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The past couple of weeks I’ve been playing with mobile apps development, both for Android and for iOS (meaning iPhone and iPad in layman’s terms). Being an open source kinda guy and very familiar with Java I immediately felt very comfortable with the Android SDK and the platform as a whole. It really is a great platform and very viable for creating great apps and experiences for mobile devices. However, there are a couple of key issues that I believe need to be fixed in order to push Android to the next level.

First and foremost, paid apps are still not available everywhere. Only users in a few select countries can download apps from Android Market that cost money and, even worse, developers in even fewer countries can publish non-free apps for people to buy. As a mere users there are ways around this but if you’re - like me - a Swedish developer there’s no way to get paid for your efforts. This is a really big deal since developers outside of the nine supported merchant countries also need to eat and pay the bills or whatever it is you use money for. Sure, one might claim that true hardcore developers will develop awesome apps anyway and give them away on Android Market because digital creativity is in our nature and this is true to some extent. But at the end of the day money is one of the best incentives out there and the fact that many potential Android developers can’t charge for their apps is most surely causing a lot of app-awesomeness from happening and keeping the platform from experiencing the kind of “gold-rush” that iOS is having.  It may even be driving some developers to the iOS-platform instead since they might reckon that if they can’t paid why should they bother with the platform anyway?

I don’t see what the frackin’ hold-up is here really. So Google, get off your asses and make this happen sooner than later. Market needs to have paid apps and developers getting paid everywhere, OK?

Another thing that is painfully obvious when you look at the variety of Android devices out there is that the hardware companies that sell them, companies like HTC, SonyEricsson and Samsung, care only about selling new devices. They have very little interest in delivering software updates for devices that customers have already bought. I mean, it took HTC a full year to push out an OS-upgrade for the HTC Hero and SonyEricsson is at this moment selling Android 1.6 devices with the plan to update them to 2.1 around New Year. Meanwhile, FroYo (Android 2.2) devices are starting to hit the market and the specs for 3.0 are already out there.

I fully understand that it may not be easy for these companies that are primarily manufacturers of hardware to wrap their business models and brains around the fact that these days, with mobile phones becoming more and more like “real” computers, software matters more than hardware. A mobile phone will become obsolete a lot faster due to an old OS than due to year-old hardware. So something needs to be done about this. HTC and others need to take care of their customers and push out the updates a lot quicker because not everybody wants to (or can) buy a new $500 mobile phone every three months just to get the latest software. Maybe Google should set up some sort of centralized repository that the makers of Android phones could use to make sure they’re all in sync with each other and with what’s new? I don’t know, but something should be done to keep the platform from fragmenting any further.

And finally one other thing that I think can be a real game-changer is Flash-support. Yes, there is Flash-support in FroYo, I haven’t experienced it first-hand myself though so I don’t know how well it works. But my point here is that since Apple is taking a serious stand against Flash on devices running iOS there is a chance for Android (and Adobe naturally) to shine here. Make Flash work flawlessly on all contemporary Android devices and you will have a feature on the platform that the main competition can’t and will not match, which naturally is a great advantage.

These are the major points that bother me at the moment and I believe them all to be more or less critical for the growth of Android. I want to underline here though that although there are flaws - every platform has them - I believe a great deal in Android and will continue to submerge myself in the platform with great joy.

So Google and everybody else involved, time to step it up a notch OK? I’ll be watching you

No one that follows tech-news can possibly have missed that Apple have whipped up a shitstorm of sorts with it’s changes in Section 3.3.1 of the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement resulting in the prohibition of the use of third-party tools for developing iPhone apps. This is what Section 3.3.1 used to look like:

3.3.1 — Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs.

And this is what Section 3.3.1 looks like now:

3.3.1 — Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).

Clearly this is a move that Apple has made in order to even further increase their control and hold over the development done for their mobile platform and shut out any and all apps that are not developed in a manner blessed by Apple. This includes 3D-games developed with Unity3D, all apps that could be built with Flash CS5 and many more.

As a developer I take great offense to this and I consider it to be a real dick-move by Apple. Further, I believe it to be a move that clearly demonstrates that the people making the decisions have completely lost any understanding of what it is to be a software developer and how we developers think and operate.

