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You win, RIM (An open letter to RIM's developer relations)

blog.jamiemurai.com

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Re: You win, RIM (An open letter to RIM's developer relations)

#51

Post by jammur »

fleitz wrote: post #38

The fundamental problem is that their devices works the same way as their developer model. It's unintuitive, clunky and overpriced. The only thing RIM has left is BBM. It's not worth developing for. I got the legal bullshit from Apple too. Seriously, it had to be notarized, I had to send Apple docs that had some kind of embossed type seal (I'm surprised they didn't require it in wax) like I was delivering a proclaima…

Were you registering as a business? I saw other commenters mention that they had to jump through additional hoops when registering as a business, but I had no trouble at all as an individual. Just put in my name, address, etc., pop in my credit card number, and I was good to go.

Re: You win, RIM (An open letter to RIM's developer relations)

#52

Post by jammur »

lallysingh wrote: post #49
btipling wrote: post #9

The complaints are: $200 price to develop with 10 app limit. Multiple registration forms. Requiring multiple downloads. Requiring to purchase vmware fusion. Installer that just copies an iso. Having to password protect the simulator. Bad documentation on how to load an app on the simulator. The comparative ease with which you can do these things with android and ios.

Honestly as an ex-indie PalmOS developer, I'm having trouble being sympathetic. I don't do blackberry myself, and don't have any particular affection for RIM, but this is just a little much. As I understand, RIM's gonna do all the fulfillment & billing for you in the app store? This is the SDK for an unreleased product? On a new, unreleased OS? On a different architecture than your dev machine? Yeah, it may require s…

It's not a question of whether you CAN make it work, but whether you should have to. RIM is in competition for developers with Apple and Google. Why would a developer choose to go with RIM when the experience is much better elsewhere. I think we can all agree that apps are one of the things that will make or break a smartphone platform in the current market conditions. If RIM can't attract talented developers to write apps for their platform, the outlook can't be good for them.

Re: You win, RIM (An open letter to RIM's developer relations)

#53

Post by ascendant »

veeti wrote: post #26

"Knowing what a pleasure it is to use Apple and Google’s tools," I haven't used the iOS SDK, but the Android SDK is far from "a pleasure to use". The 3.0 emulator is so unusably slow that it makes it practically impossible for me to adapt my app to the new tablet UI without going insane in the process.

I haven't done Android dev lately but I wrote a few apps in the 1.5/1.6 days and it was really nice once you got used to the tools.

Re: You win, RIM (An open letter to RIM's developer relations)

#54

Post by kisielk »

leon_ wrote: post #22

Hmm, I expected something ... well ... something really bad. But it looks like the guy has just a very thin skin. I'm an iPhone developer who signed up with the program as soon as it became available and I can tell you: Becoming an iPhone developer was a major PITA. It started with the registration (Apple let you wait for weeks after you purchased the membership), then with taxes formalities (as a non us-citizen I ha…

Sure, but those were the early days of the whole mobile platform craze. Today Apple and Google have a huge lead and RIM is trying to play catch-up. RIM's offerings have to be competitive with what the other players have now, not what they had three years ago.

Re: You win, RIM (An open letter to RIM's developer relations)

#55

Post by icarus_drowning »

jarek wrote: post #17
btipling wrote: post #9

The complaints are: $200 price to develop with 10 app limit. Multiple registration forms. Requiring multiple downloads. Requiring to purchase vmware fusion. Installer that just copies an iso. Having to password protect the simulator. Bad documentation on how to load an app on the simulator. The comparative ease with which you can do these things with android and ios.

Isn't the requirement to get VMware Fusion Mac-specific? Might as well complain about not being able to write iOS applications on Windows.

This is a fair point, but its a fair point that completely misses the point. If RIM wants to attract the huge numbers of developers that are flocking to iOS (and, presumably, doing all of their dev work in OS X), they should be doing everything possible to make the switch from iOS development to Playbook development as smooth as possible. And there is no way to do that without addressing the question of Playbook development on OS X.

