardware)

So YOU want to complain the SDK doesn't work with the old 1.0 OS on the hardware, when clearly you need the refresh the OS in the hardware in order to take advantage of all the stuff you're supposed to be able to do with it.

So stop complaining, if you're not in the program, then you can build stuff with th SDK and play around. But if you're not in the program you don't have EVERYTHING you need.
And it's NOT a hardware problem. Included with the June release is a OS 2.0 software upgrade to the hardware which you NEED in order to make it run right.

Since you can't have that, don't complain the SDK doesn't work because THAT's not the problem. It's like complaining you're running Windows 95 on your desktop and complain you can't build applications for Vista. You don't have the OS to run it, right?
Well your 1.0 iPhone (or picka version less than 2.0) doesn't have all the hooks it would need.
And they ain't gonna send 100,000 copies of that out into the phone world so get over it....

You may be a software developer, but you'll have to do with what you can make happen with the SDK and the 1.x version of the iPhone world until you either get inside the program or June rolls around and they release the iPhone 2.0 pack.

But let's all stop balling about it, this is how this has to work.
It's not any different than other beta programs I've been in, you're either in officially, or reading a lot of stuff and playing with pieces of demos.
You're lucky to have the pieces you have, every program I've been in at MicroSoft would'a kept you in the dark until June.

One of the complaints, if you've been reading my posts as well, is that he isn't getting the ver 2 beta software for the phone which will, depending on the beta status, give him the ability of testing his apps on the phone itself. Those who have been able to register have gotten that beta, or at least the tier 1 developers have. I'm not certain.

Es obvio que los comentaristas de la élite no entienden las palabras que digo. ¡Tal es vida! ¡Por esa razón, no perderé toda nuestra tiempo para que decir más, excepto puede ustedes tener una buena vida!

AltaVista much?

I think you want iniciado-de-la-manzana.com.

Well, I'm sorry that Apple doesn't respect you as much as Adobe. However, the SDK seems okay from a very cursory look at it. We haven't upgraded to Leopard yet but we'll be developing for the iPhone this summer.


So compile your GL ES code and test it on the desktop. The core code should port relatively well to the final SDK in June. The accelerometer will likely be accessible via the HID manager and I think there is a wiimote HID driver that someone wrote. You can test your game play that way and that should port reasonably cleanly.

Or you can look at the Torque game builder and have a cross platform game engine that likely (I didn't see any official note but didn't look either) that should eventually work on the iPhone. It already supports OSX and the Wii. There's likely accelerometer support in there somewhere.

If you're the same guy that ported ColdFusion MX to OSX this is not a showstopper by any means. I dunno why you'd cut Adobe more slack than Apple anyway.

Actually, I was being optimistic at 70+

"In Q4 2007, Canalys estimates that Symbian had a 65% share of worldwide converged device shipments, ahead of Microsoft on 12% and RIM on 11%. By region, Symbian led in APAC and EMEA with 85% and 80% shares respectively, while in North America RIM was the clear leader on 42%, ahead of Apple on 27% and Microsoft at 21%."

http://www.canalys.com/pr/2008/r2008021.htm

More at http://www.symbian.com/about/fastfacts/fastfacts.html also

It's certainly been dipping as the smartphone market grows in the USA and the traditional Symbian companies such as Nokia and SE continue to be unpopular with US phone purchasers and carriers. It's growing there faster than elsewhere largely because it was so small until recently by comparison to Europe and Asia.

Has anyone had trouble getting the values of instance variables to show up in the Xcode debugger?

Any classes that are based on an iPhone API class show only the name, type and address of their instance variables, not the values.

Regular C scalars and OS X API instance variables show up fine.

I'm wondering if there is a setting that I missed.

If anyone has the SDK, could you use Debug build, put a breakpoint somewhere after some variables should have values, and let me know what you get in the debugger? I'd appreciate it.

I wasn't going to post anymore to this thread, but you have provided some useful information and I wanted to thank you.

1) To clear the air: My "with all due respect" comment wasn't directed at Apple. Rather, it was directed at posters to this forum, who were offering opinions on how good/bad the SDK is without ever having downloaded (looked at) it.

2) You cannot compile OpenGL ES for the Desktop as there is no OpenGL ES framework for Mac OS X, only for ARM. Apple could/should (likely will) implement an OpenGL ES framework that runs on the desktop and, therefore, can be used by the Simulator. I wouldn't even consider trying to do this myself-- apparently it is difficult for even Apple to implement. So, for now, OpenGL ES program testing is for real ARM devices only.

