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IPhone =/= Debian app

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Re: IPhone =/= Debian app

#21

Post by akeefer »

mclin wrote: post #11

What about the barrier to entry: $100 + a Mac + an iPhone. As compared to a computer, which pretty much everyone had by 1998. Also iPhone programming is way harder than HTML. I had a mandatory high school class that taught HTML. Maybe I'm underestimating how many people are jumping on this, but my intuition is it can't be as many as were jumping on web. Twitter/social media marketing however... :P

For many novice developers, web development imposes its own barriers to entry. First of all, you need some server somewhere, which means you need to know something about servers, maybe have some sysadmin skills, and likely that you'll have to make some sort of ongoing cash outlay for it. Secondly, if you want to get paid you need to figure out how to process payments, or at the very least what ad network you want to attempt to embed.

On the dead simple end where you just want essentially a blog with ads, it's easy. On the not-so-simple end, where you want to build an application you can charge money for, the app store model is very straightforward. You don't have to make any decisions about servers or hosts, do any sysadmin work, worry about traffic spikes and scalability, and your cash outlays (aside from development time) are all upfront and totally predictable. Similarly, payment processing is already there and handled for you. And lastly, you don't have to worry about SEO or distribution channels because you don't have a choice in the matter.

It's easier to put up a web page somewhere than to build an app for the app store . . . but for a large number of people building an app for the app store is much simpler than putting up a web application. And that, I think, is a big reason why the app store exploded.

Re: IPhone =/= Debian app

#22

Post by faboo »

dman wrote: post #13
mclin wrote: post #11

What about the barrier to entry: $100 + a Mac + an iPhone. As compared to a computer, which pretty much everyone had by 1998. Also iPhone programming is way harder than HTML. I had a mandatory high school class that taught HTML. Maybe I'm underestimating how many people are jumping on this, but my intuition is it can't be as many as were jumping on web. Twitter/social media marketing however... :P

Please also include - a) ~30 dollars to buy an objective c book b) N hours to learn a new language when youre perfectly productive in another language.

This attitude is perplexing to me. a) If you have internet access, why would you need to buy a book? b) Unless you're a strict Prolog or ML enthusiast, Objective C is similar enough to what you already know that you could probably be productive inside a weekend or two.

Also, learning a new language or library that's different enough from what you know that it takes more than a few hours to be comfortable (generally) makes you a better programmer.

Sorry, I do realize you were mostly trying to pile onto the IPhone cost tally, but I'm always surprised to see other programmers imply that learning new things is inherently hard and undesirable.

Re: IPhone =/= Debian app

#24

Post by dman »

faboo wrote: post #22
dman wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please also include - a) ~30 dollars to buy an objective c book b) N hours to learn a new language when youre perfectly productive in another language.

This attitude is perplexing to me. a) If you have internet access, why would you need to buy a book? b) Unless you're a strict Prolog or ML enthusiast, Objective C is similar enough to what you already know that you could probably be productive inside a weekend or two. Also, learning a new language or library that's different enough from what you know that it takes more than a few hours to be comfortable (generally)…

a) Because I stare at a computer screen ~10 hours a day at work. When I am reading in the evening I prefer to have a book, which I can underline and scribble in. b) Every programmer over time develops tiny helpful apps that make life bearable, having to rewrite all those apps / utilities in a fresh new language is a burden that I would like to avoid. c) Admittedly I am a bit more aggrieved than most people because my languages of choice are lisp, scheme and python.

Re: IPhone =/= Debian app

#25

Post by aaronbrethorst »

telemachos wrote: post #15
einarvollset wrote: post #3

Ehum.. What? Yeah there were a lot of shit webpages back in the day, but there was also what became came ebay, facebook, google, etc, etc. I don't see a lot of debian apps doing better than facebook..

>> I don't see a lot of debian apps doing better than facebook.. There's no possible scale of values that you could use to evaluate this comparison. It's not even apples to oranges. It's like saying Facebook is doing better than beagles. The things don't fit into the same category at all. Here's a random example: one of the Debian apps is aptitude. It manages packages on the command-line. If you are a Debian sys-admi…

Facebook is doing way better than beagles! Beagles are predisposed to epilepsy; Facebook is not. Beagles did not generate $800MM in revenue last year; Facebook did!

