13 ms·

JWZ Unable to Distribute Two Free Pre Apps

176 points by sutro 17y ago

Maciek416 17y ago
Anyone care to speculate as to why they would require developers of free apps to have a verified PayPal account? Is it just incompetence / lack of attention to detail ?
- cschep 17y ago
  I would guess it's because the same account could be used to distribute paid apps. So incompetence in the fact that they don't have two users types, or just an unwillingness to deal with any of those complexities? Or they want people spending money on apps so they are making it a bit harder to make just free ones? All speculation though. I imagine it's just simpler for them to have one type of account, and giving them your info is the only way to have it, regardless of what you do with it.
camccann 17y ago
Clearly, one of the higher-ups at Palm told the company they needed to find ways to surpass the iPhone's user experience, and forgot to specify "but only the good parts".
bcl 17y ago
Looks like the grass isn't always greener. I do wonder why they decided to close their app distribution, I enjoyed the little bit of PalmOS development I've done.
hendler 17y ago
Seeing Pre's early troubles and Rim's App world ( see review at GigaOm [1]), not sure there is anyone getting app stores right (besides APPL). Between phone companies having to negotiate with platform and phone developers the market is too complicated. Makes Android look like the only long term, viable competing platform. Even though Balmer said MS got Windows Mobile wrong [2], even if the next one is better not sure the next version will be open enough, and cool enough to gain wide adoption. [1] - http://gigaom.com/2009/09/28/app-world-will-be-crucial-for-rim-as-smartphone-space-heats-up/ http://gigaom.com/2009/09/28/app-world-will-be-crucial-for-r... [2] - http://wmpoweruser.com/?p=8170 http://wmpoweruser.com/?p=8170 Edit - just saw this via @timbray http://openandroidalliance.com/ http://openandroidalliance.com/
gtufano 17y ago
It seems clear that writing application for ANY mobile device will require jumping through some obscure corporation rules. Symbian is no exception to that, nor it is RIM. Maybe it is time to relax and accept it as one of the facts of life...
- dejb 17y ago
  This isn't the case for platforms that don't have a compulsory 'app store' model. I can write an app for Android or Windows Mobile (and probably many other platforms) and distribute it any way I see fit.
  - natch 17y ago
    When you develop for these platforms, does your code have to be signed before you can give your app to other people to run? If yes, who controls access to the capability of issuing/revoking certificates?
    - tfincannon 17y ago
      Android apps can be self-signed and published in the Android Market.
    - dejb 17y ago
      Windows Mobile doesn't have/require signing. I'll wager most Symbian phones are like this as well.
- AndrewDucker 17y ago
  I have a Nokia S60. I can install apps by downloading a program file and copying it to the phone. Or I can install apps "over the air". In neither case does _anyone_ have to authorise me installing the application. Nor will I buy any phone that makes me jump through that hoop.
  - lupin_sansei 17y ago
    Ditto Windows Mobile. Just find it and download and install it, either on your desktop machine or via the web on the phone/PDA.
chrischen 17y ago
It seems the one advantage over the iPhone would have been an open app platform. They're copying the wrong features from apple.
- lupin_sansei 17y ago
  Yep. Talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of (potential) victory. If I was in charge of Palm I would even let people email/mms/BT free apps to each other just to make it that much easier than Apple to install apps.
- jbellis 17y ago
  Well, according to jwz they have two potential advantages. The other being ease of development. "This is the subject of an upcoming post that I haven't finished writing yet, but let me just point out that the WebOS port of Dali Clock -- a program that does some moderately complicated realtime graphical tricks -- took me a couple days to do, but I've been dicking around with the iPhone port of it off and on for, like, a year. Note that I know ObjC really well, and I have already written a Cocoa version of Dali Clock that runs on OSX, and porting that version to the iPhone has been such a monumental pain in the ass that I keep giving up on it before I finish. "So yeah, WebOS is easier. "Certainly less powerful (no OpenGL, for example) but holy shit is it ever easier."
  - catch23 17y ago
