I usually try and give a few comments on each of the new iPhone software development kits that are released and was putting something together for the fourth version when all of a sudden they released a new one.

The fourth version fixed a large number of bugs within the development kit and made it a lot more stable and even added a proper Interface Builder for the iPhone, but this new, beta 5 version, cements that even more and then some. It may even be getting close to an actual release candidate.

You now use OpenGL | ES on the iPhone simulator and it works a treat. The main thing to remember is that the simulator runs a lot faster than the actual device. I don’t know why they couldn’t have throttled the speed to match more closely the actual device.

I’ve been running the new version 5 for around a week now and haven’t found any real problems with it. It handles certain things differently than before and you end up having to go through everything re-coding your work just to get it working again, but this is, as they say, still a beta version.

A few days after posting my “Where Fools Fear to Tread” blog a third beta release of the iPhone SDK was released and I have to say that it is a much more stable release than the second. I’ve not had any problems at all with this one. In fact, it seems to compile more quickly and launch faster too.

A friend of mine was so lucky to receive their development certificate. Am I in the least bit jealous, YES. With this little electronic signature I would be able to try out the accelerometers and OpenGL 3D work, but hay, in the meantime I’ll just keep working through the APIs.

Doing a few small projects based on the iSDK just to get my head around the touch interface, Core Animation on such a small screen and a few others. The team at Infurious are hoping to have something ready for the launch of Apples AppStore, or shortly afterwards.

I’ll keep you posted.

It has been a few days now since I downloaded the most recent beta build of Apples iPhone SDK. I would love to say how much of a change there has been and how much more stable it feels, but not so.

It has to be said, that when developing using a beta release of anything, it’s best to use a dedicated machine. Well, taking this advice on board, I installed the original iSDK on my main machine and it worked fine, rather limited, but worked.

The latest beta release arrived with much anticipation. Feeling and expecting this version to be just as stable, it went on my main machine. Oops. A large number of basic functions had stopped working. Then the crashes started happening, just couldn’t figure what went wrong. It just got to the point that I have to wipe my hard drive and reinstall Leopard and the original version of the iSDK.

Two hours later and my problem iPhone app now works without any hitches. Now to clean up the code and find a development machine to work on.

A new version of the iPhone SDK was released today and the strange thing here is, I’m getting about 1 - 1.5Mb/sec download, so the whole process was about 20ish minutes. Others closer to the source in the states were seeing download speeds as low as 90Kb/per second.

Well the new version has the Interface Builder application, needed to create user interfaces for the phone. Will be interesting to see how this pans out. Looking forward to any improved frameworks as a number of key headers are missing from the original beta release.

More updates soon.

‘Perry’ wrote (on the RogueAmoeba blog post “Code Signing and You”):

“…the case for Code Signing on a Mac - in the service of its administrator/owner - is very compelling. In a sense, the Mac is living on borrowed time - viruses and worms and other nasty bit-critters will surely come our way, and going to an all-signed environment is one the most potent weapons we have to keep your systems from being overrun. I realize this capability *could* eventually be abused in various ways, and I trust you’ll all keep Apple honest about it. But it can also be a powerful force *for* you.

Oh, and to put that to rest: I do work for Apple, and I designed and implemented Code Signing in Leopard. If you think it’s going to usher in a black wave of OS fascism, you have every right to blame me - it was, pretty much, my idea.”

Like some, I see code-signing as a necessary neutral. It’s neither good nor evil but it could be used for evil purposes (where evil is really just a shade of ‘not good’).

It’s all about trust again. When we first heard of Intel’s Palladium, there was an uproar. When we heard about processor serial numbers on the Intel platform, there was an uproar (despite the fact they had been quietly present for years on PowerPC).

The other commenters on the blog put forward scenarios where corporations will use this facility for evil and point to Apple’s DRM’ed music (using FairPlay) and also Apple’s odd restrictions within DVD Player.app on Mac OS X as an example of how the company is ‘evil’.

Of course it’s bollocks.

It took FairPlay to get the media owners (record labels) to start to play ball. Now we have DRM-free music available from multiple sources. Similar Apple’s DVD Player is compliant with the law because they want to avoid litigation. You can get round it by using other DVD-playing applications but Apple plays it safe. They’re not interfering with other third party apps.

It may be blind and stupid faith but I know enough people within Apple and I’ve read enough accounts of people working there that I trust them to do the right thing. Individual end users do need help in discovering which applications are bad and which are good and Apple, in order to reduce the amount of legwork required, is bound to have a review process where they solicit information from users of iPhone applications. This will have the dual effect of speeding up the eventual distribution of applications and also making sure there’s a peer review process.

