anyone tried developing iPhone apps?

[chopperdudes]

school's nearing and i'm tired of my fri-sat-sun evening part-time below-minimum-wage waiter job at a friend's restaurant. like almost everyone on this forum, i'm a coder, and like almost everyone in ontario, i started with turing. i wouldn't say i'm a good coder, just competent enough to make small games. coding the likes of minesweeper can sometimes take away an hour or 2 of boredom, but the full mario clone including cheats took over 3000 lines (which got me a perfect for my final ISU). of course this is all with turing as i do not know graphics in java yet.

algorithm wise i'd say i'm above average, but nowhere near good. i did win the $100 prize for junior CCC last year, but am now frantically trying to prepare myself for Senior to come this year. anyways... enough with the story.

so i'm tired of my job, got a bit of money, got a few friends that are coders, and was wondering how we could get small jobs on something we love (an no we don't love working as a waiter). so we looked into the apple iPhone apps. we read alot of successful stories, but are quite hesitant to believe that that is the norm (at least after the iPhone app has opened to public for almost a year i believe). for $99 this could be considered a cheap risk (or just pay to gain experience and what not). and we can use the mac one of our friends have. however, what i would really like to hear is if anyone here has tried to develop and/or sell iPhone apps, and if so, what are your experiences and how much money were you able to make.

thx alot

[rdrake]

My summer job required me to develop educational resources for the iPhone platform. I have not sold anything.

My experiences have been somewhat positive. The platform is ridiculously restrictive and the certificates are rather annoying. Getting used to the language isn't too bad, but using it properly takes some work, particularly with regards to memory management. It may use Obj-C 2.0, but you have no garbage collection on the iPhone.

Some things are nicely done, others I find lacking. Up until recently there wasn't even an API to manage your data (no, a C API to sqlite doesn't count).

If you want a sample application to have a look at, you can check out one of my example programs located over at Github.

Any questions in particular?

[DtY]

I've been playing around with it a bit.
If you go to developer.apple.com and apply for a developer account (for free), you can download the complete API and start paying. The $99 is only to put the application on an actual iphone (instead of using the iphone simulator on your computer) or to put it into the app store.

[chopperdudes]

i'm more interested in terms of money (if i'll make any is the big question, not rly how much). and if it's actually worth it and there's a market to explore. i do know the 99 is for putting apps on the store, but i first need access to a mac =) lol. once i do, i'll play around with it and see how it goes.

so rdrake, what did you find lacking? (besides the fact that there wasn't an API) were there wheels you'd have to reinvent? and elaborate on the restrictive platform?

[rdrake]

chopperdudes @ Mon Aug 24, 2009 11:25 pm wrote:

so rdrake, what did you find lacking? (besides the fact that there wasn't an API) were there wheels you'd have to reinvent?

It was mostly the lack of any decent data API that really annoyed me. Most of the other bits are ok (that is to say I can't recall any more annoyances at this point in time).

chopperdudes @ Mon Aug 24, 2009 11:25 pm wrote:

and elaborate on the restrictive platform?

Let's say you write an application. You're happy with it, you paid your $99 to Apple, and you submit it for sale in the application store. Apple doesn't like it, your app is rejected, too bad.

You can't install what you want when you want. I can see them charging money for their services in adding the application to the app store, but I think it's ridiculous to charge money to developers to test their applications on an actual device.

[Dan]

chopperdudes @ 24th August 2009, 11:25 pm wrote:

i'm more interested in terms of money (if i'll make any is the big question, not rly how much). and if it's actually worth it and there's a market to explore. i do know the 99 is for putting apps on the store, but i first need access to a mac =) lol. once i do, i'll play around with it and see how it goes.

Apple resvers the right to force you to refunded purchaes of your application, plus the fee/share apple gets, at any time.1

There is also the posblity that apple will review your app and not acpect it from some trival (and inconsitent) reasson(s) and is under investagtion of the FCC due to doing just this for a google voice app. 2

Also there are reports of delays in payments to app devlopers and horiable custmer serivce. 3

So in the worst case you could lose money (on top of the fees to get it in the store), time and end up with an app no one can use unless they jail break there iPhone.

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1 http://gadgets.boingboing.net/2009/03/26/report-apple-forces.html
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/25/apples-iphone-app-refund-policies-could-bankrupt-developers/

2 http://www.tuaw.com/2009/08/22/distinctions-without-differences-apples-inconsistent-app-store/
http://mashable.com/2009/07/31/google-voice-ban/
http://chillix.wordpress.com/2009/05/29/another-app-store-rejection-story/
There are many other cases for app rejection you can find with some googling that are even more crazy.

3 http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/03/24/iphone-app-developers-gripe-about-payment-delays-and-dismal-customer-service/

[octopi]

On the other-hand, blackberry development is both easy and free (or near free).