Some people seem to believe that it’s a good thing that all iPhone OS development is being streamlined into a single set of tools all under the control of the platform-owner (i.e. Apple). Anyone believing this doesn’t get it either and is clearly not a developer themselves. Let me explain.

Developers don’t like being told exactly how to operate and what roads to travel on when on the path to solving a problem or task. There’s always multiple solutions to any given software development issue. There is no such thing as the ultimate tool-set or the IDE to end all IDEs. This is why we like having the freedom to chose what tools to use and how to use them to build software. By putting restrictions on what tools are “allowed” for iPhone OS development Apple is pulling a move with multiple bad consequences.

Firstly, it pisses developers off. Like I said, we don’t like being told how to work and think. In fact, there’s no group of creative people that enjoy that. Can you imagine if MOMA said to all artists that if you want your art displayed in our facilities you have to buy all your supplies in a specific store and hold your brush/chisel/whatever in a specific way? Same thing here. And yes, I’m saying that software development in many ways is an artform. If I want to use a third-party set of tools or some other exotic methods not previously imagined by Apple in order to create an awesome iPhone-app I should be able to do that. If the way my brain works makes this, to me, the most natural path of development, why restrict me and forbid me to do it? It’s ludicrous and any real developer will tell you the same thing.

Sure, I can get behind the idea that Apple want to set up some rules for what apps are allowed into their AppStore (even if the AppStore acceptance process is utterly broken…). Telling developers what to build is sort of OK, but telling them how to build is definitely not OK. It’s bullshit, plain and simple.

Secondly, this dick-move of Apples is ruining business for the companies/people developing these third-party tools as well. Sure, Apple has no responsibility to ensure the business of any other company but this is none the less a really bad side-effect of the changes to Section 3.3.1. People may lose their jobs and companies may possibly go out of business thanks to a really moronic and completely unnecessary change in the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement

The main target here, however a company not very likely to go out of business, is obviously Adobe and their product Flash which currently dominates when it comes to video and other multimedia content on the web. The changes to Section 3.3.1 followed swiftly after Adobe announced that the next version of Adobe Creative Suite would include tools that enabled Flash-developers to build Flash-apps that would run on the iPhone and iPad. That means that developers could use CS5 to create apps that were truly multi-platform and with very little hassle. They wouldn’t have to maintain different simultaneous versions for multiple devices, just one version that they could then deploy on iPhone OS, Android or whatever OS they wanted. One version of the app but multiple markets for it to exist in, which consequently means more business for the developers and, once again, all without having to deal with the mess of having multiple versions of the code. Now imagine how happy that would’ve made all of the world’s Flash-developers! Naturally, Apple couldn’t have that.

So that’s the third reason Section 3.3.1 bites, it causes unnecessary problems for developers that don’t want their apps to be exclusive to the iPhone OS, and what developer really wants that? Even if Apple may have the goal that 100% of the smartphones of the world are iPhones, it is never going to be a reality. Naturally software developers want a shot at pushing their apps and consequently make money in more markets than one, and, if at all possible, with minimal hassle. Clearly that’s not something that Apple wants.

What Apple wants for all the apps running on the iPhone OS is for them to be exclusive for their platform. They don’t want multi-platform development anywhere near their products and this was made even more clear by the open letter from Steve Jobs entitled “Thoughts on Flash” that was published on Apples website a couple of days ago.

In his letter The Steve lists six reasons why Apple hates Flash and wants it to die rather than run on the iPhone OS. Some of these reasons are actually somewhat valid, however most of them are complete and utter hypocritical nonsense. Let’s run through them quickly:

Reason one: Adobe Flash is 100% proprietary and Apple is a supporter of the “open web” having created WebKit and pushing HTML5, CSS, JavaScript and other open standards.
Hello pot, calling the kettle black much? This just makes me laugh. Apple is one of the most proprietary companies in the tech-industry. Their levels of secrecy and unwillingness to give away so much as an ounce of their secret sauces is legendary. Just because you’ve successfully pushed one open source project it doesn’t make you Richard M. Stallman. Get off your high horse. Flash is a well publicized standard and going by your own standards that should be good enough for you. Also, when Apple is pushing the very proprietary video standard H.264 as hard as they are (continue reading and you’ll see that they absolutely love H.264) they really shouldn’t be yapping about who is or isn’t being “open”.