Re: IPhone =/= Debian app

#26

Post by mclin »

akeefer wrote: post #21
mclin wrote: post #11

What about the barrier to entry: $100 + a Mac + an iPhone. As compared to a computer, which pretty much everyone had by 1998. Also iPhone programming is way harder than HTML. I had a mandatory high school class that taught HTML. Maybe I'm underestimating how many people are jumping on this, but my intuition is it can't be as many as were jumping on web. Twitter/social media marketing however... :P

For many novice developers, web development imposes its own barriers to entry. First of all, you need some server somewhere, which means you need to know something about servers, maybe have some sysadmin skills, and likely that you'll have to make some sort of ongoing cash outlay for it. Secondly, if you want to get paid you need to figure out how to process payments, or at the very least what ad network you want to…

oh for sure. I differ though in that that's not the comparison being drawn in the article. TFA compares iPhone apps to pimply kids making web pages for local businesses in I had a few friends in high school that made decent money making websites for eg a local car dealership. It was easy because it's just HTML.

Re: IPhone =/= Debian app

#27

Post by codeflo »

telemachos wrote: post #17
codeflo wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, I want to make a few things clear here. First of all, I was being a bit snarky obviously. I didn't know about "aptitude purge", but it's a bit ironic that when googling for that, the first result is a forum post about someone with orphaned config files that aptitude purge wouldn't remove... sounds reliable. I think it's time for desktop OS makers (and that includes Apple, because OS X isn't any different from L…

Edited to remove unhelpful rage It sounds like you don't know Debian very well. That's fine. No reason you should. I know Debian reasonably well. I can tell you that in four years of using aptitude, I have found a very small number of edge cases where it does not work sanely, efficiently and helpfully. (To clarify it's really APT + aptitude. aptitude is one possible tool to use APT.) It's not perfect; no software is.…

(Edit: This response was written at a point when the parent post was quite a bit more unfriendly than it is now. I'll leave this here regardless, even though it's out of context now.)

Was I in any way rude to you?

1. That's not what I said.

2. I admit that I don't use Debian, but internally, package managers don't differ that much. I was criticizing the model where software has to install files all over the place. I think the proper response should be "make a simpler model", not "write a complex tool that can keep track of this mess".

3. So I was wrong and Debian packages come with cleanup scripts. That's good. Am I right in assuming that those cleanup scripts are only as good as the maintainer of the package, i.e. there's nothing inherent in the design of Debian that makes this cleanup function work reliably. (Note that some config files might have been created after installation, i.e. are not part of the original package.)

4. What?

5. Have you talked to a casual computer user recently? They are afraid of installing unknown software, yes. Almost everyone I know has had malware on their PC at one point or another.

Re: IPhone =/= Debian app

#28

Post by telemachos »

aaronbrethorst wrote: post #25
telemachos wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I don't see a lot of debian apps doing better than facebook.. There's no possible scale of values that you could use to evaluate this comparison. It's not even apples to oranges. It's like saying Facebook is doing better than beagles. The things don't fit into the same category at all. Here's a random example: one of the Debian apps is aptitude. It manages packages on the command-line. If you are a Debian sys-admi…

Facebook is doing way better than beagles! Beagles are predisposed to epilepsy; Facebook is not. Beagles did not generate $800MM in revenue last year; Facebook did!

I didn't know about the epilepsy. How sad.

Comparing Debian to Facebook in terms of revenue is literally senseless. Debian is a free - free as in beer, free as in freedom - operating system. It does not exist to make money. That was my real point since I suspected the OP meant "doing better" in terms of money.

Re: IPhone =/= Debian app

#29

Post by frankus »

I would point out that there is as much difference between your basic piece of ShovelWare and a real iPhone app as there is between a "Home Page" and a Web app.

In both cases having a deep understanding of the platform and the skills to build non-trivial stuff on top if it will be valuable after gold rush phase has passed.

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