As an aside, Apple has made significant changes to XCode and the Interface Builder. It is a work-in-process but they are restructuring things to support multiple platforms (different from UB on OS X, or other releases of OS X). /Developer/Platforms currently shows the following directories:

--Aspen.platform (ARM with all iPhone frameworks, including OpenGL ES)
--AspenSimulator.platform (i386 with most iPhone frameworks, excluding OpenGL ES)
--MacOSX.platform (i386, PPC frameworks for the Mac OS thaty we know and love-- OpenGL, but no OpenGL ES)

This seems, spiffier and gives flexibility to implement other platform targets for OS X development.

3) It may be that no one outside of Apple has the ability to run on the actual devices:

http://daringfireball.net/2008/03/so_whos_in_already

4) The Accelerometer frameworks are supported in the Simulator but there doesn't seem to be any way to provide Accelerometer input to the simulator.

5) Based on your suggestion, I googled for "wiimote HID driver" and was able to find an excellent working example (including source):

http://blog.hiroaki.jp/2006/12/000433.html

Works great with Front Row!

So, if you have a Wii, you should be able cobble together the components to test on the desktop. Aside: It would be nice if Apple enabled BlueTooth on the iPhone so it could be used instead of a Wii Remote.

6) I have download the Torque Game Builder and will have a look at that, as it may be a fast(er) path than waiting for the missing pieces of the SDK to arrive. I am not really interested in writing games-- I used that as an easy-to-understand example of apps I want to write that use Accelerometers and OpenGL ES.

Finally, Yes I am the guy that ported ColdFusion MX to OS X. But that was more an exercise in patience, tenacity (stubbornness) than technical expertise-- All I had to learn was: a little Linux, a little OS X Unix, a PC simulator and ColdFusion MX... with a well-defined origin and target. This pales in comparison to the effort to try and become proficient in Objective-C, Frameworks, XCode, Interface Builder, iPhone, Simulator, etc... to the point of being able write an acceptable iPhone app.

Again, thank you for the suggestions-- I think they will open a workable path and may help others who are facing the same roadblocks.

Ah, my bad. I toyed with gDEBugger (looking at potential tool chains) and I know it supports ES but never did any ES stuff. Primarily I do DirectX/.NET and dabble with the wiimote and a little JOGL.


Nice. And yes, it would be nice to use the iPhone via BT for a variety of things...


Good luck. On the other hand there are a bunch of cool things to fiddle with between now and June that you don't REALLY need to bang your head against any unnecessary iPhone SDK walls unless time to market is a dominating force for you. Getting a good preview on basic SDK stuff is likely good enough for a couple weeks and then moving on to something else until June.

I wasn't kidding when I said compare access to the iPhone to that of Surface. The only things we get are from the dev team blogs and some general "get smart about WPF or XNA" suggestions. Mmmmkay...yeah...get smart on WPF or XNA...thaaanks.

Exactly! I have an app in mind that would use the accelerometers. However, in order to even figure out how to go about writing the app, I need to write some test programs and see how they behave on a real device. Now, I can't even confirm that the test programs work on the Simulator.

If I have to sit around and wait until June before I can even figure out how the app that I am trying to do might work, I might as well pick something else to work on.

All I want is the ability to load my code on a device and see how it works. Why is that something that I have to wait until June to be able to do?

I guess Apple doesn't care. They got the cash out of me buying a new MacBook Pro to do iPod touch development on. It seems a shame that the MacBook will spend its time running Windows and the Symbian development tools instead of MacOS and Xcode.

alan

You should sue Apple. How dare they force you to buy a MBP to develop on with their SDK and then not give you access to the limited access beta of the iPhone OS that was never mentioned or promised. I think you have a solid case here!

Gee, is it possible to have a serious discussion on this forum?

I love my new MBP. Glad that I bought it. It is the best Wintel notebook that I have ever used (single button trackpad not withstanding).

As I said, it is a shame that I am running Windows on it to build Symbian apps. Not sure how it benefits Apple to have me going down that path instead of working on my iPhone app that would sell iPhones in market segments that would probably not have thought of buying an iPhone.

alan

You're new here. Generally it's possible, more so than most Apple sites even, although any dissent or criticism of Apple is jumped on by at least one fanboy* that can't see the wider picture.

When it comes to phones, the completely weird, back-assward nature of the market in the USA has a certain sway on one's belief in Apple's one true way. Just sigh and walk away from the keyboard.


* not that solipism usually is.