I’d like to hear more from Perry on this debate as individual security on computing devices is important to me from the point of view of working in the IT business. There’s always a considerable difference in working with Macs and PCs - the latter is always slower in my experience (considering that my day job gives me a Core Duo machine running XP and my home machine is a Core Duo machine running Leopard) due to the need to perpetually run AV and firewall software and if not running them, due to the amount of malware that has been picked up.

Not enough people hear the reasons for design decisions and this is an Apple fault. They don’t make individuals publicly known. Every time there has been an outcry, I’ve always managed to speak to someone within Apple and they’ve given me the reasons for this and that. And yeah, in the wake of their spin doctoring I’ve always agreed.

For the average end user there needs to be a helping hand, an additional way to reduce the contact they have with malware. It’s something that will piss off some people who for political reasons want to have 100% access to their devices but I’m confident that the jailbreaking crowd will cater for them adequately.

Probably one of the most anticipated software releases from Apple happened on Thursday 6th March. Apple released their beta version of the iPhone SDK, software development kit.

Steve Jobs, along with Phil Schiller and Scott Forstall, showed what we can expect with the new version 2.0 iPhone/iTouch firmware to be released in June. Phil Schiller kicked it all off by going through the enterprise additions to the iPhone. Here we see practically everything the was missing and then some. This as far as I can tell is going to make a reasonable sized dent in the Blackbury RIM market.

The real interesting bit of the presentation, well at least for me, was the presentation given by Scott. Here he gave a fairly detailed review of the SDK, I'll cover that in more detail in a later blog post. Let's just say that it was fantastic. Along with Scott was a few companies that were given a two week pre release of the SDK and asked what could be done with it. The results was really amazing.

First up was an Scott himself. Here he showed of a space shooter game in 3D using OpenGL|ES. The movement was very smooth and the shooting action solid enough to be enjoyable. One of the interesting points he made was the fact that it was also using OpenAL for sound. This gives a full 3D sound spectrum.

Electronic Arts was next up showing their iPhone version of Spore. Travis Boatman was responsible for this one.

In Spore you control a micro organism from the early dawn of life in the big soup bowl. You have to control your spore and help keep it safe and grow. The neat aspect of this game is the control mechanism. Spore uses the iPhones 3D axis accelerometers to control movement. At certain points in the game you have the ability to add custom parts to your spore to help it evolve. There are a total of 18 levels in this game and to think that all this was programmed in 2 weeks on an unknown software platform. This looks to be one great looking small game.

Salesforce.com represented the vertical markets. Chuck Dietrich showed what they had managed to accomplish in less than the two week period.

Salesforce are looking to bring their 63,000 plus applications to the iPhone. Chuck showed one of their sales applications. This Sales Force Automation application is used to store sales persons contacts, sales records, target levels, and a whole slew of other sales and marketing information.

Rizwan Sattar from AOL showed of their instant messenger for the iPhone. You have complete access it your buddy lists, check who is online/offline and set your profile. One of the neat features is the ability to change your buddy icon using the image picker built in the iPhone, or even take a picture with the built in camera.

Epocrates was something I wasn't expecting, actually I've never heard of the product in my life, but according to Glenn Keighley, over half a million health care professionals and 1 in 4 physicians in the US use it. Epocrates is a drug encyclopedia containing over 3,300 of the most popular prescribed drugs in the US. This database can be searched and photos available showing what the drug looks like. It can even show the doctor how mixing different drugs can effect the patient.

Last but not least was Sega with an iPhone version of Super Monkey Ball. Ethan Einhorn showed a very playable version of the game using the same control mechanism as EA's Spore above. The big difference here is it's a full 3D visual experience.

According to Ethan, he was totally surprised as to the power of the iPhone and he stated that it wasn't a cell phone game but a console game. They even flew in a graphic artist to help scale up the visuals because of the shear power of the device.

Steve Jobs finished up the presentation by describing how they are going to handle the distribution of iPhone Apps. The only way to get your app in front of every customer will be through their 'App Store'.

Apple will take care of hosting, distribution credit card handling and providing free update service. For this they will be take a 70/30 percent split, which for the most art seems quite reasonable. Other blog posts seem to find this a bit of a take on, but for what your getting I think its a good deal. If however your providing freeware or shareware applications then these will be hosted free of charge.

So, there’s three categories of applications which can be installed onto the iPhone without Jailbreak.

