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A Story of Why Devs Should Think Twice about Developing for the iPhone

icombatgame.com

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Re: A Story of Why Devs Should Think Twice about Developing for the iPhone

#2
This was the state of the AppStore over a year ago and I've continued to hear the same story from various sources month over month. It's not really a surprise anymore, so it begs the question of whether or not they did research. They should complete this blog post and make it a Top 10 Reasons Why Not To Develop for the AppStore. The four bullet points are scratching the surface of many issues that compound into a one big frustration.

The thing is, there is also a list of the Top 10 Reasons Why You Should Develop for the AppStore. That list forces you to swallow the crap you have to put up with well, because Apple has cured so many of the much bigger headaches.

Re: A Story of Why Devs Should Think Twice about Developing for the iPhone

#3
We have also had a submission rejected because of content in the application description. Even though the binary submission was not altered, we were forced to re-upload the binary and wait an additional >2 weeks for the next round of review feedback for removing ONE sentence from the description.

There should be a separate review queue for application description, the current system is incredibly inefficient.

Re: A Story of Why Devs Should Think Twice about Developing for the iPhone

#5
and to add on to the dev hurdle, you must code in obj-c and have a mac. I am sure there are ways around the mac part, but limiting the target language already discourages many devs from building apps for the iphone. i myself am slowly becoming an android fan (ASE - http://code.google.com/p/android-scripting/wiki/FAQ)

Re: A Story of Why Devs Should Think Twice about Developing for the iPhone

#8

We have also had a submission rejected because of content in the application description. Even though the binary submission was not altered, we were forced to re-upload the binary and wait an additional >2 weeks for the next round of review feedback for removing ONE sentence from the description. There should be a separate review queue for application description, the current system is incredibly inefficient.

Even though the binary submission was not altered, we were forced to re-upload the binary and wait an additional >2 weeks for the next round of review feedback for removing ONE sentence from the description.

This smacks of the sort of bureaucratic mediocrity which Steve Jobs should hate and have hunted down, quickly and without mercy. It's exactly the sort of big company rot that slows a big company down.

Re: A Story of Why Devs Should Think Twice about Developing for the iPhone

#9

We have also had a submission rejected because of content in the application description. Even though the binary submission was not altered, we were forced to re-upload the binary and wait an additional >2 weeks for the next round of review feedback for removing ONE sentence from the description. There should be a separate review queue for application description, the current system is incredibly inefficient.

Even though the binary submission was not altered, we were forced to re-upload the binary and wait an additional >2 weeks for the next round of review feedback for removing ONE sentence from the description. This smacks of the sort of bureaucratic mediocrity which Steve Jobs should hate and have hunted down, quickly and without mercy. It's exactly the sort of big company rot that slows a big company down.

Unfortunately, like google, apple has never been big on customer service, of which this is a sort.

Re: A Story of Why Devs Should Think Twice about Developing for the iPhone

#10

and to add on to the dev hurdle, you must code in obj-c and have a mac. I am sure there are ways around the mac part, but limiting the target language already discourages many devs from building apps for the iphone. i myself am slowly becoming an android fan (ASE - http://code.google.com/p/android-scripting/wiki/FAQ )

You are not limited to developing native apps, in fact, even if you are comfortable in developing in Obj-C, for applications of a certain size using PhoneGap or YUI to make cross-platform WebKit based normal apps is perfectly reasonable.

For apps of significant size or those with performance issues, it is not unreasonable to expect to have to use one native language, such as most game consoles do, or even Android does as pointed out in your link: "If you have performance concerns for your application, it's probably better to use the standard Android SDK (or NDK) where you'll have more control over the system."

Sure you could write a huge app in ASE instead of being restricted to Java, but its not recommended. In the same way you can write a huge app in PhoneGap over Obj-C, but it is not recommended.

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