Things you can’t do in an iPhone application
When Apple announced the iPhone SDK, I expressed my mistrust of the walled garden in no uncertain terms. The feedback was pretty overwhelmingly negative. Apple fans generally don’t like criticism, and my use of metonymy seemed to touch a particular nerve.
Personally, I wouldn’t build an iPhone application with your seed capital: I can’t see how anyone would base a business model on the inscrutable whims of the gnomes of Cupertino. And I’ve got to admit that I’ve slightly enjoyed the Schadenfreude of seeing the pain that developers have suffered at the hands of Apple’s opaque and arbitrary application vetting process, because I feel a bit vindicated. That may well make me a bad person, but I’ll live with it. I also hope that the outcry of disgruntled developers will make the concept of a single gatekeeper less palatable in future. I want to see the App Store model wither. No, that’s not true. I want the concept of one single exclusive App Store to die. I want this experiment in cut down computing to fail. Hard.
The last two days have brought another couple of examples of incomprehensible reasons for rejection, so here’s a list of things you can’t do in an iPhone application:
- Allow anyone to read books that are on the internet, because the internet contains porn (if badly bowdlerised Victorian translations of the Kama Sutra count as porn).
- Celebrate Israeli independence and/or whistle.
- Display the word ‘fuck’, even if it was typed in by the Apple tester himself or came from the internet
- Provide functionality that Apple thinks it owns, such as fetching podcasts or email.
- Interact with an application that could be used to download unlawful copies of copyrighted material
- Use a development framework that would allow you to write cross-platform phone applications.
Of course, one category that seems to suffer no such restrictions is that of the flatulence simulator.
Anyway, I expect irate responses to this piece as well. So let me make one thing clear: Apple can indeed legally do what it likes (more’s the pity). But, developers, if you choose to hitch your wagon to their horse, don’t complain where you’re led. I, for one, won’t have any sympathy for you.
I know that the iPhone is a lovely platform. I know that the development tools are very good (at least by the standards of mobile phone development). I know that having someone else handle charging and billing is convenient. But the fact that the yoke is padded in velvet doesn’t make it any less constricting. Whether to submit to it is your choice.
tl;dr: I told you so.
2009-05-21 23:44 UTC. Comments: 6.
Tom Taylor
Wrote at 2009-05-22 09:50 UTC using Firefox 3.0.10 on Mac OS X:
One of the best things that I can see about the iPhone is that it’s given the mobile industry a massive kick in the balls.They’ve turned it from being an industry about vendors pushing crappy services at users, to something approaching the level of flexibility of the desktop, and where indie developers can create great stuff, in a short amount of time, and get paid for it.
Android, Palm Pre, S60 and all the other platforms that are trying to catch up are ultimately going to be better because of this, and the market will be healthier.
Strawp
Wrote at 2009-05-22 12:55 UTC using Firefox 3.0.10 on Windows XP:
Join the dark side and program some Android apps, where the market allows anything unless it’s specifically pornographic!You’d never get an app on iPhone which automatically queues up a torrent on a remote server based on the barcode you just scanned, for example :P
Terence Eden
Wrote at 2009-05-22 14:47 UTC using Firefox 3.0.10 on Windows XP:
The best thing about Android (and it has a lot going for it) is that you don’t need to go via the app store. Just stick the .apk on a website and anyone can install it*.You don’t need to apply to anyone to sign it. You can stick it behind a PayPal link if that’s what you want.
From a dev point of view, you get access to just about everything that the phone can do.
Here’s my incredibly geeky first attempt at an Android App. http://android.shkspr.mobi/ussd.apk
T
*Ok, they have to check a box in the settings that they’re happy to install untrusted software.
[NB, I work for Vodafone who sell the HTC Magic. I don’t speak on their behalf.]
Neil Trodden
Wrote at 2009-05-24 13:19 UTC using Safari (Mobile) 525.20.1 on Android:
Paul, I chose an Android handset because as shiny as the iPhone is, I knew I would come to be bitter about the limitations of the iPhone.Sadly, people’s apathy seems to correlate directly with how shiny the device is.
Daniel Hardy
Wrote at 2009-05-24 17:36 UTC using Firefox 3.0.10 on Mac OS X:
Neil, I think that is a little harsh, surely you don’t believe the iphone success is down to how “shiny” it is.If a “shiny” device was horrible to use, word of mouth would absolutely kill it.
In the long term the platform and model which delivers the best mix of value for money, ease of use and innovative features will win out. Simple as.
Tim
Wrote at 2009-05-30 14:40 UTC using Firefox 2.0.0.21pre on Linux:
I bought me a nokia 5800, which some have compared to the iPhone (probably mainly due to the touch-screen). There are many ways the two can be compared – 5800 has the larger feature set, iPhone arguably has the slicker interface, iPhone is considerably more expensive, etc. But in the end there are three reasons I won’t (and didn’t) buy an iPhone.I don’t want my choice of phone to…
...restrict my choice of operating system (ubuntu mounts the 5800 up as mass storage (for music and video transfer) or finds the modem straight off). iTunes for Linux seems like a royal pain.
...restrict my choice of phone network.
...restrict where I get my software.
I know S60 isn’t exactly open source (yet) but I also know I can get and install shoddy apps from anywhere I like.
Oh, sorry, fourth reason. Call me a control freak but I like to be able to change my own battery (and not pay 60 pounds).