Developments in iPhone-land
I was away at the end of last week, so I missed much of the hubbub about Apple’s letters to the would-be iPhone developers. The poorly-phrased missive was initially interpreted by some as a rejection, but later assessments suggested that it was intended more to keep devs in a holding pattern as Apple scrutinized the requests.
Since then, it’s become apparent that some developers have gotten accepted into the program, though the numbers appear to be fairly limited at present. While the SDK allows you to develop apps for the iPhone, developers need to obtain a certificate from Apple in order to to test applications on their phone and distribute programs via the App Store, get access to Apple’s iPhone documentation and support, and to install the 2.0 beta version of the iPhone OS. Even those in the program appear to have limitations, though, as there seems to be a five iPhone limit for testing; installing it on unauthorized devices will render those devices inoperable.
Presumably, more devs will be allowed access to the program as time goes on, but I have to wonder what kind of impact the five phone limit will have on beta testing. One developer I spoke to pointed out that if there’s no way to enable wider beta testing, we’ll likely be seeing “a lot of buggy apps on day one.” Given how much noise Apple has made about security and stability, I’d think that’s a scenario they’d want to avoid.
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Comments (2)
Unlike Macs, iPhones are configured very similarly. They have the same OS, the same amount of memory, and -- from the application's perspective -- the same peripherals. (For example, aside from user data, what difference is there between Joe's 16 GB iPhone and Phil's 16 GB iPhone, assuming both are US-based?) Also unlike Macs, apps run on their own, without any other third-party software in memory and without any plug-ins trying to do funny things to their apps. So perhaps there's not as much need for widespread beta testing as there is with Mac apps, at least from a conflicting-with-third-party software perspective. Of course, this will also make it difficult to run a private beta test so lots of different users can put apps through their paces, but assuming Apple provides for that in the App Store, that'll just mean more public beta tests.
Posted by Geoff Green | March 20, 2008 1:50 PM
You know, I have to ask myself. What is Apple so worried about getting more phones into the channel. Why put a "limit" as to how many phones one can acquire as part of testing, etc.
Sure, they may be concerned that these phones might get out to the "black market" but is that REALLY a bad thing. You would think they would truly want as many phones out there as possible.
Heck, I am sure they are worried about losing money to the hacked phones, but it would seem to me now is as good of time as any to start "saturating" the market with these devices.
Posted by Mike Erickson | March 20, 2008 1:59 PM