
JWZ Unable to Distribute Two Free Pre Apps - sutro
http://jwz.livejournal.com/1096401.html
======
jrockway
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
_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
It's even better when they provide QR codes so you can just take a picture
with your phone and voila

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

~~~
jbellis
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
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
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.

------
acangiano
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
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.

~~~
cesare
Tip calculators have been best sellers on the apple AppStore. Just sayin'. ;-)

~~~
tptacek
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
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?

~~~
phsr
There is a separate minimum wage for servers. Last time I saw it (years ago)
it was like $2.75USD

------
mrshoe
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.

~~~
Zak
I understand why having a place where users can get verified applications
installed in one step is a good user experience. From my point of view, one of
the biggest advantages of modern Linux distributions is that most software
installation is handled through a common package manager with an integrated
update system, dependency tracking and a large repository of software.

That said, I don't see how making it difficult for developers to submit apps,
or preventing users from installing apps by other means makes for a better
user experience.

~~~
tjogin
Yes, I imagine that users _not_ being afraid that the software they install is
malware does quite well for overall sales.

~~~
orangecat
That's a good reason for Apple to run their own app store; it's not a good
reason to prevent any other way of getting apps.

------
allenbrunson
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
$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
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!

~~~
ido
> 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?

~~~
sireat
I believe, you can do it on a Hackintosh, as well, although the cheapest legal
platform is the old Mac Mini.

~~~
KC8ZKF
Old Intel Mac Mini. PPC Macs won't work.

------
mattmaroon
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
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
If my grandparents purchased a Treo 650, which they wouldn't, they wouldn't
have ever found them. So this is nothing new.

------
camccann
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".

------
spolsky
More duct tape!

------
hendler
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-r...](http://gigaom.com/2009/09/28/app-world-will-be-crucial-for-rim-as-
smartphone-space-heats-up/) [2] - <http://wmpoweruser.com/?p=8170>

Edit - just saw this via @timbray <http://openandroidalliance.com/>

------
newsio
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?

~~~
Batsu
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
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.

------
antirez
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.

------
Maciek416
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
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.

------
bcl
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.

------
vips
In long run open platform is the way to move forward

~~~
dschobel
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.

------
tigerthink
The amount of effort he was willing to put in to release _free software_
amazes me.

~~~
davidw
Have an idea of how many "man-years" of effort there are in things like Ruby,
Python, Linux, Apache, Postgres, GCC, etc... etc... ?

~~~
metachor
Yes, but in this case the software in question is a tip calculator and Dali
clock.

~~~
joezydeco
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.

------
ilyak
They want to Fail. So they would!

------
gtufano
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...

~~~
AndrewDucker
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.

~~~
natch
Can you write apps yourself without using some Nokia code signing tool?

~~~
davidw
Certainly. Where signing comes into J2ME is that it pops up dialogs asking the
user before the application does certain things if it's not signed, like "hey,
this app is about to use some air time - is that ok?". With signing, you can
get around that.

On Blackberry, you have to pay 20$ to get code signing certificates, and
without that you can still write basic apps, just not ones that access most of
the 'interesting' features.

Android lets you self-sign applications.

All those platforms have free development tools, and in Android's case, I
believe most of it is actually open source.

~~~
biafra
It's really annoying to find out what you cannot do with non-signed midlets.

For example:

1\. Your app cannot browse directories without the user being asked for
permission on every change of directory. Try deveweloping a file browser with
that restriction.

2\. You cannot use a SocketConnection to connect to a remote host to port 8080
(only HttpConnection is allowed without beeing signed). Try developing an
http-proxy with that restriction, when you want to forward every connection to
another proxy on port 8080.

And the Problem with being signed is that you have to have about 5 different
certs on your key to be accepted on any phone by any manufacturer on any
carrier.

Those certificates are not free. They cost about 300$/year each.

This was really annoying.

I am so glad I do not have to do this on Android.

~~~
davidw
Yeah, J2ME is not perfect, but at least you can do _something_ with it. The
certificate prices are definitely way too high. And yes, Android is by far the
best so far.

------
natch
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
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.

~~~
protomyth
Since Google blocks some rural numbers, and I do believe I am in a region
where they block, I am thinking it is not very awesome at all.

