Mar 19

iPad Developers Code Their Apps in the Dark

Posted in: Apple, developers, ipad, Media Players, Today's Chili

iPad back

Apple on Friday said it would begin accepting submissions for iPad apps next week to launch with the grand opening of the iPad App Store.

Apple’s e-mail, provided to Wired.com by a developer who asked to remain anonymous, told developers to submit their apps by March 27, 5 p.m. PT if they wished to release their apps when the iPad lands April 3.


“You will also receive additional information about submitting your app for final review before iPad ships,” Apple’s e-mail stated. “Only apps submitted for the initial review will be considered for the grand opening of the iPad App Store.”

With the iPad launch just days away, we’re sure to see a wealth of brand-new tablet apps from developers eager to get a head start. Most of those developers, however, are coding in the dark, because they haven’t actually seen the device yet.

BusinessWeek on Friday reported that a select group of developers who have worked with the iPad had promised to keep the device isolated in a room with blacked-out windows. Apple also required them to sign a 10-page pact swearing not to disclose any information about the iPad.

Apple has only granted a few developers the privilege of using an iPad to help make their apps, according to BusinessWeek. Some major developers, including Evernote, have been rejected when they requested access to iPads for testing.

That creates a reverse conundrum for the Apple developer community. When the iPhone 3G and the App Store launched in July 2008, many apps were riddled with bugs, because developers were still getting familiar with the new iPhone OS 2.0 software development kit — but at least the original iPhone was available for testing. With the iPad, the situation has flip-flopped: Developers have experience with the iPhone SDK, but most have never touched an iPad.

And that means developers are coding apps that fit a tablet screen without any hands-on testing to gauge whether their interface is suitable for the iPad experience. Apple provides an emulator for testing iPad apps, but that won’t be the same as actually using the app with a large, multitouch screen.

Even Apple seems to have already been challenged by its own product. A few weeks ago I pointed out that some default iPhone apps — Calculator, Clock and Stocks, for example — are conspicuously missing from the iPad, according to press releases and images. Later, Daring Fireball’s John Gruber cited tipsters who explained that Steve Jobs scrapped the iPad versions of those apps.

“Ends up that just blowing up iPhone apps to fill the iPad screen looks and feels weird, even if you use higher-resolution graphics so that nothing looks pixelated,” Gruber wrote. “It wasn’t a technical problem, it was a design problem.”

In theory, making games for the iPad shouldn’t be as difficult. Games resized for a higher resolution might just work out fine. Designing iPad apps in general, however, will likely be a new art that developers — and even Apple programmers — fine-tune over time.

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Mar 19

A few developers receiving iPads early, must keep it in room with blacked-out windows and tuck it in every night

Posted in: Apple, apple ipad, AppleIpad, developers, ipad, Today's Chili

Really, would you expect anything less from Apple? All sorts of wild tales have emerged about Apple’s tight restrictions on developers lucky enough to receive early iPad test units, and no matter how true they might be, we’re eating it up with a spoon. According to “people familiar” with the matter sourced by BusinessWeek, there’s a 10 page pact for developers to sign, with requirements that include keeping the iPad isolated in a room with blacked-out windows, continuously tethered to a fixed object, photographic evidence of compliance, and of course no bragging to the Twittersphere about your score. Frankly, if the iPad isn’t hand delivered to developer offices by a couple guys in well-tailored suits with an iPad briefcase handcuffed between them, we’d be sorely disappointed.

A few developers receiving iPads early, must keep it in room with blacked-out windows and tuck it in every night originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 19 Mar 2010 12:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mar 18

Pay to Play: Some iPhone App Sites Demand Money for Reviews (Updated)

Posted in: Apple, apps, developers, iPhone, Phones, Today's Chili

iphone payola

If you can’t pitch the press, pay them. That’s the proposition some review sites have for publicity-starved iPhone developers.

Several websites dedicated to iPhone app reviews are requesting payments from developers in exchange for writeups of their apps, Wired.com has learned. Those payments are not always clearly disclosed to readers, and the practice hasn’t received much discussion outside of gaming blogs.

Soliciting money in exchange for a product review is not illegal, but the practice should raise questions about the credibility and independence of the review sites, critics say.


“They prey on people who need exposure,” said Oliver Cameron, developer of the popular iPhone app Postman, who has avoided pitching his apps to sites that request payment for reviews. “It strikes me as a paid ad, really. They never seem to actually ‘review’ it.”

