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I first started developing an application for Palm in 2000 with the Palm IIIc. I was amazed at how well-though the API was. A few things were missing, such as POSIX-compatible routines.¹ The API looked a lot like Carbon, which was a perfectly reasonable way to develop applications. CodeWarrior was a decent-enough tool, and growing in capabilities. New hardware, while not announced or even previewed yet, was on the horizon that could take away most of the nastiest problems with Palm OS, which were rooted in the 680×0 architecture.

I estimated at the time they were at least four years ahead of the competition in terms of an operating system.

But since then?

Buying and selling themselves to… themselves.
Absolutely nothing on the OS front.

Since then? Windows CE and successors have caught up in many areas, exceeded Palm in others. Blackberry, and iPhone exist, both of which make Palm look pathetic.

Loss of professional-level development tools.

Hardware quality control problems.

It’s hard to believe that Palm has thrown away this much of a lead. But they have.

1. Expecting full POSIX support on a Palm back then was maybe a little unrealistic, but expecting the available routines to match POSIX definitions is quite a bit more reasonable. [↩]

I don’t usually like to report anything John Gruber posts, because everyone will have already seen it. But I’ll make an exception: Michael Tsai is right: What Apple delivers in the iPhone is less offensive than the spin as it’s been delivered. (via Daring Fireball.)

I’m not so upset at the iPhone’s lack of openness as I am concerned it could be the start of something on Mac OS X. And the only reason for that is that in spinning all these restrictions as good things on the iPhone, Apple has made me start to worry that they might consider them good on Mac OS X 10.6, too.

I’ve been putting this off, because I really don’t want to clash horns with The Macalope. Mostly because he’s got, well, a nice rack. And I don’t. But a recent tweet by the horny one meant I have to get this off my chest.¹

I live in Canada, so I only wish I had the prices and plans available that AT&T offers. But even then, I note an interesting consequence to the way the new iPhone costs you money:

Assuming the Macalope’s numbers are right, sure, the iPhone 3G is $40 more expensive. But that’s over two years! On the day you sign the contract and leave the store with a nice, shiny box on your way to your “unboxing!” photo shoot, you’ve got an extra $300 in your pocket.

All of which begs the question of what you’re going to do with that extra $300 until then. I suggest that instead of blowing it on a Wii² you consider how to turn it into $340 by the end of the contract. That’s only 13% over two years. I’m no financial whiz and I’m not even sure how to spell “whiz,”³ but I bet even I could manage that one. If you don’t think you can, maybe you should step away from the computer long enough to think of something.

Sure, it isn’t cheaper. But if you play your cards correctly⁴ it may turn out to be to your benefit anyway. For the record, I don’t give credit to Apple for that. I’m sure no one there said “Hey, let’s hike the price, but we’ll make them pay the extra over two years. Our customers will be able to invest the money they save on the initial purchase and end up ahead!” It’s just the way the numbers work. Hooray for math!

1. Wow, it would be fun to be paid to write like this. [↩]
2. Because, let’s face it, you either already own one or are mocking the people who do. [↩]
3. I guessed financial, too. [↩]
4. And odds are you won’t, but whose fault is that? [↩]

In Canada we have two GSM cellphone providers: Fido and Rogers. Well, actually, we don’t really. A few years ago, Rogers bought Fido. So these days, I’m used to Fido getting the short straw out of every cup.

I called service a few days ago for an unrelated reason was surprised to hear “If you are calling about the iPhone, press 2.”¹ After completing that call, I tried 611 again and hit 2.

I was expecting “The iPhone will not be available to Fido customers,” but I was surprised. The iPhone will be available to Fido customers. Don’t believe me? There’s actually a news story on CBC. This seems to be a big turn-around by Rogers in offering Fido customers a good phone.

I don’t know how affordable the data plan will be, though.

1. The message has since been removed; I guess the rush died down. [↩]

Gruber at Daring Fireball writes about the restriction of one application at a time on the iPhone. Read it before you go on.

Writing a background task for Touch OS X would be very, very hard. Well, actually, not so much hard as taking a lot of skill, time and effort. I can really understand why Apple wouldn’t want just anyone doing it. But before I get too stressed over it, it’s worth asking a few questions:

First, what kind of program does this actually affect? Not many, probably. In fact, basically, polling network software or network software that receives pushes is the most common scenario.¹ An instant messenger program is an obvious example; it needs to keep the connection alive and plays some sort of beep when a message comes in.

So we’ve established a program this affects. Now it’s worth asking a second question: Is it possible this rule is up for negotiation? At the right price, would it go away? And if so, what might the right price be?

1. An application that background operation is critical to.
2. An application that Apple thinks is important enough to be worth the resources on the iPhone and the effort. Because make no mistake, it’s going to take effort from Apple.
3. Doing the work on campus with an Apple engineer’s help.
4. Payment for the engineer, possibly to be waived in some cases.

In short, if I was to write a program that beeped on the hour, I probably wouldn’t get an exception. I wouldn’t even know who to ask. But AOL Instant Messenger? That might happen. AOL might not even have to ask.²

In short, as developers we need to worry more about we are going to do, than what someone like AOL is going to do.

1. Time-based software is also a possibility, but let’s discard that for the moment. [↩]
2. Although I doubt they have anything running in the background at this point. For the purposes of a prototype/demo, a simple, customized back end would make more sense. [↩]

Rogue Amoeba’s list of enhancement requests against the iPhone SDK file in Apple’s bug reporting system. Most of these are more philosophy than technical issues, but I know there’s some I plan on filing, too.

In an effort to remedy this and remove some of the limitations, we’ve submitted a number of bug reports to Apple. Some of these are useful specifically for us, while others are beneficial to anyone, but our goal here is the same with all of them - we want to make the iPhone platform as robust and powerful as possible.

Some of the comments show people not getting it. Filing enhancement requests in Apple’s bug reporting system is not spam. That’s the feedback mechanism. Further, a hundred people filing duplicate bugs means more than one developer filing a single bug.

So if there’s something you don’t like in the iPhone SDK, file a report on it. I know I plan to report some of these.

Craig Hockenberry writes Hello App Store. Not sure I agree that $99 is too low, though. I think most of those who downloaded the SDK will never buy a signing key.

I’ve downloaded it and looked over some of the samples. There’s a lot of stuff that can be done with it, but a lot that can’t.

The sticking point is that the most interesting part of the iPod touch is the accelerometer, which the simulator doesn’t provide. So you need to actually test on real hardware. But you can’t test on real hardware without signing up for the iPhone developer program, which isn’t available to Canadians. So, basically, I can’t write code that uses the accelerometer.

That’s no big deal, though. At least as long as keys are available before June when the SDK comes out of beta. The accelerometer is the icing on the cake for the first thing I want to work on.

Interesting look at iPhone application development. Although there’s probably a few wrinkles we haven’t heard about yet, it’s reasonable to expect the basics will be the same when the SDK is released. (via Daring Fireball)

Apple’s quietly (so far) introduced a 32GB version of the iPod touch. I thought 16GB would be too small, but it actually seems to be just right for me.