1. Payfer Apps - you write your application, sign it, give it to Apple and they host it on the App Store and you get 70% of all proceeds.
2. Free Apps - you write the application, sign it, give it to Apple and they host it on the App Store for free.
3. Source - you write the application, give the code to someone else, they sign it themselves and then they can install on their own iPhone via XCode

The last method changes things. It’s no longer just a case of just releasing source code, there’s the signing too. You’re attaching your identity to the code. A bit more than just running ports or apt.

But it does mean that for the select few who can install apps (been accepted into the Beta program, paid their $99, uploaded their CSR, downloaded their certificate), there’s a method of swapping test code and with a bit of luck a community will build.

For my part, I’d like to play with Kalimba on my iPhone!

Let’s say you’re a developer producing applications. Your livelihood depends on applications sold and you really want to get the best penetration for them.

How much would you pay for:
a) no need to set up a web shopping cart
b) no need to pay for bandwidth and hosting
c) greatly reduced need for marketing
d) reduced need to ‘package’ an app
e) listing on a web store that will be in front of about 7 million customers at launch.

Apple wants thirty percent (though they’ll host your free app for free). For this thirty percent, they’ll approve, list, maintain a reviews database, process payments and send you the income monthly.

Some people think this smacks of greed but I’d counter that it smacks of reality. If you’ve spent a lot of time working in software but not in the retail side then you have probably very little experience of the costs. We are agreed that Apple is a publicly traded corporation and therefore needs to turn a profit. We’re going to have to agree that the App Store will be a hot trick for software distribution.

So let’s look at the competition. Who else hosts software for download like this?

The obvious candidate is Handango.

From Electronista:

Small developers who sell less than $250,000 in gross revenue will see exactly half of their income stripped from each sale — up from 40 percent, Handango reportedly says. More profitable firms will see even more money siphoned away, with all businesses selling between $250,000 and $1 million supplying 60 percent of their revenue and all larger outlets conceding 70 percent. The notice will be made public within a few days and should see the new distribution agreement take effect by March 15th, the alleged source indicates.

Handango makes Apple’s 30% seem like a bargain.

On the other hand, Mobihand gives developers 80%. What do we get for that extra 10%? I’m guessing we get placement on the device itself. Mobihand claims to have the lowest rates in the industry for application hosting.

MobiHand will pay to Content Provider 80% of Net Receipts occurring at www.mobihand.com and 60% of Net Receipts at all other channels.

So, Mobihand will charge you 20-40% of the cost of your software for hosting the sale depending on how and where they bought it.

Even at 30%, Apple’s deal is no strings, no nonsense and is going to have the advantage that every piece of software you see there will work on your iPhone.

And it’s shitloads better than Handango.

At some point last night, Apple’s development servers fell over and died. These servers can hold 40 000+ concurrent download streams but there were so many people downloading the new iPhone SDK that the whole server became unresponsive. After several hours of trying, I finally got a connection at 11 pm and left the SDK and iTunes videos to download overnight, which they did. At the same time, I watched the video of the introduction of the SDK and demos from AOL, Saleforce and EA. As it drew to a close, so did my eyes.

• This morning I installed the SDK and started to read what teh internets was saying about the day before. There are guys from Apple on Twitter providing links and snippets of info to help people get started. And of course, teh internets have spoken.

  Jason at 37signals sounds off on his vision for the iPhone.

  “What we saw today was the beginning of two-decades of mobile domination by Apple. What Microsoft and Windows was to the desktop, Apple and Touch will be to mobile.”

  Steve Job’s Fortune interview (which I covered here yesterday) talks about how bad it feels to not be able to capture market share even though you might have a much better product. The iPod shows that it’s possible to capture a market by crafting a good product. Apple’s history has been full of examples of how to lose a market in the past so it’s nice to see them taking the lead for once.

• TUAW reports that iPlayer is actually working for the iPhone. Content is limited but I’d encourage everyone with an iPhone to give it a go.
  

  “A limited selection of shows from the iPlayer have been made available to UK residents on their iPhones. … At the moment only the BBC-produced ‘Whistleblower’ documentary seems to be working from the iPlayer website, with content being streamed-only via the iPhone’s built-in QuickTime player “

• Apple has posted the video of the SDK Roadmap here so if you have a spare hour or so, give it a go.
• From the iPhone Human Interface Guidelines
  

  Only one iPhone application can run at a time, and third-party applications never run in the background. This means that when users switch to another application, answer the phone, or check their email, the application they were using quits.

  This is a serious consideration when you’re managing things like editing documents or wanting to save progress in a game. There has to be some continuation - do you ‘journal’ progress? Are there spare cycles in the CPU to do a quick save every second?

• We had a bit of an emergency meeting in the wee small hours this morning over IM regarding the futures of our software development efforts and we’re going to publish that news in a few days.