The two sites that were most frequently mentioned by programmers who contacted Wired.com were TheiPhoneAppReview.com and AppCraver.com. Both sites appear in the top four Google search results for the search term “iPhone app review.”

With more than 150,000 apps in the iPhone App Store, rising above the crowd is a major challenge for developers. Getting a good review on the web can help drive sales and that, in turn, can raise an app’s profile within the App Store. While apps that earn their creators hundreds of thousands of dollars are rare, they do exist, and many developers seek publicity in hopes of achieving this dream.

Driven by that demand, app review websites are offering to “expedite” reviews — that is, bring apps to the front of the review queue — in exchange for a fee. But at least one site, ThePhoneAppReview.com, has gone even further, and threatened to shun products whose developers haven’t paid for reviews.

The iPhone App Review told independent developer Michael D’Ulisse it would not review his app Pocket Labeler at all unless he paid a fee of $25. The demand is at odds with the website’s About section, which implies that fees only apply to reviews that are expedited. D’Ulisse provided a copy of an e-mail from a site editor:

I would be interested in writing a review and having it on our website (www.theiphoneappreview.com). We do charge a $25 fee for reviews (this is used to compensate our authors), so the decision is yours. If you want a review written, but have no promo codes left, I can purchase the app and add the price of the app into your invoice. Let me know either way. Thanks!

–Sarah Parker
The iPhone App Review

D’Ulisse noted that on a separate occasion in November 2009, he received the same e-mail response from The iPhone App Review when he distributed press releases for his app 2,001 Easy Gifts.

“So you’ve got a reviewer, and she’s an editor at the site who wants to use my app personally but will not post a review on her site unless I give her $25,” D’Ulisse wrote. “What happened to journalistic integrity?”

The iPhone App Review’s editor-in-chief Shaun Campbell said he was unaware that his site’s writers were requesting payment in exchange for reviews. He explained that the reviewers work autonomously, so he is unsure of how they’re paid by app creators. As of this writing, The iPhone App Review’s About section remains unchanged, stating that fees only apply to expedited app reviews.

“I have never once sent a request for a fee to a developer to review their app,” Campbell told Wired.com. “That is not our policy, which is why that is not stated in the About.”

Campbell said that his site’s policy is to offer expedited service in exchange for a fee because with the gigantic number of apps in the App Store, it would be an “impossible task to review all the apps we receive, paid or unpaid.” He added that very few talented writers would be willing to review iPhone apps for free and that providing payment ensures quality work.

“The iPhone App Review is not a PR charity,” Campbell said. “We’re a business, and like in any business, there are costs that need to be recovered.”

Requiring payment for product reviews is not illegal, but the Federal Trade Commission has frowned on the practice. The commission believes a paid review can easily be the same as a paid advertisement, and consumers as a result may be misled into purchasing a product based on a falsely positive evaluation that was bought.

To address the issue, the FTC in October 2009 published revised guidelines governing endorsements for bloggers, requiring bloggers to provide disclosure whenever a review is written in exchange for money or gifts.

Rich Cleland of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection said he could not comment on specific websites, because they must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. He said that in general, so long as payments are disclosed clearly and accurately, it is not considered misleading to the public.

“If a consumer knows that a producer pays for the review to appear, the consumer can make up their own mind to what extent that affects the credibility of the review,” Cleland told Wired.com in a phone interview. “From our perspective, the primary issue is not the payment but the disclosure of the payment.”

Still, paid reviews should raise questions about a publication’s credibility, he added.

“It’s reasonable to assume that a significant number of consumers wouldn’t give the same level of credibility to something they thought was a paid review versus something they thought was an independent review,” Cleland said.

Every time a review is written in exchange for pay, it should be explicitly disclosed on that review, Cleland said. Paid reviews on The iPhone App Review do not include such a disclosure in the text of the review.

AppCraver.com also seeks payment for expedited reviews. Lore Sjöberg, Wired.com’s Alt Text columnist, said he submitted his iPhone app The Cyborg Name Decoder to AppCraver.com for review, and in response the site offered to expedite a review of his app for $150. The letter included a promise to contact Sjöberg “prior to publishing a review that scores lower than 5/10.”

The e-mail also offered Sjöberg the opportunity to buy an advertisement on the site, along with the promise that every advertised app would also receive an editorial review.

AppCraver did not respond to Wired.com’s request for comment. However, it’s worth noting that AppCraver has, in some reviews, disclosed when reviews are “expedited,” providing a link to the site’s policy about paid expedited reviews, which states, “Simply put, an Expedited Review is one where the developer paid to move to the front of the line. Developers can NOT buy a good score.”