Reason two: Adobe’s claim that Apple’s devices can’t deliver “the full web” since they don’t run Flash is caca because plenty of big websites have video in H.264 now and as for Flash-games there are loads of games on AppStore you can play instead.
There is some truth to this but it is still not valid in my opinion. Just because a long list of Apple-approved sites deliver video in H.264 instead of or as well as Flash it doesn’t mean every website does. It will still cause frustration when you run into that site with that video you wanna watch just have Flash - which is currently the dominant way to show video on the web. As for the games argument, it’s just laughable and shows that Steve isn’t a gamer himself. It’s like this: if I wanna play my game, I wanna play my game NOT another game. So if my game doesn’t run on the iPad it is no consolation at all that there are loads of other quality games available. I still can’t play the game that I wanted to play.

Reason three: Flash has lots of security flaws and the number one reason Macs crash.
I have no idea if the first claim is true or not so I’m not gonna argue against it. I’ve never had any of my Macs crash because of Flash but I’m not gonna argue the second claim either since I have no way to know what the truth is here. If Apple have statistics, which I assume they have, saying this, then it probably is true.

Reason four: Flash eats twice the battery life that H.264 with hardware acceleration does.
Again, whether this is true or not I don’t know but even if it is true I don’t think it’s a valid reason for shutting Flash out. Let the users themselves decide what to spend the juice of their batteries on. What’s next? Blocking games that are CPU-intense and thus eat “too much” battery. It’s just ridiculous. If customers want Flash, and they obviously do, let them have it even if it eats the batteries of their iPads and iPhones. Let people make their own choices.

Reason five: Flash was designed for PCs using mice, not for touch screens using fingers. You can’t “hover” or “rollover” on a touch screen.
This is true, but it is still an invalid reason simply because the controls of an app are up to the developer. It has nothing to do with the technology itself. Don’t you think Flash-developers targeting the iPhone would’ve thought of not to use controls that require “hovering”? Enough said.

Reason six: Apple knows from experience that all software developed using third-party tools suck and are inferior to software developed specifically for a particular device and/or operating system. Relying on third-party tools is also always a bad thing because then you’ll have to wait for the tool-developers to include new OS-features in their product and that can take a long time.
This part of Steve’s letter is so full of stupidity and claims that are in no way backed up by hard facts it’s laughable. What “experience”? Where are the statistics or surveys to prove this? Nowhere is where they are because it’s bullshit, plain and simple. It’s just a vague claim made like it’s the truth just because The Steve said so. Also, I find it amazing that Steve Jobs has taken it upon himself to save developers from using “bad tools”. I’ve said it several times already but I’ll say it one final time: Developers want freedom and choices! Let us decide for ourselves what tools we use and how we use them! We can take responsibility ourselves for our choices. We don’t need Steve Jobs to make them for us. Let us code and develop any way we want. Period.

So in closing all of this is just another scheme of Apple’s to lock people to their platforms attempting to create a sense of exclusiveness for their products in the process. The very same things they’ve in the past scolded Microsoft for. But what differs from previous ploys of theirs is that this is a tremendously nasty move that really benefits nobody, not even Apple themselves in my opinion. I think it is really sad and I don’t like the way Apple has been developing since releasing the iPhone - I think that’s where it all started to go downhill. I love Apple’s products - the hardware, OS X, iLife, all of that good stuff - but the company policies are pissing me off more often than not these days. Steve and his underlings need to step back and take a good look at themselves, the company’s past and the path their currently marching onwards on before it’s too late and Apple really becomes the new Microsoft or IBM. Nobody wants that, least of all me.

Just like millions of other people I was really excited when Apple announced the AppStore for the iPhone. I immediately thought that this could be the thing that makes the iPhone a great buy despite the hardware failings (pretty cruddy camera, no video recording, no real bluetooth support, etc.). However, it wasn’t long until I no longer felt this way.

First there was the fucking NDA that created an inhospitable environment around iPhone-development and made it impossible to build any kind of community around it. Apple finally made good on that one but it took way too long and that they had that crap in place to start with is inexcusable anyway. What were they thinking?

