Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Apple doesn't want iPhone developers?

Spent a little time over the holiday break thinking about potentially profitable applications for the iPhone... Finally came up with an idea I'm a little excited about. Ok, so it's probably not profitable, but at least it would be fun to write. Unfortunately, I hit a roadblock. I registered for the Apple Developer Connection to get the SDK to get started and couldn't find one for Linux.

A quick email to Apple returned:

"Thank you for contacting the Apple Developer Connection regarding the iPhone Developer Program.

The iPhone SDK requires an Intel processor-based Mac running Mac OS X Leopard. Please know that Apple does not offer a version of the iPhone SDK for Windows operating systems and we have not announced any plans to do so."

Have to admit I'm a little miffed about that - I'd love to have a nice Mac but if I don't have one by now, I'm sure not buying one just to develop an iPhone app. This seems a bit shortsighted on Apple's part. Oh well, Android seems pretty interesting too... hopefully there are some new Android-based phone offerings soon. In the meantime, here's a link to a recently published title from my favorite series:

Hello, Android

[edit: after thinking it over some more, it's pretty smart, albeit distasteful. The amount of sales that they're generating on the iPhone creates a large target for developers, who of course have no choice but to buy a Mac to develop an app for that market - a double win for Apple]

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