Not all iPhone app review sites require money or gifts in exchange for write-ups. The creators of app review sites 148Apps and Slide to Play authored a set of ethical standards called Organization for App Testing Standards, or OATS, that they hope other sites will commit and adhere to.

“Steve and I created OATS out of our concern for the lack of ethics when we started seeing more and more of these sites,” said Jeff Scott of 148Apps. “While we strive to stick to standard practices of editorial integrity, there are others that seem to operate under a very different set of morals,” said Scott.

Slide to Play’s Steve Palley said paid reviews are detrimental to the community of iPhone developers and customers.

“Paid reviews damage our entire ecosystem because they harm consumers, period, full stop,” Palley told Wired.com in an e-mail. “People who think they are reading objective reviews are going to be disappointed after taking paid ‘advice.’”

Added Palley, “We decided that we needed to do something to put a stop to it.”

The FTC’s Cleland said that if blogs are not clearly or honestly disclosing payments for reviews, consumers can file complaints to the FTC’s online Complaint Assistant or by calling 1-877-FTC-HELP (1-877-382-4357).

Update: 2:30 p.m. PDT — Matt Marquez, a Mac Directory editor, has published a post about his experience applying for a job at The iPhone App Review, in which Campbell said all writers were required to charge a fee to developers for reviews.

Update: March 19, 10 p.m. PDT: — The Today in iPhone podcast has posted another e-mail showing a The iPhone App Review author requesting payment in exchange for a review last month — with no mention of expedited service. The PayPal ID listed for sending payments is Shaun Campbell.

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Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com


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Mar 12

With More Than Enough Apps, Apple Pushes for Quality

Posted in: Apple, developers, iPhone, Phones, Today's Chili

Apple’s recent purge of sex-tinged iPhone apps and its lesser-known ban of “cookie-cutter” apps signifies the company’s new focus on quality in its App Store, rather than quantity.

Last month, Apple removed about 5,000 apps with “overtly sexual content” from its App Store. And this week Apple told Mobile Roadie, a company that provides templates for clients to build iPhone apps, that the App Store would no longer accept “cookie-cutter” apps — apps made with app-generating services that do little more than reproduce websites or pull RSS feeds from the internet.


“This is a hot issue as more focus is being placed on app platforms to ensure they’re providing a quality user experience and content,” said Michael Schneider, CEO of Mobile Roadie. He stressed that his company is not a maker of “cookie-cutter” apps because its templates are highly customizable.

“I’m not going to comment on specific competitors, but I believe as a result of the recent changes at Apple many of them will be out of business,” Schneider later wrote in a blog post. “The ones that are left are going to have to step it up, which is a good thing for the App Store, for our business, and for consumers.”

Since the App Store’s early days, Apple has boasted about the number of apps served through the store and highlighted its rapid growth. The App Store launched with 800 third-party apps in July 2008, and by November 2009 it had surpassed 100,000 apps. As of February, Apple’s App Store had accumulated about 150,000 apps.

That number has translated into a huge competitive advantage. In terms of quantity, the App Store has a commanding lead in the mobile space. Android is in a distant second with 19,300 apps. Windows Mobile’s store has 690 apps, Palm has 1,450, Nokia carries 6,120 and BlackBerry serves 4,760. Sure, you may not want to use the majority of the Apple store’s 150,000 apps, but the fact that customers have nearly eight times more selection than they do with Android phones and nearly 200 times more than with the Windows Marketplace is a convincing sales advantage for many.

In recent months, Apple has expedited its App Store approval policy to be much faster than it used to be. Several iPhone developers told Wired.com that the App Store has recently been approving their apps in as little as two days. Last year, an app approval could take between two weeks and two months.

Apple did not respond to Wired.com’s request for comment regarding major changes in the App Store. But Scott Schwarzhoff, vice president of marketing at Appcelerator, an app-building service, said it was likely that a larger staff and new automated tools are helping to speed up Apple’s approval process. As a result, that frees up bandwidth for Apple to institute bigger-picture changes to improve the quality of the App Store, he said.

“Now it’s a quality-versus-quantity issue,” Schwarzhoff said. “When they first started they wanted tons of apps, but now with 150,000 apps out there, there’s no need for Apple to have bigger numbers on its side as compared to quality applications.”

Without a doubt, those put out of business are chagrined by Apple’s capriciously changing App Store policy. For example, Fred Clarke, co-president of a small software company called On the Go Girls was making thousands of dollars each month before the policy shift. Now, with 50 of his company’s sexy apps banned from the store, his salad days are over.

