Max ([info]avatraxiom) wrote,
@ 2009-02-05 05:56:00
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Current location:Mountain View, CA
Entry tags:tech

The iPhone SDK
So, if Apple was wondering about me, and perhaps picking the petals off flowers going "He loves me, he loves me not," I think this time we ended up on "he loves me not."

The iPhone SDK only works on Mac OS X.

I do not own a Mac. In fact, I'm pretty sure I don't own any machine on which OS X will run.

The explanation for this is, "It's all built around XCode and Objective C which don't work on other platforms."

Let's back up.

Why isn't XCode based on Eclipse? Then it would run on every platform.

Objective C works on Linux. Linux is an OS that developers use. Wouldn't it be nice to have an SDK that developers could use?

If the simulator only ran on a Mac, well okay, that wouldn't make sense since Macs are now Intel machines, but maybe there's some graphics interfaces that don't exist on other platforms. Fine.

But can't I at least get the ability to develop an iPhone app using the platform of my choice, instead of being ASSIMILATED INTO THE BORG COLLECTIVE just to write a program?

I expect to get approximately 1 billion comments now, since I'm complaining about something. It seems that happens whenever I complain about something. :-) Ah well. :-)

-Max


(27 comments) - (Post a new comment)


[info]jojobear99
2009-02-05 03:46 pm UTC (link)
That's interesting...I wasn't aware the iphone SDK only works on a Mac...between not having an iphone and not having a mac and not having any objective c experience...yeah, I think I'll *not* be taking up iphone programming anytime soon.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]avatraxiom
2009-02-05 03:52 pm UTC (link)
Hahahaha. Yeah, I think I'll just do Android development if I'm going to do mobile stuff, instead. That's at least Java (though I hope that doesn't mean that I have to deal with crappy Java UI libraries).

-Max

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]4zumanga
2009-02-05 04:44 pm UTC (link)
I certainly wouldn't want xcode building on top of eclipse, as eclipse is a horrible slow application.

Mac users as a rule want applications with the look and feel of native apps, and eclipse really doesn't provide that.

It is actually possible (with a hacked iPhone) to design and install applications onto the iPhone from linux, it's mostly just an ARM-targeted g++, and then sshing into the device and dropping your executable onto it.

The only things Apple have really tied to Mac OS X are:

1) The simulator - I imagine the reason they did this is that setting up the rendering is really easy when you can mostly "pass through" to the OS.

2) Code signing and iTunes - I don't know why they've tied these to Mac OS X, probably just plain lazyness.

So overall, I don't think Xcode should be a cross-platform app, but I do agree they should provide cross-platform command-line tools to do signing and uploading to the iPhone, which is I suspect all you actually want!

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]avatraxiom
2009-02-05 06:45 pm UTC (link)
It would have been easier to fix Eclipse's performance that write an entire app, I suspect.

I'm sure Apple has had to write a native GUI layer for Java anyhow at some point, and it would have been easier than writing an entire app.

I want to design a normal app that can be downloaded from the store, and it would be nice to have as much of the SDK available as possible--say, the libraries and headers required. So I need everything involved in that process.

It would also be nice to be able to watch the howto videos without becoming part of the borg collective.

-Max

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]4zumanga
2009-02-05 06:59 pm UTC (link)
No Java app managed to look and act like a standard mac app for me, fitting in nicely with all the OS features. I've slowly phased out just about every non mac app from my computer (except command line ones) because they annoy me.

Also, you really think fixing Eclipse's performance would be easier than writing an entire new app? I really don't agree! I hate Eclipse with a passion personally, whereas xcode runs nice and smoothly.

I don't think that Apple is completely in the right by any means, they really are an annoying silent company about what they are doing. A good case in point is the 'push' mechanism, which they discussed for a while, and has now just disappeared. They won't tell anyone if it might be coming back at a later date, which is really annoying.

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[info]avatraxiom
2009-02-05 09:30 pm UTC (link)
Yeah, I've never seen a great Java GUI, myself.

Honestly, I've never used Eclipse, I just know that it's pretty much the standard base usually nowadays for cross-platform development environments.

The performance could be an issue with the JVM on Mac OS, too, I don't know.

What's the push mechanism? I'm not usually in the loop on Apple things.

-Max

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[info]4zumanga
2009-02-05 09:44 pm UTC (link)
It isn't possible to run more than one iPhone app at the same time, and there is no concept of "running things in the background" (except for Apple blessed apps, like their Mail client).

This obviously causes some problems (like example I imagine a bugzilla app would want to notify you of new messages or bugs arriving), so the aim was to make available the library already used for Mail. While you still couldn't run an app in the background (or even any code), you could push simple info from a server to the phone that would:

1) Make a pop-up box appear and/or make a sound.

2) Add a number to the icon of your app.

This was heavily advertised to developers as a new great thing we would be able to use, but it just seems to have disappeared, and apple won't discuss it.

My app is just a game, so it doesn't really bother me, but some apps are difficult to write well without something resembling a background process

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]avatraxiom
2009-02-06 12:56 am UTC (link)
Ahh, yeah, I do remember talk about that! Yeah, that would be extremely handy to have.

