Posted on Jan 20, 2010

iPhone OS: Day 2, Isolation

I hope Ayreon would forgive me for robbing a name from their album, The Human Equation.

These days I'm reading a lot of documentation regarding iPhone OS since I think I'm going to develop something related as part of my Bachelor's Thesis. Sincerly I'm a bit scared about this environment: being a Linux user doesn't ease my travel for sure but this device catch my attention for a lot of things. For instance I like very much the User Interface. I like how Apple designed the OS from a graphical point of view. I can easily say the same for the SDK documentation, it's really really well done. There are tons of examples, tons of documentation; there's even a mini-little tutorial for Object-C newbies.

But, well, as you may already have understood, I really dislike how the Operative System works. It's so darn closed that scares the Hell out of me. The thesis, if I'll accept it, would be an application for GPS Tracking with some other funny features like Geo Tagging, Compass usage and so on. So I've started thinking about what would ever happen if during my walk suddenly a call incomes. iPhone doesn't allow more than one application to run in foreground so the choices are only two: or you get the call, or you track your walk. 2010, dudes! I can't believe we still are forced to be tied with such things. Yea, I know. Security purposes and battery saving. Apple: spend your money on OS optimization and low-consumption hardware! (or ask Nokia how can they produce 12h devices). Well at least we can change the battery. Nope, we can't.

However, why isolation? Isolation came to my mind because of the device itself. It's completely closed. You can't install your own applications without paying a 99$ for being recognized as "Apple Developer". You can't develop an "Hello world" nowhere but Mac OS X. You cannot even try your own bloody-written application that use GPS without paying that fscking 99$. My professor told me:"Well, you still can develop some pseudo-random algorithm to feed your data analysis with". It's outside of my world, it's something I might not even conceive. After all I'm going to grit my teeth because I think that a thesis has to be as explorative as possible. I won't like the idea to put my effort in something I already know. Furthermore, iPhone has a lot of customers (with money) and a nice showcase for applications.

Don't know what will happen. I've already started buying a book. I think I'll sell it before it's shipped to my home.

Posted on Dec 23, 2009

An App Store for everyone?

Yesterday I ran into a news talking about how much Tapulous earned from selling its game through the Apple App Store.

At first I've immediately thought about how much is important to have a service like App Store behind. App Store is simply amazing, clear, easy to use, transparent to the end-user. I think that Apple did put a nail in the coffin with that web-service and, mostly, it's thanks to App Store if iPhone (and iPod touch) is one of the most sold smartphone nowadays.

So, I've exchanged some emails with some friends of mine discussing about which probably is the must-have feature in order to reach similarly goals. The service itself? The quality of the software? The brilliantness of the software? The popularity of the service? The way a product is advertised?

Well, at first I was one of the guys that think that the quality of the software is the primary quality in order to achieve popularity and make some money, but after having seen articles like this I began to think that probably quality isn't one of the most remunerative features a product must have.
I think a software has to be brilliant at first. It has to promote an "idea" that no other softwares have ever promoted so far.
However this is a concept way too intrigued to be faced into 5-mins blog post.
 

But, as you might know, App Store is available only for iPhone OS. So I've started thinking about the possibility to have a similar centralized store available for every other platform.

Before going through that argument, let's think about what we already have.
 
Linux, for instance, already has a similar place for applications. Almost every distributions have a repository (or more) where applications are stored and available to users. The way the applications are "placed" inside such repositories are invisible to the end-user (Debian stores precompiled and prepared .deb files, Gentoo stores only ebuilds and so on) but every distros have a common way to dig into them.
 
Windows, in controversy, has no repository. Everything is entrusted to the search engines, local resellers or magazines.
 
Mac OSX places itself onto an halfway point. There are services like Version Tracker or MacUpdate that provides similary features but the user is still forced to open a browser in order to download an app. Furthermore they simply provide a nice way to search through thousands of apps but they don't provide a way to directly upgrade an app. At least, mac users, have notifications.
 

Another aspect of this discussion is spinning around the security issues. Windows, for the example, is the biggest hatch for warez programs. So, what's the point in providing such a service if everyone uses channels like Torrent (or whatsoever) to gather cracked apps?

Well, this already happens on iPhone/iPod touch. There's a process called Jailbreak that allows users to install unsigned apps, cracked apps. This way, the App Store concept goes to Hell.

Another thing is the real gain for developers compared with how much Apple (for Apps Store) earns by keeping their software in its own showcase.
Apple keeps for itself the 30% of the of the revenues, 70% goes to developers.
But, how much is 30%? This means that if Tapulous earns 1 million dollars a month, more then 400'000 dollars goes to Apple by doing nothing but allowing Tapulous to lay out their app. That's an huge slice, isn't it?
 
With such earnings, there will be competition over the world. There's no way Apple will provide Windows software through its channels, so Microsoft is forced to open and propose an identical service by using another name, obviously. This will surely drive into endless discussions, few software houses will put their software on a growing "app repository" with the result of having nothing changed.
 
In the hypothetical scenario where everything is set up, will users pay for applications if there was a common showcase right away? I don't think so.
I may be prejudiced towards Windows users (I was on them, long time ago) but I think the mentalities are quite different.
 

The million dollar question is: Is it really possible to give Computer users a service like App Store?