    So we trade faster development time for a longer review process time. So instead of hiring more developers for your app, you hire more lawyers -- sounds like a definite fail. With business acumen like that, I'm not surprised why Palm is failing.
    - dschobel 17y ago
      Well to be fair to Palm, it sounds like their app submission & review process is very much a work in progress. Fortunately processes like these seem to converge towards sanity and pragmatism over time.
allenbrunson 17y ago
In this respect, the iPhone development experience is somewhat better. You sign up for a dev account (which costs 99 bucks a year), then you can submit free apps to the store. There is a lot more paperwork and hoops to jump through if you want to submit paid apps, but it's all optional.
- old-gregg 17y ago
  $99 bucks a year? And developers pay that? Damn... I didn't know. I, for one, won't develop for someone's proprietary platform unless I get free PR for my efforts or have my feet kissed. iPhone programmers have their relationship with a platform vendor completely backwards. But in the end it is Apple who'll pay for this absurd, not them.
  - blahedo 17y ago
    Note that anyone can download libraries for XCode that let you compile and simulate iPhone apps---but you must have their dev kit to actually transfer this over the wire to your iPhone. And the dev kit is $99. There is, supposedly, another way: there is a program by which universities can get free iPhone developer kits for use in classes. Sounds great, right? Don't you believe it. The signup process is poorly conceived and a flaming mass of pain that, after a month and a half of trying, caused me to give up making an iPhone/iPod app be the final project in my HCI class. Good job, Apple!
    - davidw 17y ago
      > but you must have their dev kit to actually transfer this over the wire to your iPhone That pretty much sums up the problem, in my opinion. Those things aren't cheap, and if it's mine, I should get to install what I want on it. I can understand weeding things out of their store - that's fine - they want to control the quality. However, if I want to put something on my own device via a usb cable, I ought to be able to.
    - ido 17y ago
      > Note that anyone can download libraries for XCode that let you compile and simulate iPhone apps As far as I know you can only develop for the iphone on a mac. Is that true?
mrshoe 17y ago
jwz says this in the comments: An important point here is that Palm-the-company used to not be stupid in this way. The way this worked on PalmOS was completely sane. They went and fucked up their whole process when they switched to WebOS. I assume this is because they hired the majority of the WebOS management team from Apple, pushing out the people who did it right in the PalmOS years, and those new people are idiots. I'm not sure it's safe to assume that this process is stupid. Palm did, indeed, copy all of this straight from Apple's playbook. Apple's App Store is wildly successful. It may have issues from the perspective of some developers, but that's not the only perspective that matters. Palm isn't trying to make a bunch of developers happy. They're trying to sell phones and make users happy. Whether you can make users just as happy without requiring developers to jump through hoops remains to be seen. One could easily argue that it's possible, but I'd like to see evidence of that in the real world. I don't think the software ecosystems for desktop computers are a fair comparison. The ecosystems for older Palm devices, which jwz references here, were never nearly as successful as Apple's App Store. Maybe that suggests that the hoops somehow help the user experience? I don't know. But it looks like Palm is assuming that it does. I agree that this whole process seems completely broken from jwz's perspective, but it's hard to say that Palm had people "who did it right in the PalmOS years" when they never got it right in the category that matters: number of app sales. That could be 100% attributable to the iPhone's superiority, not the App Store's, though.
- leftnode 17y ago
  I think any platform can make both developers and user's happy. I agree and empathize with jwz in that its got to be incredibly frustrating to write two relatively simple apps only to have to jump through hoop after hoop to get them published. I know I'd be equally as frustrated if I couldn't just get my apps on the store.
  - gaffo 17y ago
    I have 2 very simple apps up on the catalog and the "hoops" he's referring to took me a total of 25 minutes to "jump" through.
- Zak 17y ago
spolsky 17y ago
More duct tape!
- bbot 17y ago
