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Rather interesting article about what the changes to the iPhone SDK agreement means for developers...

If Apple do this it will please Microsoft no end and Google and other Android phone makers when developers decide that writing for apple is no longer worth it. Then their competitors will gain more software writers for their platforms.

Apple shoot.......and they miss.
I'm going for an Android phone next. No stupid restriction holding back apps.

I think it's still amazing that Apple are so restrictive, and yet developers still continue to develop for the platform, and do so in anger; there are many many more apps for the iPhone OS than there are for Android. I'd go as far as saying (as I have no numbers and can't be arsed to go look) that when iPhone OS was as old as Android is now, it probably had more apps and probably more users and developers...

I guess current cross-platform developers will have to weigh up the pros and cons of sticking with Apple of moving away. It might be easier to develop for Android, but currently you'll get better money on the iPhone.

We'll see what the next 12 months brings...

Greed trumps anger every time. It's a pain, but there's still money to be made from iPhone apps. Why people still make free iPhone apps is beyond me though.

With iPhone OS 4, iAds (stupid name, good concept) will be a big incentive to ad Ads to your app and make money off free apps...

Possibly because they had an idea and wanted to have it on their iPhone.

But they could jailbreak it and build their own app without having to stick to Apple's crap.

Perhaps, then, it's the same reason that people spend years of their life developing the likes of Firefox, Linux and other free software?

If you get an app downloaded 300 000 times that is an achievement in itself.

that is one typo away from being extremely funny

This would require approximately 20 million people to throw their idevices away. As it stands that's a notion getting beyond fantasy and into delusion. It won't affect Microsoft much because Microsoft (and WM) are such a minor player in the mobile app market as to be irrelevant. Google also don't care either way - they actually literally don't care about apps at all, for them the only thing that matters is that people buy the phones to connect to their online services and drive ad revenue. If not one single further app was made for Android Google wouldn't give a monkeys. What they may care about is if a rash of badly programmed resource hogging CS5 built crap ware floods their app markets because that will adversely affect the reputation of the device.

All this means in iPhone terms is you can't use the likes of monotouch and CS5 to make iPhone apps. The thousands of developers who have already figured out how to write apps with Cocoa touch won't have lost anything and will continue to make money doing so. The Iphone app market is mature and has too much mass for the loss of a development platform to matter one way or another. The only people who have lost out in this are Adobe - who have had one of the big selling features of CS5 flash pulled out from under them almost on the eve of launch - and developers who want to throw cheap flash-based shovelware onto multiple platforms instead of developing their apps properly for the platform's features.

Frankly, I have little or no sympathy for either group.

Is this anything over than a competitive business move on Apple's part? No. Will the consumer actually be hurt by this in any grave way? No. will the flow of new apps on the Apple app store suddenly dry up? Don't be silly. There's about 10 times more money in making apps for the iPhone app store than any other app store out there. You really think developers are going to say 'No, I won't learn Cocoa touch and make $100,000 a year selling my app. I'm going to learn CS5 flash for Android and make $1000. I may not have a home or food to eat, but at least I haven't given in to The Man!'

Jon

Exactly what I was thinking

'Get aIds on YOUR apps!'

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