All Articles Tagged state of the apps

Gameloft — and other developers according to Gameloft — are cutting back on development for Google’s Android platform due to the “weakness” of the Android Market. According to Reuters, Gameloft finance director Alexandre de Rochefort said:

We have significantly cut our investment in Android platform, just like … many others. [The Android Market] is not as neatly done as on the iPhone. Google has not been very good to entice customers to actually buy products. On Android nobody is making significant revenue.”

Ouch. Harsh words. Meanwhile, with iPhone generating 13% of Gameloft’s revenue (400 times more than Android), we’ll no doubt see plenty more on the iTunes App Store.

While we’ve heard developers and pundits talk about the business advantage of the iPhone before, and while Android’s numbers may be rising and soon, in the short term the bigger houses like Gameloft might just stick with where the money is.

[Thanks to the Reptile for the tip!]

A little while ago we posted about Apple’s new use of a static analysis tool to find private API calls and reject the apps that make them. Rather than Storm8 or Unity this time, however, it’s former Facebook developer Joe Hewitt’s pioneering Three20 framework that’s getting caught.

Daring Fireball has some details:

One popular open source framework, Joe Hewitt’s Three20 (linked here on DF back in March), played a bit fast and loose with private APIs, and so now there are numerous developers with apps getting flagged for private API calls made from the Three20 framework. This Google Groups thread [link] covers the problem and the work that’s being done to create a branch of Three20 that’s free of private API calls.

Gruber also links to RogueSheep, whose Postage app has gotten caught via Three20, and has some suggestions to help them help Apple help them avoid getting rejected for unintended private API calls in the future:

Making the static analysis tool available to developers would indeed be helpful. But I suspect it wouldn’t work in terms of game theory. Honest developers could make good use of having access to the tool, to help ensure their projects are free of private API violations. But dishonest developers would use the tool to figure out ways to slip private API calls past the checker. Parrish’s second request, for Apple to run the tool against submissions far sooner in the review process, strikes me as a good and reasonable one.

Us as well.

Instapaper and Tumblr developer Marco Arment riffs on the NYT’s article on Palm webOS’ trouble wooing developers, and it’s predictably good stuff.

His major point is that with its huge install base (which topped 50 million iPhones and iPod touches months ago), it makes more financial sense to develop for Apple’s platform, rather than Google’s Android or Palm’s webOS which might have on 5% to 10% as many devices on the market.

Giving developers an app store is the easy part. The hard part is bringing us enough customers. The iPhone is so good that it built up a huge installed base without any third-party apps, but no Android or webOS devices can say that yet.

Arment points out that the iPod touch makes a huge difference as well, giving developers a similar device to work on without the need for an expensive cell phone contract. He also echoes Fake Steve’s comments on different hardware complicating development, though he thinks if Android popularity continues to grow, the platform might justify the investment one day.

Is the Android Marketplace a more open alternative for developers compared to the iPhone App Store, or does the growing diversity of hardware, software, and overlays make it just as frustrating in its own way? Okay, so Fake Steve is likely to be more pro-Apple than a Fake Eric would be, fair enough. And, yes, some high-profile developers have taken issue with Apple’s draconian incompetent App Store approval process, well taken. But as much as Fake Steve is funny, the real Dan Lyons (of Newsweek) behind him is an equal opportunity offender, happy to take the p*ss out of Apple at any opportunity, often anti-Linux, and just as often insightful when it comes to things like Old Media and, yes, competing platforms. So take this with a giant-sized fake grain of salt, but take it:

There are just a bunch of different devices that have a lot in common with each other but aren’t quite the same. Trying to turn that into a “platform” is like trying to build a porch using three hundred pieces of wood, none of which are the same size. From the [Gadget Labs] story:

A slew of problems have made managing Android apps a “nightmare,” they say, including three versions of the OS (Android 1.5, 1.6 and 2.0), custom firmware on many phones, and hardware differences between different models.

Dear friends, this is only going to get worse, not better. Think about it. Every handset maker wants its device to be different. And special. So they intentionally tweak the OS to give themselves what they think of as an “advantage,” when really it’s nothing of the sort, because all it does is prevent ISVs from writing apps for them. Even if the handset makers weren’t totally short-sighted and evil, there’s the competency issue.

No doubt Apple’s App Store can make developers tear their flesh off in frustration, and GPS/CPU/GPU/Camera/etc. issues fragment the iPhone/iPod platform as well, but at the end of the day, does 50+ million “compatible enough” iDevices that are gate-keeper’ed still offer developers a better experience than a wide range of quasi-competitive, free’er devices?