All blackberry stuff is based on java, so if you already know java it won't be too difficult. It comes with a simulator for testing your applications, and if you have a physical blackberry you can put your programs on it for free depending how complex your code is.

The only catch (and it's a minor one IMO), is if you want to use certain API features you need to register with RIM for 20$ (USD). They will give you a set of code signing keys, which allows you to sign your code, so it'll run on the device. If you don't use those certain features then you don't ever have to pay anything.

The restricted features cover things like storing data on the blackberry, adding global menu items (for example add a menu option to the calander program which will send data to your program when clicked), etc...

There are some catches, the on device dubugging isn't too great, for my phone they hadn't yet released the proper files, so I was only able to view simple types in the debugger (when connected to a physical device), complex types would just show the references. It's also fairly complex when it comes to dealing with data connections, for example when the service goes in and out, blackberries also (IMO) as reliable with data services as iPhone is.

I was able to make a pretty good looking and successful application for our workplace which keeps track of all on-site service calls, kilometers driven, parts used, etc in about a month's worth of time.

[DtY]

The blackberry doesn't have a store though does it, so selling a blackberry application would be done by the developer, which would be considerably harder.

[octopi]

http://na.blackberry.com/eng/services/appworld/?

I've never used it, so can't speak. I would think if your app is good enough to be popular in an 'App Store' then it should be good enough to survive on its own. It's not too hard to integrate paypal for purchases. Its also very easy to make applications install from a website. You just put your applications files up (jad, cod files) then set your server to send the correct content types for those files, and that's it-just send the user to the jad file, and it'll install it on the phone (after getting confirmation from user)



Edit: fees for blackberry app world are a little different than iPhone, here its a 200usd fee, which allows you to publish 10 apps, or 1 app, and 9 updates. However there doesn't appear to be any commission.

[DtY]

Just realized my post looks a little rude. That was, "does the blackberry have an app store like the ipod? I haven't heard of it"
If you can write an app that gets popular on the ipod app store (or other smart phone equivalent) it would probably be okay on it's own, however, most software wont get there, and which would you rather do (1) press a button, enter your password on an ipod (or other smart phone) and have it or (2) Find out about the software somewhere (hard part) going to the website, entering your paypal information, buying, manually putting it on your phone.
You have to do the marketing yourself, buy web hosting, buy advertising probably, of course that's more work than submitting it to the app store, and having people see it there when they search.

[Dan]

I hate to support Microsoft, but Windows Moblie might be one of the most open mobile development platforms other then android and there is a version of the app store (Windows Market Place) witch does have an app to access it from the phone (tho it may not be installed on all WM phones).

Your not forced to sell your app threw them, there are several unoffical WM application stores and you can sell it off your own site. There is no cost to test your app on your phone as Microsoft does not control your phone, you do. There is the same $99 cost to list your app in the Market Place however and there are rules and a reivew process (tho less strict then apples).

Windows Moblie is big on .NET but it is also possible to install a JVM and run byte code (java).

According to Wikipedia 1 windows mobile has 12.4% market share, BlackBerry has 19.5% and iPhone only has 10.7% so it might make sence to target those markets before the iPhone (consdiering the risk with iPhone devlopment). Also Symbian seems to have the largets share at 47.1% despite not being very visible.

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1 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone

[rdrake]

Anybody looking to do BlackBerry development on their own absolutely has to read this article. I'm sure a lot of the advertising/customer relations/etc. information is applicable to just about any mobile platform as well.

And just for clarification, there is one official application store for the BlackBerry as well as at least 3 unofficial ones that have been around for quite some time.

[Joel92]

I'm currently learning Objective-C then will learn Cocoa/Cocoa touch and try to develop some apps.


If money is all you care about, and you don't want to wait to learn ObjC/Cocoa well I guess you could just sub-contract/outsource some apps? Although, you'd still need your developers license.

[wtd]

Developing for Blackberry/WinMo/Android phones has a few big drawbacks. To name a couple that spring to mind:

Hardware differences. Any of those three run on sometimes subtly and sometimes wildly varying hardware configurations. When you're writing your app, can you count on a touchscreen? No. Can you count on it having a fast processor or decent amounts of memory? No. Can you count on a high resolution screen? No. You are left to either dramatically restrict the features in your application or dramatically limit your target market and confuse your potential customers.

Discoverability. The iPhone has a tremendously active community of users and developers who not only get the word out to the hardcore fans but also to ordinary users. Good apps get noticed and publicized to a wide market. It has been my observation that there is significantly less of this surrounding the other platforms.

[Dan]

But at what cost WTD?

The total removal of any real freedom to develop what you want, unfairly removing all comptition (no duplicate functionality) and requiring the aproval of apple for everything you want to distrubte?

Besides just like in the PC world, there are soultions to devloping for verying hardware.