Thursday, March 6th, 2008...12:11 am

The iPhone SDK is going to suck.

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Here is why the iPhone SDK will suck.

Steve Jobs said that there is not going to be Flash support for the iPhone because Flash lite isn’t good enough.

Apple’s iPhone, with all its cutting-edge mobile Internet trickery, needs something much better than the current Flash player that Adobe makes for cellphones. The Flash Player option that fits the bill is made for devices like laptops that are larger than the iPhone; as a consequence, it performs too slowly on the iPhone, he said.

http://tinyurl.com/2nxrap

Then there is Dan Harrelson’s comment

This week they release their SDK and if Apple does so with no limitations, then it will be successful. Developers should be able to create an app, upload it to the iTunes store and pick their desired monetization scheme. If Apple puts anything in the way of the interchange between users and developers, then the SDK will fail, just as Michael Mace predicts.

http://tinyurl.com/28jt85

And he’s right, it will fail because they limit too much.

Constraints are good because they force designers to solve for the weakest link, users or hardware. Apple seems to think that constraints are the opposite, the worst thing ever, and in that they only offer the barest minimum of what exists. It’s known that Apple practices Genius Design, which means they see themselves as their own users and can design best without outside input. Instead of solving for constraints, they ignore them. They force them out, call things inferior, or unnecessary and focus on the simplest of offerings for the simplest of users.

It is no wonder that Apple is shunned by enterprise IT support everywhere.

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5 Comments

Filed under People are complicated, electronics

5 Comments

  • Rick
    March 6th, 2008 at 10:44 am

    I think you need to make a category called “rants” for these posts :)

  • Dan
    March 10th, 2008 at 2:00 pm

    How come your tiny url links aren’t real hyperlinks?

    Anyway, what specifics do you see that will make it suck? I don’t know much about it yet but I was pretty excited about trying out the SDK.

  • admin
    March 10th, 2008 at 5:39 pm

    must be part of the CSS for the blockquote I have them in… I’ll look into that.

    The suck is going to come from sitting between developers and users. Apple seems to think that there is a bigger model for developers who want to sell their products, as Apple makes you pay $99 just to submit your application to them for possible inclusion through iTunes, but I think that more developers will want to give their applications away.

    It is too many hoops for developers and users the way I see it. Apple should look to Macromedia Central to see what I mean.

  • Dan
    March 11th, 2008 at 1:21 pm

    So, aside from the business model - do you think the SDK will be good? One thing I read about that does suck is that only one app at a time can be active. I was going to try making a RSS reader for the iPhone that could download audio/video enclosures directly to the device but that idea is basically shot since the RSS reader can’t run in the background - boo!

    I do think that iTunes only for app delivery is bad. If we want to make a custom app for a niche market or select set of users - how do you distribute the app?

  • admin
    March 11th, 2008 at 1:31 pm

    For individual delivery you would physically need all the users iPhones to upload through the SDK and dock. That could work in a controlled environment like a trade show, but for the real world it’s a joke, you can’t update your app.

    I think that the SDK could be used to make a good Marble Madness game but since you can’t access the dock, I think it’s going to be limited by AT&T, as you’ll need to do everything “over-air.”

    At the end of all the moaning I should say that I think it’s a step in the right direction (pre-android) for mobile phones.

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