David Emery OnlineApp Store: I’m out.
I will never write another iPhone application for the App Store as currently constituted.
Writing software is a serious investment of time and energy. It also carries the opportunity cost of the other things you could have built. We live in a capitalist economy. Under capitalism, profit is the reward for economic risk. Without a reasonable expectation of profit, the sensible business-person will not invest. Without investment and risk-taking, there is no innovation.
Apple’s current practice of rejecting certain applications at the final hurdle – submission to the App Store – is disastrous for investor confidence. Developers are investing time and resources in the App Store marketplace and, if developers aren’t confident, they won’t invest in it. If developers – and serious developers at that – don’t invest, what’s the point?
I’m very concerned with the policy Apple is adopting with the approval process on the App Store – sure, the ‘I Am Rich’ fiasco made sense (it surely was causing problems with some users accidently buying it) but arbitrarily banning apps destroys developer confidence.
On the plus side, the backlash has been so widespread that I can’t help but think they’ll change their policies – they pretty much have to at this point.
Visit ➔The labels that turned the tables
Once upon a time, the major labels were king. They swept up sales in their velvety cloaks, showered money from the heavens, and defined the way you and I bought music. Now they’re shedding staff, dropping bands and losing their star names. Now the drivers of the record industry are small, maverick labels that define trends and launch careers. Some of them even sell records by the lorryload. And this autumn sees a spate of anniversaries in which these powerhouses of British music are celebrating their achievements.
Nice article on our little corner of the industry…
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Scrobble again
Back in February I talked about MobileScrobbler, the rather brilliant iPhone app that allowed you to scrobble to Last.fm directly from your iPhone.
Since February however a lot of things have happened in the iPhone ecosystem; most importantly the release of the 3G iPhone with the simultaneous release of iPhone OS version 2.0. With v2.0 we got the official App Store, which you would think was the natural home for the MobileScrobbler app but alas, no – MobileScrobbler has to run (obviously, if you think about it) as a background app to pay attention to what songs you are playing, and that’s not allowed with official apps. Also, I don’t think the forthcoming v2.1 update which includes push notifications for apps will help either (that’ll work great for things like IM apps, but not for things that need to monitor other apps on your phone).
To rub salt into the wound, MobileScrobbler has actually been turned into an official Last.fm app on the app store – removing the scrobbling and focusing on Last.fm radio playback (which I have no interest in), which means that all development on MobileScrobbler has stopped. And development is needed – unofficial apps made for iPhone...
Read more ➔EA Announces SimCity and The Sims 3 for the iPhone
EA has announced that nine new titles are currently in development for the iPhone: Yahtzee Adventures, EA Mini Golf, Lemonade Tycoon, Mahjong, Monopoly: Here & Now The World Edition, SimCity, Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 09, Need for Speed Undercover, and The Sims 3.
I am very excited by the prospect of SimCity for the iPhone – if they get it right it could be the perfect iPhone app.
Visit ➔First Look at Cappuccino and Objective-J
The executive summary is that Cappuccino is re-implementation of many of the basic parts of Cocoa, and Objective-J is a language which looks nearly identical to Objective-C and “compiles down” into JavaScript. You can also use JavaScript right inline with Objective-J, similar to how you can use C in Objective-C.
This looks very impressive, and can certainly make interesting looking apps but I’m really not comfortable working so abstracted away from the real code. Coding javascript, html and css well in a cross-browser way is hard and I’m not convinced that 280 North will have solved every problem and bug inherent in the medium.
What do you if your code is right but it doesn’t work? You’re so far away from the actual code you’ve got no chance.
I’m also still not convinced by web sites pretending to be desktop applications – they’re not, and the most successful ones (like Flickr and Gmail) don’t pretend to be.
Visit ➔So, how has the 'no iTunes' policy worked, then?
Inspired by Kid Rock’s success, his label decided – bemusingly – to pull Estelle’s six month old album from Apple, too.
How did that work out, then?
Estelle’s single plunged 26 places on the Billboard chart.
But the album – did that benefit?
Not really – that tanked over 100 places down the album chart.
Another smart move by the music industry, then. Well done, guys.
Well done indeed. I thought we were past this kind of rubbish?
Visit ➔O2 UK sets pay-as-you-go iPhone 3G prices, launch info
The official pricing for the unsubsidized phones is now much higher than for the devices on contract and will require £350 ($631) for an 8GB iPhone 3G and £400 ($721) for the 16GB version.
They’re going to sell shed-loads of these over Christmas at this price – for comparison the 8GB Nokia N95 currently sells for £449.95 on O2 Pay-As-You-Go.
Very impressive that you get a year’s free data as well…
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