Re: You win, RIM (An open letter to RIM's developer relations)

#56

Post by mcclung »

jammur wrote: post #11
btipling wrote: post #9

The complaints are: $200 price to develop with 10 app limit. Multiple registration forms. Requiring multiple downloads. Requiring to purchase vmware fusion. Installer that just copies an iso. Having to password protect the simulator. Bad documentation on how to load an app on the simulator. The comparative ease with which you can do these things with android and ios.

Now I feel like an idiot for spending an hour and half writing it, lol.

I enjoyed reading it however. I will now mercilessly mock RIM along with you.

Re: You win, RIM (An open letter to RIM's developer relations)

#57

Post by lallysingh »

jammur wrote: post #52
lallysingh wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly as an ex-indie PalmOS developer, I'm having trouble being sympathetic. I don't do blackberry myself, and don't have any particular affection for RIM, but this is just a little much. As I understand, RIM's gonna do all the fulfillment & billing for you in the app store? This is the SDK for an unreleased product? On a new, unreleased OS? On a different architecture than your dev machine? Yeah, it may require s…

It's not a question of whether you CAN make it work, but whether you should have to. RIM is in competition for developers with Apple and Google. Why would a developer choose to go with RIM when the experience is much better elsewhere. I think we can all agree that apps are one of the things that will make or break a smartphone platform in the current market conditions. If RIM can't attract talented developers to writ…

RIM's got two nice advantages to it:

(1) Employers often pay for the BB, and the data plan. You're getting access to a lot of users who wouldn't otherwise be customers in the smartphone arena.

(2) As the phones are already part of the business's primary operations, you have some nice opportunities to sell apps that integrate with the business.

Considering that RIM's product isn't even out the door yet, and the specific strengths RIM holds, it's not 100% comparable to the iOS & Android side. You've got the chance to provide something that isn't a (a) fart app; (b) casual game; (c) train schedule; or (d) local wrapper for the website.

Frankly, the superficial weaknesses of the form fillout and download procedure just aren't substantial. That's what, half a day? The next few months are gonna be in the APIs, and the next few years are gonna be in the customer base, app market, maintenance, and support of the app.

Re: You win, RIM (An open letter to RIM's developer relations)

#58

Post by mclin »

lallysingh wrote: post #49
btipling wrote: post #9

The complaints are: $200 price to develop with 10 app limit. Multiple registration forms. Requiring multiple downloads. Requiring to purchase vmware fusion. Installer that just copies an iso. Having to password protect the simulator. Bad documentation on how to load an app on the simulator. The comparative ease with which you can do these things with android and ios.

Honestly as an ex-indie PalmOS developer, I'm having trouble being sympathetic. I don't do blackberry myself, and don't have any particular affection for RIM, but this is just a little much. As I understand, RIM's gonna do all the fulfillment & billing for you in the app store? This is the SDK for an unreleased product? On a new, unreleased OS? On a different architecture than your dev machine? Yeah, it may require s…

> Actually, the 10 app limit impressed me. I don't want my apps as #13 in middle of 25 variations of the same app from another developer. $20 a product just isn't expensive.

Completely agree. It's like if email spammers had to pay 1 cent per spam email - spam would go away. With Android as an example, when there's no cost to publish per App, you get a ton of garbage. I think $20/app is a good value to discourage spam.

Re: You win, RIM (An open letter to RIM's developer relations)

#60

Post by westajay »

I went through the same process, but didn't think it was that bad.

RIMs web signup download process needs to be cleaned up, and the Mac installer thing was a bit weird, but I thought the docs were straightforward, and only took me a couple mins to get the sample app deployed.

My gosh.. A command line program to remote install to the vm image! At least there is a full intel compiled image, and not some buggy emulator.

You can also build decent apps using HTML and JavaScript, much like webos.

Is it just me, or has the HN crowd deteriorated to "enterprise-ey bad, apple good"

There is a lot of opportunity in this platform, but not for consumer apps. They will be very prevalent in business environments, and the os is damn responsive.

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