There was a certain irony that was almost comical last week when RIM CEO Thorsten Heins announced to 2000 BlackBerry developers in Europe that the company was “ready to compete” because that statement came during a week when the BlackBerry maker lost to high profile enterprise clients – both Halliburton and NOAA will be dropping the BlackBerry support and replacing existing handsets with iPhones.
The statement became even more ironic, though with a tragic rather than comic tone, over the weekend as it became widely known that one major travel company that it was canceling all plans future updates on the BlackBerry platform as well as terminating technical/user support for BlackBerry users.
Following the onslaught of leaked iPad 3 parts and rumors from the last 24 hours, a new report claims that Apple is in “crunch mode” as it works with third-party developers to put the finishing touches on app demos for the iPad 3 launch in early March.
As Apple is known to do, a handful of high-profile developers are being queued up to present their iPad 3-ready apps to the world at a media event in the next few weeks.
It seems as if everyone and their uncle are building iPhone apps these days. As a result, the competition is getting fiercer and fiercer by the day, and it’s becoming tougher to stand out amongst the crowd.
That said, there are a ton of apps that just don’t “cut the mustard” and the user experience suffers because of that lack of care and quality. David Sparks, the man behind the popular MacSparky blog, said the following about what he calls “speculative developers”:
If you want to develop apps, take your time and make something awesome. Make it fast. Make it beautiful. Make something you’re proud of. Don’t make 60 crappy apps: Make one really good one.
I couldn’t agree more, but when you’re faced with the haze of substandard apps that claim to be able to deliver the goods, how can a developer get their app noticed — and adopted — over the long-term?
The latest Cult of Mac Deal may have the solution to that problem.
Apple sent out an interesting message to third-party developers today. iOS devs are now required to submit Retina display screenshots for their iPhone and iPod touch apps to the App Store. All updates to existing apps must also meet the 960×640 resolution requirement.
Not only does this new policy signal the death of 480×320 resolution apps, but it also indicates that the iPhone 3GS may not be around much longer.
During the past few weeks, one quote from Walter Isaacson’s Steve Jobs biography has bounced around the tech and mainstream media. It’s the quote where President Obama asked Jobs about Apple manufacturing jobs that had been shipped oversees and Jobs responds “those jobs aren’t coming back” – words the President decided to ignore during his State of the Union speech last month. Instead, Obama called on tech companies to bring those jobs back.
With all due respect to the White House, it seems pretty likely that those jobs aren’t coming back. Anyone that doubts that needs to reread the first New York Times piece on Apple’s manufacturing partners. The U.S. simply cannot match the manufacturing capacity in China and elsewhere. Get over it. Those jobs are gone but that doesn’t mean Apple and other tech companies aren’t creating new jobs right here at home. In fact, Apple and other tech company have create an entire to category of jobs and filled half a million of them with American workers.
Apple has issued a reminder to developers warning them to not manipulate App Store rankings. Following Apple’s removal of a third-party developer’s collection of 68 copy-cat apps (titles like Temple Jump and Numbers With Friends) from the App Store, the issue of chart scamming has been brought into the light again.
It’s no secret that RIM’s attempt to create an iPad-killer with its PlayBook tablet didn’t deliver a success. In a move that was common of last year’s parade of iPad competitors, the PlayBook shipped almost as a public beta with core functionality like a native email app missing from the device. The PlayBook’s dismal sales haven’t exactly inspired positive reactions from developers, which could signal the death of not just RIM’s tablet but also future smartphones based on the QNX operating system that powers the PlayBook.
In a desperate attempt to build up a developer community, RIM has turned to an unlikely source: Android developers. The company has already developed tools that allow Android apps to be ported with relative ease to the PlayBook, but interest hasn’t exactly been high. Now, the company is hoping to entice more developers by offering a free PlayBook.
Following the release of Safari 5.1.3 earlier this week — which was bundled with the OS X Lion 10.7.3 update — Apple has seeded Safari 5.1.4 to registered developers. The release includes improvements to both JavaScript performance, and the way in which the browser handles PDF printing.
Apple has always been a company that stresses the details. Everything down to the tiniest pixel is highly scrutinized to perfection. That’s why it doesn’t come as a total surprise that Apple is going after developers for using the wrong type of iPhone mockup to promote third-party apps on the web.
Cupertino doesn’t like the idea of developers using white iPhones to show off their work in marketing materials. It’s a black iPhone or the highway.
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What do Groupon, Twitter, Hulu, and 37 Signals all have in common? They all use the incredibly powerful, dynamic, and highly scalable programming language of Ruby or Ruby on Rails. Why is that supposed to get your heart fluttering? Because this language is the future of the web. Not being a developer myself, I shamelessly Googled to find out why Ruby on Rails is such a popular language/framework and I came across a Quora post from Ian MacLeod that sums it up nicely:
1. The Ruby community moves quickly, adopting new technologies and patterns – and refactoring or throwing out the old. Programmers love being on the cutting-edge.