(Yes, Google is closed as well, just not as closed…)

After submitting a minor .1 bug fix for Airfoil Speakers Touch 1.0.1 [Free - iTunes link] for iPhone and iPod touch, longtime Mac developers Rogue Amoeba waited for what they assumed would be a routine App Store review. Three and a half months, three rejections, and the unsuccessful intervention of a champion at Apple, the app is finally in the store, but the developer has decided the process is too odorous to continue with the iPhone platform.

Don’t stop us just because you’ve heard this before over and over again.

The issue this time was Rogue Amoeba discovering the type of Mac and exact application that was being used as audio source, and displaying the corresponding Mac OS X-provided image of the machine and icon for the app.

Though standard — intended — behavior on the Mac, Apple’s App Store policy branded this a trademark violation and they requested it be changed. Rogue Amoeba assumed the request was erroneous and tried resubmitting, tried escalating via email, even had a champion inside Apple try help get it through. In the end, the App Store policy was an immovable object, and Rogue Amoeba had to remove the Mac and app icon images. Airfoil Speakers Touch 1.0.1 was then approved and placed in the app store.

(And during the whole process, Airfoil Speakers Touch 1.0, buggy as it was, and using the exact same artwork Apple had issue with in 1.0.1 was left untouched in the App Store for users to download and use).

In the future, we hope that developers will be allowed to ship software without needing Apple’s approval at all, the same way we do on Mac OS X. We hope the App Store will get better, review times will be shorter, reviews will be more intelligent, and that we can all focus on making great software. Right now, however, the platform is a mess.

The chorus of disenchanted developers is growing and we’re adding our voices as well. Rogue Amoeba no longer has any plans for additional iPhone applications, and updates to our existing iPhone applications will likely be rare. The iPhone platform had great promise, but that promise is not enough, so we’re focusing on the Mac.

Add our voice to the chorus: fix. this. More after the break…

Read the rest of this entry »

Why is it easier to make a great Twitter client for Apple’s iPhone than for Google Android phones like the new Verizon DROID? After Robert Scoble wrote a typically impassioned post entitled The Droid fails AS A PRODUCT when compared to Palm Pre and iPhone, and used Twitter clients as an example, Thomas Marban of Android’s premiere Twitter client, Twidroid, responded:

one of the main reasons why UIs are unequally inferior are not only the way you build apps (open vs. closed hw/sw system) and the SDK itself but also marginal to non-existing UI standards, no ready-made drag & drop UI items, variations in carrier- & device firmware, hard- & software input, screen sizes, international customizations, modded phones, rooted phones and last but not least completely different expectations among users and the linux’ish target group itself. in a nutshell: beautiful mess. obviously, all these reasons eat up a huge pile of time that one could better spend with improving UX and polishing the interface. those who started early with android development have learned and are still learning it the hard way, just like they did with win 3.1 back in the days.

John Gruber of Daring Fireball, in Lots of Excuses comments:

That doesn’t sound like someone who plans to ever ship something of the caliber of Tweetie, Birdfeed, or Twitterrific. From what I’ve seen of Twidroid, it’s not even as good as Craig Hockenberry’s original version of Twitterrific for iPhone, which was written as a jailbreak app before the iPhone officially supported third-party software. If Android hardware diversity is already a problem for third-party developers, it’s only going to get worse.

This also highlights the advantages Apple has given iPhone developers. Not only is the iPhone based on OS X, but the development tools are based on Xcode and Interface Builder, and while not as many developers are likely already familiar with Cocoa touch as, say, developers might be with Android’s language(s) (or web developers may be for the Palm Pre), existing Mac developers can make those tools sing. And, given the SDK Apple provided, even new developers get a huge head start in terms of functions and user interface elements.

Sure, that means there’s a lower barrier of entry to creating poor iPhone apps, but it also means great developers aren’t wasting their time re-inventing UI wheels, or fighting the OS to do right by their apps. They investing that time in making great apps.

Speaking of tiny, incremental improvements, Erica Sadun over at TUAW highlight a new addition some developers are seeing when entering iTunes Connect — a submission history:

Appearing near recently reviewed items, this option opens a detail table showing how your application has worked its way through the App Store review process, and on to the shelf. Stormont details this update on his site.