  Oh Joel. Your next post will be straight up trolling, right? A Last Measure redirect, maybe? Also, there's no duct tape here, other than it involves Jamie himself, and perhaps what a hideously ugly hack the javascript version of Dali is.
mattmaroon 17y ago
I can install his apps trivially. I wouldn't because they're largely worthless (there are already a dozen tip calculators) but Palm has said that they'd allow homebrew apps and so far have stood behind it.
- pavel_lishin 17y ago
  If your parents or grandparents purchased a Palm, would they be able to? Anyone who posts on HN is by definition almost certainly a power user.
  - mattmaroon 17y ago
    If my grandparents purchased a Treo 650, which they wouldn't, they wouldn't have ever found them. So this is nothing new.
jrockway 17y ago
I like all the Android FUD in the comments section. I don't feel like engaging anyone there (as they think they are funny by calling Google "Skynet"), but you don't need to have any interaction with Google to distribute or sell Android apps. Any user, even with a carrier-locked phone, can download a file to his computer and use free utilities to install that on his phone. (I am not 100% sure that the computer is even required; there is probably an app that will install apk files that are on the phone's SD card.) Example where I have done this: Sipdroid. The version in the Market does not support VoIP over 3G. The version on their website does. So you download their version, run adb, and now the Sipdroid on your phone supports 3G. If the Sipdroid website wanted to charge me for this transaction, they could. No Google needed. If you want openness on your phone and still want a good user experience, Android is the way to go. Other phones have a good user experience, but they are only "open" when compared to game consoles or microwave oven firmware.
- jcl 17y ago
  Any user, even with a carrier-locked phone, can download a file to his computer and use free utilities to install that on his phone. It's my understanding that the process is even easier than this. If you alter one option in the phone's settings, you can install Android programs downloaded directly through the phone's web browser -- no additional hardware needed.
  - jcapote 17y ago
    It's even better when they provide QR codes so you can just take a picture with your phone and voila
- jamesbritt 17y ago
  " ... there is probably an app that will install apk files that are on the phone's SD card.)" Yes, there is. That's how I got the very handy Tetherbot app installed, when Google did not want to carry it in their marketplace. You can also use the SDK to install apk files.
acangiano 17y ago
Are these people idiots? As soon as you realize jwz is one of your early adopters, as a company you should fly him first class to your labs, let him interact with the developers themselves, get feedback from him, ask him how can you make his experience better, etc... If you want to go the extra mile. If you don't, at least be particularly careful not to piss him off.
- tptacek 17y ago
  He owns a bar now. His apps are a tip calculator and Dali Clock, an application which spreads over all conceivable computing surfaces like yeast fungi; just leave your device out in the open for awhile, and it'll ferment its own Dali Clock. I'm not sure jwz is quite the developer draw you're making him out to be.
  - acangiano 17y ago
    He is still has a significant influence, regardless of the usefulness of his apps, as highlighted by the position of this article on Hacker News. Had he written a blog entry called "Developing for WebOS is awesome", the submission would still be wildly popular and quite a few people would be compelled to give WebOS a shot. And of course, he would be much less likely to talk trash about them.
  - cesare 17y ago
    Tip calculators have been best sellers on the apple AppStore. Just sayin'. ;-)
    - tptacek 17y ago
      I don't understand tip calculators, and I suck at math. I'd feel like a cheapskate sitting there punching numbers into my phone. I divide by ten then double.
      - robin_reala 17y ago
        20% tip in your country? Ouch. I’m guessing US: is it true that waiters/waitresses can be paid below the minimum wage on the assumption that tips can bring it up?
newsio 17y ago
Wow. If this is a battle over developer mindshare, Palm is definitely losing an early opportunity. Apple may also be shooting itself in the foot. Any crazy Android stories like this?
- theBobMcCormick 17y ago
  This sort of thing is unlikely on Android. As I understand it (I haven't actually put an app on the Android Market yet), the only cost or hoop you need to go through to put an app on the Android Market is a $25 one time fee. Also, it's pretty simple for users to install non-market apps on their Android phone - instructions for doing so can be found here: http://phandroid.com/2008/10/17/how-to-download-non-market-apps-like-itunes-remote/ http://phandroid.com/2008/10/17/how-to-download-non-market-a...