2. Ruby seems to be one of those languages that maps well to a developer’s mental model. It’s frequently mentioned as one of a few languages that developers find a joy to code in.
3. Ruby is one of the major languages that promotes widespread use of “language magic” to createeasily-readable DSLs. This makes it very easy for casual developers to learn the language.
So, whether you want to start your company or just lock-in job security for the rest of your life…this tutorial is where it all starts.
With more than 27 step-by-step video lectures, this Ruby Programming course is only $79 (normally its 3x that much…and well worth it) and will teach you the ten steps to creating your first web app.
We don’t have to tell you that there are a ton of amazing apps on the App Store, but how much profit do those apps make? We all know Angry Birds is raking in the money, but what about the others guys? Take Camera+ for instance. 18 months ago TapTapTap released Camera+ and have been enjoying consistent success ever since. On average, a copy of Camera+ is sold approximately every 3 seconds. Recent sales numbers released by the company show that the app has earned a grand total of $5,125,844 to date….that’s after Apple got their 30% cut.
Apple has seeded a new build of Lion 10.7.3 to registered developers in the Dev Center. Following the release of iOS 5.1 beta 3 yesterday, Build 11D42 of Lion 10.7.3 is now available for developers to download and test.
While popular iOS games can make their developers a small fortune in the App Store, not every title is a huge success. With over half a billion iOS apps currently available, some are bound to go unnoticed. However, one developer is attempting to make money from his iOS game in a different way.
With his latest game struggling to take off in the App Store, indie game developer Adam Schwartz is looking to bring in some cash by selling the title’s source code on eBay.
Following a report that claims Nintendo is set to open up its own app store for its upcoming Wii U console, there are now suggestions that the Japanese gaming giant is “actively courting” iOS developers in a bit to lure them over to Wii U game development. One developer reports that the company even offered “assistance” with porting their title from iOS to be played on the console’s new controller, which features a 6.2-inch touchscreen.
With countless iOS devices being handed out this Christmas, Apple’s App Store is going to see a heck of a lot of business. It’s in your best interests, then, if you’re an iOS developer, to have your apps in the App Store and ready for sale before Apple shuts down for the holidays. You now have less than 24 hours to submit your app before it’s put on hold until January.
During an interview at the Le Web expo in Paris this week, Google chairman Eric Schmidt took a stab at Apple and insisted his company’s Android operating system is way ahead of iOS in a number of ways, including affordability and choice. What’s more, Schmidt claims that in six months, Ice Cream Sandwich will offer better functionality.
Ever since Electronic Artists (EA) started investing in the mobile games scene, the company has produced a flurry of titles that have been a big hit with Apple fans. With the combination of console to iOS ports (FIFA 12, NBA JAM, Dead Space) and original content made exclusively for iOS (Max & the Magic Marker, Fantasy Safari), EA has become one of the hottest game developers for the iPhone and iPad.
Now that we’re rolling into the holiday season, EA is starting to feel the Christmas spirit and has created a “Daily Deals” page that highlights new deals on their most popular games.
So far, nothing in the iOS 5.1 beta seeded yesterday has supported the rumors that Apple would add new capabilities to Siri with the first official point update, but there is at least one big new addition to Siri with the release of yesterday’s beta: it gives developers limited Siri integration.
Apple has just seeded the first iOS 5.1 beta to developers, along with XCode 4.3 beta. What’s new, only time and playing around with iOS 5.1 will tell, but according to past reports, iOS 5.1 should not only get to the bottom of the iPhone 4S’s battery drain issues, it should also introduce some cool new Siri functionality. We’ll have to wait and see though.
After the jump, the release notes. Are you a developer who has noticed something new in iOS 5.1, or seen the update fix your iPhone 4S battery drain problem? Please tip us!
Apple has sent an email out to developers with the reminder that the annual iTunes Connect shutdown is scheduled for December 22nd-29th. The iTunes Connect portal shuts down every year during the holidays while Apple’s corporate employees take a much-deserved break.
The shutdown means there will be no app updates, price changes, or submissions approved for the App Store during that timeframe. This year’s shutdown lasts two days longer than previous years.
Late last night, Apple seeded a new build of Safari to developers, 5.1.2 beta, which brings a fix to the embedded PDF viewing and printing issues that were present in previous versions of the browser. It also introduces a “known bug” that causes extensions to crash. As the ancient Romans used to say, caveat developor.
Apple issued a press release yesterday in which it confirmed the new iPhone 4S will be launching in South Korea next Friday, November 11. In order to prepare for its arrival, the South Korean government has lifted a ban that prevented iOS users from downloading games onto their devices.
Apple has seemingly missed its iTunes Match launch date after promising at its ‘Let’s Talk iPhone’ event early last month that the new service would be up and running in the United States at the “end of October.” Developers who have been testing the service in beta are discovering today that the iTunes 10.5.1 beta has now ended, with no replacement in sight.
While we’re still clicking that ‘Check for Update’ button in iTunes in anticipation of iOS 5, the Apple’s iCloud website has already lost its ‘beta’ tag and been given a new login page design.
