Ever since it was announced, the iPhone has generated a frenzy like no other gadget. Other smart phones have come and gone, but none have made as big a splash as the iPhone is making. Perhaps it is the high expectations that people have from the house of Apple, perhaps it is the lure of the sexy and sleek phone as well; whatever the reason, sales have been good ever since the product was launched.
One drawback that was felt during the early days of this gadget’s launch was the lack of features that allowed third party applications to run on the iPhone. The advantage of such apps is that they allow you to customize the look and feel of your phone, no matter what features it initially came with. You can download as many or as few applications, depending on your need and preference. This downside was soon resolved with the introduction of the iPhone Developer Program and the SDK that was offered as a free download.
Apple has provided enough initiative for budding developers and coders to write apps for both the iPhone and the iPod by introducing iPhone Developer University program at colleges through which instructors are allowed to create teams of up to 200 students at no extra cost (professional developers have to subscribe to be able to join the iPhone Developer Program). The team is provided with the SDK and all the regular tools that are needed to write code with added icing to the cake coming in the form of free iPhones and iPods for evaluation purposes.
This incentive comes at a time when developers are evaluating the pros and cons of writing apps for the iPhone – while there are many advantages, they also realize that they are limiting themselves to the iPhone when they could be writing web apps that are suited to any smart phone that runs on Windows, Java or the Symbian platforms. Another decision potential developers have to make is whether to make the application native (one that resides on the phone) or web-based. The latter require a wireless Internet connection in order to be downloaded directly on your phone.
Hundreds of thousands of apps, some of them hugely popular and others falling by the wayside, some that are available free of cost and others that are charged at nominal rates, are now available for the iPhone. Goes to show that developers are in fact eager to jump on this bandwagon, seeing as it’s being pulled by Apple!
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This post was contributed by Kimberly Peterson, who writes about online accounting degrees. She welcomes your feedback at KimPeterson2006 at gmail.com
by CE
22 Aug 2009 at 22:53
Do you think that selling .99 cents apps in 100′s is going to make the iPhone development worthwhile?
by JerichoHM
09 Nov 2009 at 23:07
After roughly a month of research I’ve found the iPhone App Development nothing more than another marketing ploy of the Mac world. I was almost convinced to get a Mac mini and begin development myself. Fortunately 20 years of good practice made me research the opportunity thoroughly. First and fore most you are REQUIRED to have a Mac to develop on. Secondly your developer subscription of $99 is required so you can have the certificate to develop. Last but not least is the lovely 20% commission Mac yanks out from under you. So Minimally on a $0.99 app that you might get 100 sales you are looking at a loss of $620. This is a rough estimate obviously, but there is no way without releasing apps at a beyond acceptable rate for complete testing and debugging to turn a profit. The profit you would turn wouldn’t compensate for your time spent either…. Personally as a programmer I don’t feel minimum wage would cover it. The only thing you get to claim up to is bragging rights, maybe a little recognition, and a shiny new brick sitting on your desk with the Apple logo. Mac needs to stop being stubborn mules and take on some level of conformity. Is it so much to ask that they utilize the standardized languages that have been created and fine tuned for almost 30 years? Whats wrong with an SDK applied to C++. They would still have access to OpenGL and wouldn’t have had to work so hard to recreate C++ to form xCode. Mac has once again kicked, spit, and pissed on the freelancers that are a driving force in the modern technology world. You would think riding on a BSD (OPEN SOURCE) platform and charging double if not triple for a standard Intel/nVidia configuration PC would be enough for their greedy CEO’s.