- Batsu 17y ago
  I have heard so little about Android development that it leads me to believe it's nonexistent or extremely painless. The only main stream story I even remember hearing was the malware Google had to use the kill switch on.
  - apotheon 17y ago
    There's a book at my local Barnes & Noble about Android development. Maybe you should cruise on over to the book store and see if there are any hints in the book about how the submission process works, if you're that curious. If not, you're in the same boat as me -- sitting around waiting to see if some developer's going to pipe up with a story.
tigerthink 17y ago
The amount of effort he was willing to put in to release free software amazes me.
- davidw 17y ago
  Have an idea of how many "man-years" of effort there are in things like Ruby, Python, Linux, Apache, Postgres, GCC, etc... etc... ?
  - metachor 17y ago
    Yes, but in this case the software in question is a tip calculator and Dali clock.
    - joezydeco 17y ago
      But now he's seen that it's not worth spending the time developing a full application. Writing a toy program is how most developers explore a new framework start to finish. In this case, submitting a "Hello World" or "Tip Calculator" application as a test was very revealing.
vips 17y ago
In long run open platform is the way to move forward
- dschobel 17y ago
  Sure but then you lose the hired guns that Apple has to keep the spam/malware/spyware out. Quality control is definitely an essential feature for me. It just seems like Apple hasn't figured out all of the bumps yet in providing it.
natch 17y ago
Is there a good anti-iPhone rant somewhere that avoids logical fallacies and would help me understand why some people are averse to iPhone development? I don't get it. Central point of control == bad? I don't buy it. JWZ is a central point of control for DNA Lounge, I assume; PG is a close to a central point of control for YC news; Linus is a central point of control for Linux kernel enhancements -- or was, for a while; I haven't been keeping up so if I'm wrong, please understand the general point, which is: we happily accept central control as long as there is good will. DRM == bad? Again, though I agree, Apple's implementation of DRM for Apps has gotten it far closer to right than any other, with family sharing of one purchase on multiple devices, refunds, DRM-free music, free updates, remembering your purchase so you can re-download purchased items for free (remember the phone companies' model, buy a game, run out of memory, delete it, then if you want it later you have to buy it again?). Definitely iPhone is not free, in the freedom sense, and downright scary, in the your-app-can-be-yanked-at-any-time sense, but I believe the same is true on Android; we just haven't seen the test case yet. iPhone is not open == bad OK... but it's a platform. Lots of platforms are open only down to certain layers. Google is a platform. But it only exposes certain parts of itself for developers to use. And we understand that. So why do we not understand it when it comes to a phone? Maybe because it's such a personal device? It doesn't let us do everything == bad I think this comes closest to being an answer. This would be the answer for me. But, neither does any other device. I continue to think that Android developers are naive to assume they are not going to bump up against limits imposed by carriers and by Google. They just don't have the critical mass to have hit all the nooks and crannies yet. Apple is not friendly to open source == bad. Grand Central Dispatch, LLVM, Clang (probably there are more) all would indicate otherwise. So, what am I missing? Not trying to troll here. I'm sure I have exhibited some ignorance in this long post, seriously. Why are (some small number of smart) people pounding their heads against the wall rather than develop for iPhone?
- dschobel 17y ago
  It's not the centralized control but rather how Apple is applying it to further their business agenda at the expense of their users' access to an awesome Google technology.
  - 17y ago
ilyak 17y ago
They want to Fail. So they would!
antirez 17y ago
Instead of understanding there is a problem in the way Apple is handling this stuff, trying to exploit it creating a market that's more free and easy for developers, Palm is doing the same errors, with the difference that they are nowhere as successful as Apple, so it's even worse.

