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All that support stuff is great for hobbyists, but completely unacceptable for businesses. With Apple and Microsoft you get incident support. If something comes

All that support stuff is great for hobbyists, but completely unacceptable for businesses. With Apple and Microsoft you get incident support. If something comes up, you email them your project, they dig into the source, and they tell you what's going on at the code level. The iPhone Developer Program gives you two code-level incident supports, and the ones after that are absurdly cheap. Microsoft also gives you a phone option. This is how real business support works, not forums and mailing lists. The latter is cool, but you also need the latter to have a serious platform.

Tichy 17y ago
Yeah, we have all heard the stories about the great support iPhone developers get, if their app is rejected for the app store. If that is professional business, I prefer to stay independent. Actually, all the pain just might be a deliberate barrier to entry for "small fish". Companies are used to dealing with pain, individuals less so.
- colinplamondon 17y ago
  As a professional iPhone developer with a multiple top ranking apps, that shit just doesn't really happen anymore. You're much more likely to get a call from Apple with suggestions on what to edit. The horror stories are from 6-9 months ago, and are outdated. So, while folks trot them out in threads like this as examples of how terrible iPhone development is, actual iPhone developers know that it doesn't really come up. Our last two updates were accepted within 24 hours, for instance. Our last new application took three submits, due to issues on our end- every email from them was helpful, and actually IMPROVED the final application. Turnaround was 48 hours, and, on the last submission, they expedited to same-day when I asked them to.
  - matwood 17y ago
    I have an app (nowhere near top ranking tho) and I agree with you for the most part. My first submission took 2 days and any updates have taken less than 24 hours. One took less than 6 hours for them to turn it around and get it on the app store. My only issue with the app store now is the returns. I have had 1 return and all I got from Apple was the form letter that if you have a lot of returns it might be a quality issue. What I would like to see is at least the questionnaire the customer fills out in order for Apple to grant the return. At least this way I can know if it's some sort of serious problem or just someone who made a purchase by mistake.
Quarrelsome 17y ago
I appreciate the benefits of incident support.... but tbh i've never hit a use case where i've needed it. Most issues you can work through yourself and if there is a serious fundamental flaw in the base code you can always find people in the right places to report it to. With my experience with working with Windows Mobile: EXPECT NO SUPPORT. Most of the problems are due to the OEMs and some of the major ones I worked with (Symbol, Intermec, Datalogic) had support that was hilariously bad / non existent.
buster 17y ago
Of course you need apple and ms internal developers to dig into their source code, because you as a developer can't. On the other hand, i can debug through every aspect of my android program right into the whole framework and see what is happening. Yay, open source.

Tichy 17y ago

Yeah, we have all heard the stories about the great support iPhone developers get, if their app is rejected for the app store. If that is professional business, I prefer to stay independent. Actually, all the pain just might be a deliberate barrier to entry for "small fish". Companies are used to dealing with pain, individuals less so.

colinplamondon 17y ago
As a professional iPhone developer with a multiple top ranking apps, that shit just doesn't really happen anymore. You're much more likely to get a call from Apple with suggestions on what to edit. The horror stories are from 6-9 months ago, and are outdated. So, while folks trot them out in threads like this as examples of how terrible iPhone development is, actual iPhone developers know that it doesn't really come up. Our last two updates were accepted within 24 hours, for instance. Our last new application took three submits, due to issues on our end- every email from them was helpful, and actually IMPROVED the final application. Turnaround was 48 hours, and, on the last submission, they expedited to same-day when I asked them to.
- matwood 17y ago
  I have an app (nowhere near top ranking tho) and I agree with you for the most part. My first submission took 2 days and any updates have taken less than 24 hours. One took less than 6 hours for them to turn it around and get it on the app store. My only issue with the app store now is the returns. I have had 1 return and all I got from Apple was the form letter that if you have a lot of returns it might be a quality issue. What I would like to see is at least the questionnaire the customer fills out in order for Apple to grant the return. At least this way I can know if it's some sort of serious problem or just someone who made a purchase by mistake.

Quarrelsome 17y ago

I appreciate the benefits of incident support.... but tbh i've never hit a use case where i've needed it. Most issues you can work through yourself and if there is a serious fundamental flaw in the base code you can always find people in the right places to report it to. With my experience with working with Windows Mobile: EXPECT NO SUPPORT. Most of the problems are due to the OEMs and some of the major ones I worked with (Symbol, Intermec, Datalogic) had support that was hilariously bad / non existent.

buster 17y ago

Of course you need apple and ms internal developers to dig into their source code, because you as a developer can't. On the other hand, i can debug through every aspect of my android program right into the whole framework and see what is happening. Yay, open source.