Marc Charbonneau’s Blog

Cocoa developer Matt Gemmell tells us why our application’s website sucks. I admit to making some of these mistakes in the past, although I think I fixed most of them in my most recent set of updates.

Alexander Repty released a PDF reader for iPad, Folio Case, right around the time Apple announced PDF support in iBooks. Alexander has written a lot about his experience on his blog and Twitter, and it’s an interesting story to read.

Speaking of iBooks, if you’re looking for free content in .epub format there’s nothing better than The Pragmatic Bookshelf.

Dave Caolo’s new Apple blog, 52 Tigers, has a great post about the small changes in iOS 4 you may have missed.

Despite already having a second revision Jawbone bluetooth headset, I’m still tempted by their new ICON series released this week. This is the first headset I’ve seen other than Apple’s that uses the iPhone’s bluetooth headset battery indicator, along with other improvements over previous models.

Steven Frank, of Panic co-founder fame, is taking a stand against the iPhone.

When the app store first opened, there were some questionable decisions, and like most everyone, I was willing to forgive Apple a few transgressions as they were navigating new, exciting (and rocky) territory. Historically, Apple has made bad decisions, but they’ve generally corrected them. (The $100 refunds for original launch-day iPhone purchasers after the price dropped come to mind.) The boat may turn slowly, but nothing before has ever suggested to me that Apple are actively malicious.

But after an entire year of continuous bad decisions that are hostile to developers and consumers alike, we’ve moved on from “working out the kinks” to good old-fashioned getting fucked.

Every week it seems like there’s more and more developer backlash about App Store policies and the viability of making a living as an independent iPhone developer. I don’t blame them; right now the App Store is not a platform I would want to commit to. At the same time though, I’m not about to give up my own plans for the iPhone. Most of the apps I have in mind are companion apps to desktop Macintosh applications I’ve been working on over the past year or two. While I might make money on the iPhone apps alone, I don’t see them as a way to make rent as much as I see them as a way to augment and improve the work I’m already doing on the Mac. And I think most Cocoa developers will agree with me when I say that OS X is still a pretty sweet platform to write software for.

I’ve recently been invited to the 2009 Voices That Matter: iPhone Developers Conference, taking place in October in Boston, MA.

This conference is designed for Mac developers looking for a succinct, easy way to get up to speed on the specific skills needed to build, test and distribute successful applications for the iPhone and iPod touch. Erica Sadun, author of The iPhone Developer’s Cookbook and our event’s technical chair, will lead an epic group of speakers at the conference including Aaron Hillegass, Andy Ihnatko, Jon Rentzsch, Steve Kochan, Fraser Speirs, Lee Barney and lots of others.

Having missed out on yet another year of WWDC, I’m excited about this conference. Many of the presenters are developers I know well through Twitter and blogs, and I have a great amount of respect for their work. I’m pretty confident I’ll pick up plenty of great tips that will help in the iPhone development work I’ve been doing lately.

The event organizers sent me a $100 discount to post here for readers. If you’re planning on attending, register here and be sure to use the priority code PHBLOG. There’s an additional $200 early bird discount available before September 12th. Also, send me an email beforehand if you’re coming and I’ll try to say hello!

The iPhone’s built in ringtones are pretty disappointing if you just want a “plain” ringtone, so I always have my eye out for sites like this. RCP Tones is selling their synthesizer ringtone pack at a “pay what you want” price, anywhere from $0.00 to whatever you think it’s worth.

iRingPro’s Zen collection is another good pack I’ve used, although their price is fixed at $10.

I love it, indie iPhone developers bake cake representations of their applications. The iPhone development community is largely new and doesn’t seem to have the same sense of community as in the Mac OS X development world, so it’s great to see things like this pop up.

When I bought my iPhone last month I picked up a Griffin PowerDock to bring some order to the number of iPod charging cables I have. For $50, I’m a little disappointed. It didn’t come with an iPhone 3G dock adaptor (I should have read the box more carefully), although you can order one online for around $5 + S&H. Worse though, the iPod Nano 2G dock barely fits, so much that I was almost afraid of breaking it the first time I tried to put the iPod in. Plus, the whole dock is just slightly uneven on the bottom, so despite having a big rubber pad it tends to slide around a lot.

I’ve always been happy with Griffin in the past, I would have expected more from them. It would have been different if it was made Belkin or another mass-market company.

I finally received my Gelaskins order in the mail this week. It looks cool, seems durable, but I ended up with some creases around the corners that drive me crazy when I’m holding the iPhone. The print itself is also kind of low resolution, when you look at it closely. Think inkjet quality, not photo quality.

I’m wouldn’t say I’m unhappy with it or it wasn’t worth the money, but I was hoping for a little more for a $20 sticker.

Most eBook readers let you download books online, or transfer them from your computer. Classics takes an entirely different approach by bundling only a select few books, each with its own cover and illustration drawn from scratch by artists David Lanham and Sebastiaan de With. The result (packaged together with a great custom UI, sound and animation) really makes the app shine in a way that no other eBook reader I’ve seen has attempted. It’s the interface you’re paying for though; all the books are public domain and are available for free through other eBook readers.

Currently 12 books have been packaged and included in Classics. Free updates will include more books in the future. My only concern is the possibility that after two or three more books the developers will stop development and move on to something new. A lot of recent talk about the App Store indicates that sales fall dramatically once your app drops out of the new and featured lists. However, both Phil Ryu and Andrew Kaz have told me via Twitter that they are in fact dedicated to continual updates, and a have a lot of great stuff lined up for it.

The past month or two has seen a lot of controversy over rejections in the Apple’s iPhone App Store. Apple has pulled not just “joke” apps which don’t have any quality or substance behind them, but seemingly legitimate applications like Podcaster and Nullriver’s NetShare.

I haven’t done any iPhone development yet, but I am thinking about porting a version of my OS X application Runner’s Log. By its nature Runner’s Log is a pretty tame application, but this news still concerns me. Is it possible it could fall under the ‘duplicate functionality’ clause the Podcaster was rejected for? The new iPod Touch has Nike+ software (which is definitely a competitor) built in, and it’s certainly possible it might make it into the iPhone eventually. What if my version of Runner’s Log could upload data to a website the same way Nike+ did? What if it could read Nike+ data as well?

Now, this is enough to bother me, but I’m not really concerned about it. I think the chances of Runner’s Log being rejected are honestly pretty low, if at all. But what if instead, you imagine Hulu as an example. Hulu is NBC’s flash based online TV service, and it seems to me there’s no reason they couldn’t create an iPhone app similar to YouTube if they wanted. Except, of course, that it would be a direct competitor to TV show sales in the iTunes Store. It wouldn’t exactly be duplicating iTunes, but how would Apple handle that?

Hulu has NBC behind it, so maybe it’s not fair to compare them to the typical indie developer shop that doesn’t have its own lawyers or high-up connections with Apple. The point I’m trying to make though, is that there are plenty examples of perfectly reasonable applications that could potentially fall victim to Apple. This is an area where Apple needs to be more upfront, either by providing a comprehensive list of what will and won’t be allowed, or through more communication with developers before the development process begins. Software companies big and small can’t afford to spend three, six months (or longer, in many cases) when there’s a possibility the application won’t even have a chance to pay off in the end.

The App Store is new, probably still overwhelmed with requests, and I have no reason to believe the process won’t continue to improve over time. Right now though, this is not a good situation to be in.