AppStore - crapstore

Secondly, and this is a big problem that still remains, there’s the whole fiasco with the approval process to get your apps to the AppStore. Since Apple has the final say-so on what gets published on the AppStore and there is no other way to get apps on a non-hacked iPhone if they deny your application to publish your app on the AppStore you’re shit out of luck.

Now that’s bad enough, but what makes it even worse is that there seems to be no clear guidelines as to what gets approved and what doesn’t. Some apps have been denied while other apps with almost the same functionality have been approved. Is there an official way to appeal a denial? I don’t know for sure, but I don’t think so.

One app in particular stirred up a lot of attention from the blogosphere and the internet in general, the NIN-app, published by the band Nine Inch Nails. The whole debacle has been well publicized elsewhere so I’ll not get into it in detail but basically the app was first approved but then just a short while later the developers released an update which was denied into the AppStore, which in turn, if I’m not mistaken, made the app unavailable on the AppStore. The reason for this was that you could apparently access some son (via streaming I believe) that had “offensive lyrics” or something like that through the app. OMG! There’s swear words on the internet? Meanwhile you can buy a million gangsta-rap songs on iTunes that contain a multitude of fucks, motherfuckers, “kill whitey”, bitch and other “offensive” things as part of their lyrics. But I guess that’s OK since those songs supply Apple with steady revenue.

Anyway, after a couple of days of uproar on the web by thousands of Nine Inch Nails-fans the app was re-evaluated and finally approved. Now what if this app hadn’t been published by a successfull rockgroup with a very solid and borderline rabid fanbase? Apple themselves have bragged about how awesome the AppStore is because it has turned one man software development companies into successfull businessess and enabled developers to live the dream of being their own boss and still make a solid living. What if an app developed by one of those companies was rejected for some obscure and/or stupid reason thus strangulating their cash flow completely? That could mean disaster and bankruptcy in a worst case scenario and how do we know this hasn’t happened already to some poor unfortunate developer?

Now another app has been rejected for the most moronic reason. As reported by Torrentfreak.com a remote control app for the popular cross-platform BitTorrent-client Transmission has been rejected because according to Apple “this category of applications is often used for the purpose of infringing third party rights”. That is such total and utter bullshit! You’d think that a company that actually makes software would know better than to damnify an entire class of technology because it “could be used to do wrong”. Hey, let’s ban Safari then because using any web browser you can easily find illegal stuff on the internet and download it and you could also use it to access the web-GUI for Transmission! Let’s ban cars because they can be used as getaway-vehicles in bank robberies. BitTorrent in itself is just a protocol and it’s used for lots of legitimate things. Banning applications based on them using a specific kind of technology is stupid beyond belief.

Just a couple of weeks ago, days before the whole Nine Inch Nails-thing got started, I was seriously contemplating getting an iPhone since the prices have now dropped to a reasonable level and the amount of good apps appeared to make it a good choice for a new cellphone, which I am very much in need of. I was also looking at the Android-phone, the G1, and thinking it may also be a good alternative. I do however own an iPod touch which I love. It really is an awesome device which I use everyday. But if I could have that plus a great cellphone in the same device that would be very nice. For this reason I may never completely be able to write off the iPhone as a candidate for a future cellphone.

However, with all of the crap that’s been going on around the AppStore lately I’m really not considering an iPhone anymore. So now I’m basically holding out for the next generation of Android-phones. The Android-software is just as good as the iPhone-software, maybe not as sexy and Apple-ish but I can live with that, and most of all it is based on open source and a platform not encumbered by the problems discussed in this post. So you could say that you lost me again Apple, and for such stupid reasons.

What Apple should do is let people install whatever the hell they want on their phones. If I bought the phone and paid for it I should be allowed to do whatever I want with it. If I want to install an application that floods my screen with random swear words who are they to decide that isn’t appropriate? If I want to use an iPhone to monitor my torrent-downloads that’s none of their business. If I’m doing something illegal that’s what we have law enforcement for. Basically, butt out of your customers’ business Cupertinoites.

Naturally, they should keep the AppStore because it is great to have a source for apps that Apple vouches for so to speak. But if I wanna take a risk and install something that Apple doesn’t deem worthy of publishing in the AppStore I should still be able to do that. This would benefit everybody involved, developers, iPhone-owners and Apple themselves, since it would make the iPhone an even more appealing platform.

