Comments on: What’s with the iPhone SDK FUD, O’Reilly? http://www.bananaranha.com/2008/03/26/whats-with-the-iphone-sdk-fud-oreilly/ Apple, the intertubes, software and everything else Sat, 22 Nov 2008 07:49:28 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.6.3 By: Hollis Waller http://www.bananaranha.com/2008/03/26/whats-with-the-iphone-sdk-fud-oreilly/#comment-139 Hollis Waller Wed, 12 Nov 2008 21:09:03 +0000 http://www.bananaranha.com/2008/03/26/whats-with-the-iphone-sdk-fud-oreilly/#comment-139 ax12m6ic39fldrcq ax12m6ic39fldrcq

]]> By: Jenna Fox http://www.bananaranha.com/2008/03/26/whats-with-the-iphone-sdk-fud-oreilly/#comment-123 Jenna Fox Sun, 20 Apr 2008 22:45:53 +0000 http://www.bananaranha.com/2008/03/26/whats-with-the-iphone-sdk-fud-oreilly/#comment-123 Exactly my feelings on the issue. These people claiming the unofficial SDK is more powerful because of the access it gives to unofficial api's are nuts. Before apple came along, the entire api was undocumented! All programmers had to work from was what the name of the method was, and what the names of the parameters it accepts were. Open developers have been extremely limited to using only pieces of the API's that have been figured out through guess work, and as a result some developers have become extremely cautious about making <em>any</em> UI changes to avoid having to touch the undocumented Objective C UI code and potentially break something. That's what makes the ugly, crashy, difficult to use open apps amazing. It's amazing someone went to all that effort just to make an iPhone app. With the real SDK (the one that's more than just a compiler and a folder full of headers) it's a lot easier to play with and experiment with the iPhone API's, and to make really great UI. I truly expect that once firmware 2.0 ships, the majority of the open app developers will move over to the Apple SDK to build and test their apps, then continue sending them to the Installer package manager for distribution. I really hope the Installer folks figure out how to package an application in such a way to store it in the media partition and not the system partition, and to provide UI like the (X) delete button in the wiggly icon rearrangement mode that allows easy removal of applications. Exactly my feelings on the issue. These people claiming the unofficial SDK is more powerful because of the access it gives to unofficial api’s are nuts. Before apple came along, the entire api was undocumented! All programmers had to work from was what the name of the method was, and what the names of the parameters it accepts were.

Open developers have been extremely limited to using only pieces of the API’s that have been figured out through guess work, and as a result some developers have become extremely cautious about making any UI changes to avoid having to touch the undocumented Objective C UI code and potentially break something.

That’s what makes the ugly, crashy, difficult to use open apps amazing. It’s amazing someone went to all that effort just to make an iPhone app. With the real SDK (the one that’s more than just a compiler and a folder full of headers) it’s a lot easier to play with and experiment with the iPhone API’s, and to make really great UI. I truly expect that once firmware 2.0 ships, the majority of the open app developers will move over to the Apple SDK to build and test their apps, then continue sending them to the Installer package manager for distribution. I really hope the Installer folks figure out how to package an application in such a way to store it in the media partition and not the system partition, and to provide UI like the (X) delete button in the wiggly icon rearrangement mode that allows easy removal of applications.

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