176 points by sutro 17y ago

Anyone care to speculate as to why they would require developers of free apps to have a verified PayPal account? Is it just incompetence / lack of attention to detail ?

cschep 17y ago
I would guess it's because the same account could be used to distribute paid apps. So incompetence in the fact that they don't have two users types, or just an unwillingness to deal with any of those complexities? Or they want people spending money on apps so they are making it a bit harder to make just free ones? All speculation though. I imagine it's just simpler for them to have one type of account, and giving them your info is the only way to have it, regardless of what you do with it.

camccann 17y ago

Clearly, one of the higher-ups at Palm told the company they needed to find ways to surpass the iPhone's user experience, and forgot to specify "but only the good parts".

bcl 17y ago

Looks like the grass isn't always greener. I do wonder why they decided to close their app distribution, I enjoyed the little bit of PalmOS development I've done.

hendler 17y ago

Seeing Pre's early troubles and Rim's App world ( see review at GigaOm [1]), not sure there is anyone getting app stores right (besides APPL). Between phone companies having to negotiate with platform and phone developers the market is too complicated. Makes Android look like the only long term, viable competing platform. Even though Balmer said MS got Windows Mobile wrong [2], even if the next one is better not sure the next version will be open enough, and cool enough to gain wide adoption. [1] - http://gigaom.com/2009/09/28/app-world-will-be-crucial-for-rim-as-smartphone-space-heats-up/ http://gigaom.com/2009/09/28/app-world-will-be-crucial-for-r... [2] - http://wmpoweruser.com/?p=8170 http://wmpoweruser.com/?p=8170 Edit - just saw this via @timbray http://openandroidalliance.com/ http://openandroidalliance.com/

gtufano 17y ago

It seems clear that writing application for ANY mobile device will require jumping through some obscure corporation rules. Symbian is no exception to that, nor it is RIM. Maybe it is time to relax and accept it as one of the facts of life...

dejb 17y ago
This isn't the case for platforms that don't have a compulsory 'app store' model. I can write an app for Android or Windows Mobile (and probably many other platforms) and distribute it any way I see fit.
- natch 17y ago
  When you develop for these platforms, does your code have to be signed before you can give your app to other people to run? If yes, who controls access to the capability of issuing/revoking certificates?
  - tfincannon 17y ago
    Android apps can be self-signed and published in the Android Market.
  - dejb 17y ago
    Windows Mobile doesn't have/require signing. I'll wager most Symbian phones are like this as well.
AndrewDucker 17y ago
I have a Nokia S60. I can install apps by downloading a program file and copying it to the phone. Or I can install apps "over the air". In neither case does _anyone_ have to authorise me installing the application. Nor will I buy any phone that makes me jump through that hoop.
- lupin_sansei 17y ago
  Ditto Windows Mobile. Just find it and download and install it, either on your desktop machine or via the web on the phone/PDA.

chrischen 17y ago

It seems the one advantage over the iPhone would have been an open app platform. They're copying the wrong features from apple.

lupin_sansei 17y ago
Yep. Talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of (potential) victory. If I was in charge of Palm I would even let people email/mms/BT free apps to each other just to make it that much easier than Apple to install apps.
jbellis 17y ago
Well, according to jwz they have two potential advantages. The other being ease of development. "This is the subject of an upcoming post that I haven't finished writing yet, but let me just point out that the WebOS port of Dali Clock -- a program that does some moderately complicated realtime graphical tricks -- took me a couple days to do, but I've been dicking around with the iPhone port of it off and on for, like, a year. Note that I know ObjC really well, and I have already written a Cocoa version of Dali Clock that runs on OSX, and porting that version to the iPhone has been such a monumental pain in the ass that I keep giving up on it before I finish. "So yeah, WebOS is easier. "Certainly less powerful (no OpenGL, for example) but holy shit is it ever easier."
- catch23 17y ago
  So we trade faster development time for a longer review process time. So instead of hiring more developers for your app, you hire more lawyers -- sounds like a definite fail. With business acumen like that, I'm not surprised why Palm is failing.
  - dschobel 17y ago
    Well to be fair to Palm, it sounds like their app submission & review process is very much a work in progress. Fortunately processes like these seem to converge towards sanity and pragmatism over time.

