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In short: no Mac required for developing iPhone apps. flash games which are extremely easy/quick to develop can be ported into iphone apps. Conclusion: iPhone

by ujjwalg 17y ago

In short: no Mac required for developing iPhone apps. flash games which are extremely easy/quick to develop can be ported into iphone apps. Conclusion: iPhone app development prices will go down the drain for most of the apps. There will be millions of apps on the appstore. Prices of apps will go down further. WOW!!!

elai 17y ago
.99 is the minimum you can go, so iphone apps wont get cheaper. Flash games tend to run really slow even with beafy core 2 duos, so I'm wondering if the performance will translate for smartphones.
- cakesy 17y ago
  I guess you didn't watch the video? The apps appeared quite snazzy, I am sure they used open gl es for them, so there is no reason they should be. I hate flash, but I hate dealing with open gl even more. Maybe I will have to look into this.
georgekv 17y ago
While development costs may drop, it's hard for most app prices to drop any further as Apple has set the price floor at $0.99 cents.
- axod 17y ago
  Free + email harvesting/advertising/spam?
davidalln 17y ago
Perhaps, but I think this is too cynical. You forget about the cost of Flash (assuming you're being legit), the cost of being able to put up stuff on the App Store, how potentially difficult it is to adapt the application to the iPhone, and how annoyingly stringy Apple is about bugs. This will surly shoo away a large amount of amateur Flash-ists. Plus, you're forgetting that the market is already diluted. The only apps that make it are those which get advertised heavily or a big blog discovers and writes about it. Therefore, these "million of apps" will hardly make a difference in how difficult it is to make significant money developing iPhone apps. The App Store is not going to become Newgrounds, I promise.
Zev 17y ago
In short: no Mac required for developing iPhone apps. flash games which are extremely easy/quick to develop can be ported into iphone apps. Remains to be seen. You still have to sign applications to submit them to the app store. Adobe hasn't made it clear if they reverse engineered this bit yet, or if it simply calls the codesign binary. If its the latter, you still need a Mac.
- netsp 17y ago
  I'm not sure I really get this sort of comment. Is a mac really such a hurdle relative time, effort or monetary cost?
  - Zev 17y ago
    You can find an Intel Mac Mini for ~300 on eBay. Its not terribly expensive or hard to get set up. All I'm saying is that you may still need a Mac if you intend to put your app on the app store (or on your own device if you don't jailbreak). You need a Mac because Apple hasn't released the code for the codesign application; only a binary that runs on OS X only. The codesign application is - you guessed it - responsible for signing an application's binary to run within the iPhone's sandbox. This usually done automatically by Xcode when you build for the device (for debug or distribution). Adobe hasn't made it clear how they handle this step yet. They may have reverse engineered codesign itself - so you can develop on Windows. Or they may have just looked at what Xcode does when signing with codesign and duplicated that - in which case, you still need a Mac for at least your final step (submitting to the app store) and should really have a Mac before that step (to test your app on a real device). Especially since you can't use the iPhone Simulator if you use this for your iPhone app.
    - deleted 17y ago
      [deleted]
    - netsp 17y ago
      I didn't imply that you don't need a mac. I'm just puzzled by people who seem to think that this is so important or that mac ownership is a substantial hurdle to iPhone app development. As you say, the minimum requirement is not all that high. A mac is an additional machine usually $1K-$2k, something that developers need to spend money on from time to time. If you really don't want/need one and only use it to develop one small app, 500 for a mini (or 300 for a used one) is not terrible.
absconditus 17y ago
Flash Professional CS isn't exactly cheap.
chrischen 17y ago
iPhone apps probably won't go down that much. You'll still have to pay at least $0.99 for those apps you'd get on the internet for free, and this is because you're getting the app on a closed, mobile platform that runs in the palm of your hands. Then there's the $99 fee to get it into the app store, which is part of the closed platform problem.

by ujjwalg 17y ago

elai 17y ago

.99 is the minimum you can go, so iphone apps wont get cheaper. Flash games tend to run really slow even with beafy core 2 duos, so I'm wondering if the performance will translate for smartphones.

cakesy 17y ago
I guess you didn't watch the video? The apps appeared quite snazzy, I am sure they used open gl es for them, so there is no reason they should be. I hate flash, but I hate dealing with open gl even more. Maybe I will have to look into this.

georgekv 17y ago

While development costs may drop, it's hard for most app prices to drop any further as Apple has set the price floor at $0.99 cents.

axod 17y ago
Free + email harvesting/advertising/spam?

davidalln 17y ago

Perhaps, but I think this is too cynical. You forget about the cost of Flash (assuming you're being legit), the cost of being able to put up stuff on the App Store, how potentially difficult it is to adapt the application to the iPhone, and how annoyingly stringy Apple is about bugs. This will surly shoo away a large amount of amateur Flash-ists. Plus, you're forgetting that the market is already diluted. The only apps that make it are those which get advertised heavily or a big blog discovers and writes about it. Therefore, these "million of apps" will hardly make a difference in how difficult it is to make significant money developing iPhone apps. The App Store is not going to become Newgrounds, I promise.

Zev 17y ago

In short: no Mac required for developing iPhone apps. flash games which are extremely easy/quick to develop can be ported into iphone apps. Remains to be seen. You still have to sign applications to submit them to the app store. Adobe hasn't made it clear if they reverse engineered this bit yet, or if it simply calls the codesign binary. If its the latter, you still need a Mac.

netsp 17y ago
I'm not sure I really get this sort of comment. Is a mac really such a hurdle relative time, effort or monetary cost?
- Zev 17y ago
  You can find an Intel Mac Mini for ~300 on eBay. Its not terribly expensive or hard to get set up. All I'm saying is that you may still need a Mac if you intend to put your app on the app store (or on your own device if you don't jailbreak). You need a Mac because Apple hasn't released the code for the codesign application; only a binary that runs on OS X only. The codesign application is - you guessed it - responsible for signing an application's binary to run within the iPhone's sandbox. This usually done automatically by Xcode when you build for the device (for debug or distribution). Adobe hasn't made it clear how they handle this step yet. They may have reverse engineered codesign itself - so you can develop on Windows. Or they may have just looked at what Xcode does when signing with codesign and duplicated that - in which case, you still need a Mac for at least your final step (submitting to the app store) and should really have a Mac before that step (to test your app on a real device). Especially since you can't use the iPhone Simulator if you use this for your iPhone app.
  - deleted 17y ago
    [deleted]
  - netsp 17y ago
    I didn't imply that you don't need a mac. I'm just puzzled by people who seem to think that this is so important or that mac ownership is a substantial hurdle to iPhone app development. As you say, the minimum requirement is not all that high. A mac is an additional machine usually $1K-$2k, something that developers need to spend money on from time to time. If you really don't want/need one and only use it to develop one small app, 500 for a mini (or 300 for a used one) is not terrible.

absconditus 17y ago

Flash Professional CS isn't exactly cheap.

chrischen 17y ago

iPhone apps probably won't go down that much. You'll still have to pay at least $0.99 for those apps you'd get on the internet for free, and this is because you're getting the app on a closed, mobile platform that runs in the palm of your hands. Then there's the $99 fee to get it into the app store, which is part of the closed platform problem.