I cannot believe it's already October, it's been a FAST year.
I've been finally getting down to studying the iPhone SDK, and watching the podcasts about iPhone development.
I have to say I really like the Apple resources and web site much better than the Microsoft one. While there's not as much content, the content that is there is organized much better and is more concise and useful.
I've recruited my brother to help me with doing some user input on my application and eventually some testing.
Just my take on the 'issues' with the iPhone and development.
There are lot's of articles and opinions flying around regarding the 'closed' system of the iPhone, and all the 'problems' with the model and environment so I thought I'd throw in my 2 cents in.
If you want to develop for the iPhone you basically have two choices right now. You can either sign up and become an Official iPhone developer with Apple, and paying the $100 fee that allows you to sign your iPhone applications, or you can work on the jailbroken iPhones and do basically whatever you want.
There are some advantages and disadvantages to each approach, first I'll just go over the Jailbroken option:
Advantages Jailbroken Development
1. You don't have to pay the $100 for Apple certificates.
2. You don't have to wait for Apple to review and approve your application, so you can write what you want, and distribute it however you want.
3. You can share tips and approachs on how to develop on the iPhone with other developers, just make sure you don't have too high a profile that Apple notices.
4. You don't have to share any profits you make on the apps you sell.
Disadvantages Jailbroken Development
1. You have to manage the distribution and sales of your application yourself, either using something as simple as paypal, or having a full blown e-store.
2. If Apple changes the API your app will break, and there's no guarantee that what you are using now will still be available.
3. You have to jailbreak your iPhone, and your customers will need to jailbreak their iPhone as well to use your apps.
4. There is no review process for applications, so your iPhone is vulnerable to malware and/or unstability.
5. You have to support installation and issues with your application directly with the users.
Advantages to official iPhone Development
1. Selling your application requires very little work on the developers point of view.
2. The API's you program against are supported by Apple and at this point are stable.
3. The customer base for non-jailbroken applications are much larger.
4. The customers experience is much simpler and more consistent, all the apps are installed and updated the same way.
5. Apple provides the direct support for getting the application installed on the iPhone, and provides a great feedback system for your application.
Disadvantages to official iPhone Development
1. Apple does review your app before making it available.
2. Apple could deny your iPhone application, although from what I've heard so far, none of the denials are a surprise.
3. If you have a hot-fix that needs to get pushed out, it still has to be reviewed before it's available.
4. There is still an NDA around almost all aspects of official iPhone development.
For me, the disadvantages are not things that I didn't know about coming in to the process. The advantages for Official iPhone development out weigh the choice of working on jailbroken iPhones.
Kind of a neat list, got this from a post on Lifehacker.com:
1. Do one thing at a time
2. Know the problem
3. Learn to listen
4. Learn to ask questions
5. Distinguish sense from nonsense
6. Accept change as inevitable
7. Admit mistakes
8. Say it simple
9. Be calm
10. Smile
The artist who did it was great, explained everything real well. If your interested here's a link to her My Space: Opal Moon Henna
I got my Figure Print, and I have to say I'm very impressed with it.
Everyone who's seen it says they are impressed with the details. Especially the Helm and the gun.
I have to say I'm extremely pleased with it, and I'll be ordering another one when I get my Dranei Priest up to level 70.
If you want your own (and you have a World of Warcraft account) you can sign up for the raffle at FigurePrints.
Well, my FigurePrint has arrived at my work. It hasn't been delivered to my desk yet, but now it's only a matter of time.
I'm excited, and can't wait to see what it looks like. A lot of the other guys in the office are looking forward to seeing what it looks like, so it'll probably be a pretty decent geek gawk fest at my cube when it gets here :)
I love being a geek!!!
Well it's still running quite well, about the only thing that's not working although it has improved is the application installation and updating.
I still get apps that I cannot update (I get an error message in iTunes when I sync), and now it looks like apps that I've purchased on the iPhone aren't making it back to iTunes.
It's not to hard to fix, I just delete whatever app is causing problems, and then re-download it for free. They really got that right, and it's worked very well knowing what apps I've already purchased and I can just download them for free so it's not really hard to work around it.
I've definitely noticed two things, my 3G signal is noticeably stronger in places where it was weak before. My battery life has definitely improved quite a bit.
I need to get going on a couple of things, one of them is learning the iPhone SDK.
Well, had a pretty good weekend. Got to go riding with a good friend on Saturday, and aside from the financial news yesterday and this morning this week is starting out pretty good (I work in the Mortgage Insurance Industry, the AIG news is a concern)
The iPhone update has been on my phone since about 6pm on Friday, and I've been using it quite a bit. I wanted to wait until I got to work to test the 3G connectivity, I could connect at my desk, but it was barely a single bar. Today I'm happy to say I have minimum 2 bars, and usually 3 or more bars.
The other fixes have worked great, no need to reboot at all since I patched on Friday, and they also fixed the security issue with the Emergency Call and double home button press. No crashes, no problems with calls (but I really didn't notice any problems before). I did have to delete two apps that had pending 'updates' that didn't exist, but after I did that syncing is LIGHTNING fast, yes Lightning. Under 30 seconds usually.
Overall I'm very happy once again, the world is right :)
WOOOT, it's finally here.
And from what I'm reading on the blogs, it sounds like this is the 1.4 patch that makes the new 3G iPhone fully functional :)
Probably the biggest things for me in the new update are:
1. You can update your apps without problems
2. App crashing is fixed
3. Apps are more responsive
4. Backups are faster
5. Improved signal
Probably 3 and 4 are a toss up in which is more important, but the updating and crashing of apps is a HUGE thing. I pretty much had stopped trying to update or get new apps because of having to wipe my iPhone twice completely and set everything up from scratch.
I've also heard that the dropped call issue is really fixed, but honestly I really haven't had that problem.
Time to rush home and install the update :)