allenbrunson 17y ago

In this respect, the iPhone development experience is somewhat better. You sign up for a dev account (which costs 99 bucks a year), then you can submit free apps to the store. There is a lot more paperwork and hoops to jump through if you want to submit paid apps, but it's all optional.

old-gregg 17y ago
$99 bucks a year? And developers pay that? Damn... I didn't know. I, for one, won't develop for someone's proprietary platform unless I get free PR for my efforts or have my feet kissed. iPhone programmers have their relationship with a platform vendor completely backwards. But in the end it is Apple who'll pay for this absurd, not them.
- blahedo 17y ago
  Note that anyone can download libraries for XCode that let you compile and simulate iPhone apps---but you must have their dev kit to actually transfer this over the wire to your iPhone. And the dev kit is $99. There is, supposedly, another way: there is a program by which universities can get free iPhone developer kits for use in classes. Sounds great, right? Don't you believe it. The signup process is poorly conceived and a flaming mass of pain that, after a month and a half of trying, caused me to give up making an iPhone/iPod app be the final project in my HCI class. Good job, Apple!
  - davidw 17y ago
    > but you must have their dev kit to actually transfer this over the wire to your iPhone That pretty much sums up the problem, in my opinion. Those things aren't cheap, and if it's mine, I should get to install what I want on it. I can understand weeding things out of their store - that's fine - they want to control the quality. However, if I want to put something on my own device via a usb cable, I ought to be able to.
  - ido 17y ago
    > Note that anyone can download libraries for XCode that let you compile and simulate iPhone apps As far as I know you can only develop for the iphone on a mac. Is that true?

mrshoe 17y ago

jwz says this in the comments: An important point here is that Palm-the-company used to not be stupid in this way. The way this worked on PalmOS was completely sane. They went and fucked up their whole process when they switched to WebOS. I assume this is because they hired the majority of the WebOS management team from Apple, pushing out the people who did it right in the PalmOS years, and those new people are idiots. I'm not sure it's safe to assume that this process is stupid. Palm did, indeed, copy all of this straight from Apple's playbook. Apple's App Store is wildly successful. It may have issues from the perspective of some developers, but that's not the only perspective that matters. Palm isn't trying to make a bunch of developers happy. They're trying to sell phones and make users happy. Whether you can make users just as happy without requiring developers to jump through hoops remains to be seen. One could easily argue that it's possible, but I'd like to see evidence of that in the real world. I don't think the software ecosystems for desktop computers are a fair comparison. The ecosystems for older Palm devices, which jwz references here, were never nearly as successful as Apple's App Store. Maybe that suggests that the hoops somehow help the user experience? I don't know. But it looks like Palm is assuming that it does. I agree that this whole process seems completely broken from jwz's perspective, but it's hard to say that Palm had people "who did it right in the PalmOS years" when they never got it right in the category that matters: number of app sales. That could be 100% attributable to the iPhone's superiority, not the App Store's, though.

leftnode 17y ago
I think any platform can make both developers and user's happy. I agree and empathize with jwz in that its got to be incredibly frustrating to write two relatively simple apps only to have to jump through hoop after hoop to get them published. I know I'd be equally as frustrated if I couldn't just get my apps on the store.
- gaffo 17y ago
  I have 2 very simple apps up on the catalog and the "hoops" he's referring to took me a total of 25 minutes to "jump" through.
Zak 17y ago

spolsky 17y ago

More duct tape!