But until radical changes are made I’m most likely to go Android for my next cellphone. The future will tell.

I couldn’t help but chuckle at this. Also, this is a little what my relationship with my girlfriend is like. Maybe that’s why I found it so amusing.

I was watching the latest episode of “Diggnation” and Kevin Rose was talking about the latest iPhone rumours. Apparently there’s gonna be a 3G iPhone pretty soon and it will have two cameras, one of them facing the person holding the phone, so that you can do video-chat.

While Alex Albrecht goes “I’m not so hot for the video-chat because I don’t even do that on my computer” while Kevin, stoked out of his mind, goes like “but how cool would it be to have a friend call you up and do video-chat on your phone?”. Haha, priceless.

Dude, people here in Europe have been doing that for half a decade now. My dad, who’s almost 60, does it. It’s not bleeding edge anymore and it hasn’t been for years. Welcome to the 21st century. I hope you’ll like it here

It just makes me laugh, how a big nation like the US can be so far behind in some areas. 3G is not something new, it’s just that the US hasn’t implemented it with any real success yet. The fact that Apple adds 3G to the next generation of the iPhone doesn’t make it new and exciting. It just means they’re catching up to what Nokia and SonyEricsson have been doing successfully for years.

Personally I’m pretty stoked about a 3G iPhone though, and I’m hoping it turns out real good.

I think the current iPhone is pretty much a waste of hardware since it lacks many of the features my Nokia N80IE has (3G, MMS, video-chat and Bluetooth that isn’t crippled for example) and many of these things I actually rely upon every day. But if they had those features on the iPhone I’d get one for sure.

Also, being the owner of an iPod Touch I know that the touch screen user interface is more than a gimmick. It’s actually pretty usable and neat once you get the hang of it, and the big screen is awesome for watching video podcasts, movies and TV-shows. It’s a really awesome gadget and well worth the $299 it set me back.

So if I could have all of the coolness of the iPod Touch plus the useful features of my 3G-phone naturally I’d go for that. But that basically means ALL of the useful features of my Nokia N80IE, not just a couple. Otherwise I’ll wait until Apple gets it right. If they ever do that is

It’s been widely reported about various progress in the hacking of the iPhone. A couple of days ago Engadget reported that apparently a hacker named “Nightwatch” has compiled and launched his very own application on the device.

In order to accomplish this feat “Nightwatch” has constructed an ARM/Mach-O toolchain that henceforth can be used by others to follow his example and consequently have third party native applications running on the iPhone instead of just Web 2.0 apps running in the Safari-browser.

Of course this is a positive breakthrough since developers and iPhone-owners have been screaming for an API and the possibility to develop and run real apps on the iPhone. But it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anybody. As with all such things they are always broken sooner or later, it’s just a matter of how long the apparatus can resist the efforts of it’s hackers.

But most of all, I’m very sure this came as no real surprise to Apple. In fact, I’m positive they counted on this happening sooner rather than later, and they surely will reap the major benefits from it.

By releasing a device that’s received more pre-release hype than anything I’ve ever seen before Apple has assured (almost at least) it’s success and that it will sell millions of it. By then refusing to give third party developers access to an API or an SDK they’ve assured that the caffeine-crazed hackers of the world will do their best to break into the device and have it run third party software. Once there is a fairly stable way of developing apps for the iPhone, which shouldn’t be far away now, a new market opens up which while not feeding money directly into Apple it does making their money-making product even more desirable. And they’ve done nothing themselves to make this happens except release the phone and withhold the API, all the real work the hackers have done for them. So basically, they’ve been working for Apple all along. They’ve just not gotten paid a dime for their hard and commendable work.

Another positive thing in this scenario, from Apple’s point of view, is that as long as no official API or SDK has been released they don’t have to deal with support and complaints regarding third party applications. It’s not their fault if you installed and ran some app on your iPhone that made it go up in flames since it’s not their toolchain that built that app and they certainly didn’t license it.

So even if it looks like Apple 0 - Hackers 1, it’s really the other way around if you think about it.

Now this release is way more important than all the iPhones in the world!

And there will be a live stream too.