Sadun also states that the amber status bubbles are slightly more verbose now, adding “waiting for review” for the freshest uploads.

If you’re a developer and you’re seeing these, or any other changes in iTunes Connect, let us know, and let us know what you think about them, and what else you’d like to see.

Umpteenth verse, same as the first — Macworld turned their iPhone ebook into and app and submitted it to the iTunes App Store. It was rejected. Several times. Finally editor Jason Snell expressed his frustration on Twitter and several high profile blogs picked it up. Apple called him immediately to try and make it right.

Good for Macworld. Bad for all the developers who lack the same megaphone by virtue of their job and connections.

Granted, with 100,000+ apps, the non-sensical and erroneous rejections remain a tiny percentage, but even a tiny percentage of 100,000+ represents many developers’ time, effort, and money. It’s frustrating for them and embarrassing for Apple.

Tim Cook and Phil Schiller claim they’re making improvements, and no doubt they are. From a pure perception point of view, however, this is one issue that needs fixing sooner rather than later.

Apple has just announced that there are now, officially, over 100,000 iPhone and iPod touch apps in the iTunes App Store:

“The App Store, now with over 100,000 applications available, is clearly a major differentiator for millions of iPhone and iPod touch customers around the world,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “The iPhone SDK created the first great platform for mobile applications and our customers are loving all of the amazing apps our developers are creating.”

Effusive developer quotes abound as well:

“The App Store has forever changed the mobile gaming industry and continues to improve,” said Travis Boatman, vice president of Worldwide Studios, EA Mobile. “With a global reach of over 50 million iPhone and iPod touch users, the App Store has allowed us to develop high quality EA games that have been a huge success with customers.”

“With 10,000 downloads a day, worldwide customer response to our I Am T-Pain App has exceeded our wildest expectations,” said Jeff Smith, CEO of Smule. “The App Store has given us a unique opportunity to create and grow a very successful business, and we’re looking forward to an exciting future.”

Serving 77 countries, with well over 2 billion downloads, jokes, whines, complaints, and rejections aside for the moment, that’s a massive milestone for Apple. Congrats.

The internets are a rocking with posts about the iPhone’s App Store unofficially hitting 100,000 apps, but while we wait for official word from Steve Jobs, the blogsphere is also debating the important of the sheer quantity of those apps, and whether that’s more important that quality.

It isn’t.

Scoble (and others, I think MacBreak Weekly covered this earlier) suggests that the huge number of apps makes for a greater chance each individual user will find that unique assortment that best fills their needs. In other words, while everyone has the same iPhone, they don’t all have the same apps, and those apps essentially create a personalize experience — a different iPhone — for each user.

What’s more, those must-have apps, and the money, effort, and time spent in acquiring, setting up, and becoming proficient in them, creates a cost that prohibits users switching to another platform. To go from iPhone to Android, in Scoble’s example, means you lose Tweetie, Tap Tap Revenge, Photoshop.com, NASDAQ, etc. (Never mind if you’ve bought Navigon or other, high-priced content).

John Gruber, for his part, asks if the App Store is popular because the iPhone is great, or is the iPhone great because the App Store is popular.

The number of apps already in the store — and, even more so, the momentum with which new ones are being added — almost certainly guarantees the continuing popularity of the iPhone and iPod Touch for the next few years. But Windows is proof that popularity doesn’t guarantee market-leading quality.

But the iPhone isn’t Windows. Neither popularity levels not quantity of software can be used to balance that particular equation.

Unlike the iPhone, Windows has never been a poster-child for great user experience (Windows 7 may alter that, but it’s just going to market now). Fact of the matter is, the iPhone debuted in 2007 without an App Store at all, and sold for the entire first year (until the launch of the iPhone 3G and iPhone OS 2.0) without an App Store. It sold on the strength of its user experience.

It’s that focus on usability that makes the iPhone great, and that in turn makes many of the apps great. Just like with the Mac, Apple has built in core technologies and development tools to handle a lot of the heavy lifting. So, while it still takes the very best developers to make the very best apps, even fair-to-middling developers can make apps that are surprisingly usable.

Those great apps, combined with a large quantity of usable if not inspired apps, is what makes the iPhone so compelling. The App Store itself is proof. Where Palm, Windows Mobile, Nokia, and RIM have had apps — many thousands of them — as well, it took Apple to create a single place, with a single home screen icon, to find and acquire them all. If it was just quantity, Apple would have had a hard time catching up to them.