bbot 17y ago
Oh Joel. Your next post will be straight up trolling, right? A Last Measure redirect, maybe? Also, there's no duct tape here, other than it involves Jamie himself, and perhaps what a hideously ugly hack the javascript version of Dali is.

mattmaroon 17y ago

I can install his apps trivially. I wouldn't because they're largely worthless (there are already a dozen tip calculators) but Palm has said that they'd allow homebrew apps and so far have stood behind it.

pavel_lishin 17y ago
If your parents or grandparents purchased a Palm, would they be able to? Anyone who posts on HN is by definition almost certainly a power user.
- mattmaroon 17y ago
  If my grandparents purchased a Treo 650, which they wouldn't, they wouldn't have ever found them. So this is nothing new.

jrockway 17y ago

I like all the Android FUD in the comments section. I don't feel like engaging anyone there (as they think they are funny by calling Google "Skynet"), but you don't need to have any interaction with Google to distribute or sell Android apps. Any user, even with a carrier-locked phone, can download a file to his computer and use free utilities to install that on his phone. (I am not 100% sure that the computer is even required; there is probably an app that will install apk files that are on the phone's SD card.) Example where I have done this: Sipdroid. The version in the Market does not support VoIP over 3G. The version on their website does. So you download their version, run adb, and now the Sipdroid on your phone supports 3G. If the Sipdroid website wanted to charge me for this transaction, they could. No Google needed. If you want openness on your phone and still want a good user experience, Android is the way to go. Other phones have a good user experience, but they are only "open" when compared to game consoles or microwave oven firmware.

jcl 17y ago
Any user, even with a carrier-locked phone, can download a file to his computer and use free utilities to install that on his phone. It's my understanding that the process is even easier than this. If you alter one option in the phone's settings, you can install Android programs downloaded directly through the phone's web browser -- no additional hardware needed.
- jcapote 17y ago
  It's even better when they provide QR codes so you can just take a picture with your phone and voila
jamesbritt 17y ago
" ... there is probably an app that will install apk files that are on the phone's SD card.)" Yes, there is. That's how I got the very handy Tetherbot app installed, when Google did not want to carry it in their marketplace. You can also use the SDK to install apk files.

acangiano 17y ago

Are these people idiots? As soon as you realize jwz is one of your early adopters, as a company you should fly him first class to your labs, let him interact with the developers themselves, get feedback from him, ask him how can you make his experience better, etc... If you want to go the extra mile. If you don't, at least be particularly careful not to piss him off.

tptacek 17y ago
He owns a bar now. His apps are a tip calculator and Dali Clock, an application which spreads over all conceivable computing surfaces like yeast fungi; just leave your device out in the open for awhile, and it'll ferment its own Dali Clock. I'm not sure jwz is quite the developer draw you're making him out to be.
- acangiano 17y ago
  He is still has a significant influence, regardless of the usefulness of his apps, as highlighted by the position of this article on Hacker News. Had he written a blog entry called "Developing for WebOS is awesome", the submission would still be wildly popular and quite a few people would be compelled to give WebOS a shot. And of course, he would be much less likely to talk trash about them.
- cesare 17y ago
  Tip calculators have been best sellers on the apple AppStore. Just sayin'. ;-)
  - tptacek 17y ago
    I don't understand tip calculators, and I suck at math. I'd feel like a cheapskate sitting there punching numbers into my phone. I divide by ten then double.
    - robin_reala 17y ago
      20% tip in your country? Ouch. I’m guessing US: is it true that waiters/waitresses can be paid below the minimum wage on the assumption that tips can bring it up?

newsio 17y ago

Wow. If this is a battle over developer mindshare, Palm is definitely losing an early opportunity. Apple may also be shooting itself in the foot. Any crazy Android stories like this?