-Max

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]argh128
2009-06-24 02:28 pm UTC (link)
FYI, Xcode is really based on Project Builder and a bunch of Open Source toolchains. So its actually older then eclipse. Project builder was built by NEXT, and used to run on windows.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]avatraxiom
2009-06-24 05:42 pm UTC (link)
Oh, interesting! I didn't know that. :-)

-Max

(Reply to this) (Parent)
See?!
[info]mboffin.wordpress.com
2009-02-05 04:53 pm UTC (link)
See?! They force you into only using their platform to develop apps. You need to be running their OS, with their tools, according to their rules! It's total developer lock-in! This is why I hate Microsoft! Oh, wait....

(Reply to this) (Thread)
Re: See?!
[info]avatraxiom
2009-02-05 06:47 pm UTC (link)
Hahahahaha! :-) At least I can theoretically use gcc to compile a Windows app, though...but yeah, mostly you do have to me using MSVC... :-)

-Max

(Reply to this) (Parent)
Re: See?!
[info]4zumanga
2009-02-05 07:01 pm UTC (link)
Yes damn them, if only they used an open source compiler as standard for Mac OS X, and provided all the library headers, so I could download it onto linux and build a cross-compiler!

Oh wait, they do.

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)
Re: See?!
[info]avatraxiom
2009-02-05 09:31 pm UTC (link)
Hahaha, yeah, I'd probably have an easier time building an OS X app on Linux than I would building a Windows app. I'm just really used to Linux development and web frameworks, which are pretty much all cross-platform by default.

-Max

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]4zumanga
2009-02-05 10:27 pm UTC (link)
On a more serious note, is your aim bugzilla related?

A really good iPhone-aimed skin (by which I mostly mean CSS), can go a long way towards replacing an app. You can even make app icons for web sites.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]avatraxiom
2009-02-06 12:57 am UTC (link)
My aim is Bugzilla-related. :-)

Yes, I could do a skin, too, but I actually wanted to sell the app--clients are a much better market than server-side frontend stuff, which is hard to sell anyway, since the code has to be available pretty much by definition.

-Max

(Reply to this) (Parent)

(Anonymous)
2009-02-08 04:27 am UTC (link)
I guess that XCode wouldn't be strictly necessary, but I imagine that the reason the simulator is tied to Mac platform has something to do with the huge overlap between the Cocoa and Cocoa Touch libraries – linux and windows can compile Objective-C but the Cocoa libraries are proprietary. This would be a good project for GNUStep if they were up to it.

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[info]avatraxiom
2009-02-08 04:42 am UTC (link)
Oh, yeah, definitely a good project for GNUStep! :-) Good idea. :-)

-Max

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)
iPhone app for Bugzilla
(Anonymous)
2009-06-17 05:48 pm UTC (link)
I recently came across a new app that is being built for bugzilla on iPhone.

This iphone app for bugzilla is called iBzilla that lets you access bugs from your phone. It seems you can configure multiple bugzilla instances, View My Bugs, Search for any bug(s) in any product, component, version using standard Bugzilla fields and create New Bugs.

Not sure if it has background processing to automatically notify of new bugs but this is under development. We'll have to wait to see when this gets launched. I can not wait to try my hands on it. Check it at http://www.ibzilla.com

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)
Re: iPhone app for Bugzilla
[info]avatraxiom
2009-06-17 08:18 pm UTC (link)
This comment sounds pretty spammy to me, but I did indeed notice the addition of this product to Bugzilla:Addons yesterday, so I'll let it stand.

-Max

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)
Re: iPhone app for Bugzilla
[info]ibzilla.myopenid.com
2009-06-30 08:49 pm UTC (link)
You can check the update for this product soon...
-Sandy
http://www.ibzilla.com

(Reply to this) (Parent)

[info]argh128
2009-06-24 02:26 pm UTC (link)
I half to say, that I was just thinking of starting to work on this action myself.
As a NON gov side job.

Also, you can probably use xCode inside a VM.

(Reply to this) (Thread)

[info]avatraxiom
2009-06-24 05:42 pm UTC (link)
Probably, but then I'd have to buy the OS, no? And I'm not sure I could run the simulator properly inside a VM, without OpenGL.

-Max

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]argh128
2009-06-25 05:13 am UTC (link)
Assuming the vm runs xcode you could just do the build cycles on a real iPhone. Slower yes. Of course a mac mini is less then 500$

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]avatraxiom
2009-06-25 05:14 am UTC (link)
Well, a Mac Mini is more than $500, but theoretically I could do the actual testing on the iPhone. But really, you have to have a Mac to develop for the iPhone in any serious way.

-Max

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]argh128
2009-06-25 03:39 pm UTC (link)
A brand spanking new one no.. but last years model is.
http://www.smalldog.com/product/70246

(Reply to this) (Parent)(Thread)

[info]avatraxiom
2009-06-25 11:17 pm UTC (link)
Oh! Didn't know you could still get them! :-) Thanks for the info. :-)

-Max

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