theBobMcCormick 17y ago
This sort of thing is unlikely on Android. As I understand it (I haven't actually put an app on the Android Market yet), the only cost or hoop you need to go through to put an app on the Android Market is a $25 one time fee. Also, it's pretty simple for users to install non-market apps on their Android phone - instructions for doing so can be found here: http://phandroid.com/2008/10/17/how-to-download-non-market-apps-like-itunes-remote/ http://phandroid.com/2008/10/17/how-to-download-non-market-a...
Batsu 17y ago
I have heard so little about Android development that it leads me to believe it's nonexistent or extremely painless. The only main stream story I even remember hearing was the malware Google had to use the kill switch on.
- apotheon 17y ago
  There's a book at my local Barnes & Noble about Android development. Maybe you should cruise on over to the book store and see if there are any hints in the book about how the submission process works, if you're that curious. If not, you're in the same boat as me -- sitting around waiting to see if some developer's going to pipe up with a story.

tigerthink 17y ago

The amount of effort he was willing to put in to release free software amazes me.

davidw 17y ago
Have an idea of how many "man-years" of effort there are in things like Ruby, Python, Linux, Apache, Postgres, GCC, etc... etc... ?
- metachor 17y ago
  Yes, but in this case the software in question is a tip calculator and Dali clock.
  - joezydeco 17y ago
    But now he's seen that it's not worth spending the time developing a full application. Writing a toy program is how most developers explore a new framework start to finish. In this case, submitting a "Hello World" or "Tip Calculator" application as a test was very revealing.

vips 17y ago

In long run open platform is the way to move forward

dschobel 17y ago
Sure but then you lose the hired guns that Apple has to keep the spam/malware/spyware out. Quality control is definitely an essential feature for me. It just seems like Apple hasn't figured out all of the bumps yet in providing it.

natch 17y ago

Is there a good anti-iPhone rant somewhere that avoids logical fallacies and would help me understand why some people are averse to iPhone development? I don't get it. Central point of control == bad? I don't buy it. JWZ is a central point of control for DNA Lounge, I assume; PG is a close to a central point of control for YC news; Linus is a central point of control for Linux kernel enhancements -- or was, for a while; I haven't been keeping up so if I'm wrong, please understand the general point, which is: we happily accept central control as long as there is good will. DRM == bad? Again, though I agree, Apple's implementation of DRM for Apps has gotten it far closer to right than any other, with family sharing of one purchase on multiple devices, refunds, DRM-free music, free updates, remembering your purchase so you can re-download purchased items for free (remember the phone companies' model, buy a game, run out of memory, delete it, then if you want it later you have to buy it again?). Definitely iPhone is not free, in the freedom sense, and downright scary, in the your-app-can-be-yanked-at-any-time sense, but I believe the same is true on Android; we just haven't seen the test case yet. iPhone is not open == bad OK... but it's a platform. Lots of platforms are open only down to certain layers. Google is a platform. But it only exposes certain parts of itself for developers to use. And we understand that. So why do we not understand it when it comes to a phone? Maybe because it's such a personal device? It doesn't let us do everything == bad I think this comes closest to being an answer. This would be the answer for me. But, neither does any other device. I continue to think that Android developers are naive to assume they are not going to bump up against limits imposed by carriers and by Google. They just don't have the critical mass to have hit all the nooks and crannies yet. Apple is not friendly to open source == bad. Grand Central Dispatch, LLVM, Clang (probably there are more) all would indicate otherwise. So, what am I missing? Not trying to troll here. I'm sure I have exhibited some ignorance in this long post, seriously. Why are (some small number of smart) people pounding their heads against the wall rather than develop for iPhone?

dschobel 17y ago
It's not the centralized control but rather how Apple is applying it to further their business agenda at the expense of their users' access to an awesome Google technology.
- 17y ago

ilyak 17y ago

They want to Fail. So they would!

antirez 17y ago

Instead of understanding there is a problem in the way Apple is handling this stuff, trying to exploit it creating a market that's more free and easy for developers, Palm is doing the same errors, with the difference that they are nowhere as successful as Apple, so it's even worse.