“It’s very hard to go from making a good living to zero,” he said in an interview with The New York Times. “This goes farther than sexy content. For developers, how do you know you aren’t going to invest thousands into a business only to find out one day you’ve been cut off?”

However, all of the developers contacted by Wired.com said they were happy with the change. They said that thanks to Apple’s new (albeit unclear) quality standard, the App Store will be less cluttered with trashy apps, which benefits both developers and consumers.

Eric Kerr, co-founder of AppLoop, shut down his company 10 months ago for financial and personal reasons. AppLoop’s service, called App Generator, turned any online publication with an RSS feed into an app — something that might have fallen under Apple’s new ban of cookie-cutter apps. But Kerr sided with Apple on its decision to prohibit apps with extremely limited utility made with app generators.

“Apple doing this is really only accelerating the inevitable,” Kerr told Wired.com. “You have all these applications that don’t provide any additional value to users, and in the long run the market will determine they’re useless and people will not download them. Because of the application-discovery problem, that might take a while for that to actually happen, and during that time period you have a bunch of low-quality apps clogging the system.”

Obscure rules

Still, Apple has come under fire because of the lack of clarity regarding policy changes in the App Store. During Apple’s removal of apps containing overtly sexual content, many criticized the company for allowing sex-tinged apps from big companies such as Playboy and Sports Illustrated to remain in the store.

Apple’s vice president of marketing Phil Schiller said Apple had removed the sexy iPhone apps in response to complaints from parents and women. However, he said the apps from Playboy and Sports Illustrated would remain because they came from reputable companies.

“The difference is this is a well-known company with previously published material available broadly in a well-accepted format,” Schiller told NY Times.

But as Apple continues to push its new quality regime, a question arises: Where do you draw the line between raising quality standards and censorship? That’s already stirring some debate. Apple crossed the line with German tabloid Bild, whose iPhone app was pulled because of a feature containing sexual content, an act that the publication has called “a curtailing of press freedoms.”

“Today it is naked breasts, tomorrow it could be editorial content,” said Donata Hopfen, head of Bild’s digital media department, in an interview with German magazine Der Spiegel. She said Bild was urging the Federation of German Newspaper Publishers to take action “in the interest of freedom of the press.”

That battle, however, will be a tough one for Bild. Apple is not a government, and thus it is not governed by the First Amendment, said Peter Scheer, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition.

In other words, the company’s rules may be arbitrary and unfair, but Apple has the right to make decisions about what it carries in its App Store.

The fact that it lacks significant competition may be encouraging Apple act more high-handed than it would otherwise, Scheer noted.

“They’re trying to create this aura of respectability and selectivity,” Scheer said. “Apple’s trying to create this censored environment. It’s a little like China. What China does to the whole internet with pornographic content is what Steve Jobs is trying to do in his neighborhood for the iPhone.”

With a big lead in the numbers game Apple’s move toward emphasizing quality might just help it retain its dominance in the mobile market. However, Scheer said if Apple’s moves continue to be construed as acts of censorship, it could drive customers to more open alternatives such as Google’s Android platform.

“Eventually you embitter a lot of people who don’t understand why they’re being denied access to something they’d like to have on a device they have and they own,” he said.

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Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com


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Mar 03

Indie Coder Proves Android Apps Can Make Money, Too

Posted in: Android, android market, developers, Phones, Today's Chili

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While visiting Japan in September, 26-year-old Stanford graduate Eddie Kim picked up a book about coding Android apps because he thought it might be a fun hobby. Little did he know that six months later, his casual creation would earn him more money than any of his full-time jobs.

jtzxucsKim, a former Volkswagen engineer and co-founder of San Francisco-based startup Picwing, now earns $13,000 each month off an Android app called Car Locator (right), which helps users find their parked cars. Kim’s app, which he sells for $4 per download, took him only three weeks to code.

“I thought about making an app for the iPhone, but my thoughts were, it’s such a crowded space right now, and I thought Android would be a better opportunity to get involved in,” Kim told Wired.com.

“Plus, I learned that you need a Mac to do iPhone development, and at that point I lost all interest,” said Kim, a proud Windows user.

Kim’s success story is the first we’ve heard from an independent coder developing for the Android platform. While the iTunes App Store was still just months old, we saw a handful of reports about independent developers making copious amounts of money off their iPhone apps. For example, independent coder Steve Demeter said he made $250,000 in profit in just two months with his iPhone game Trism. Later, programmer Ethan Nicholas raked in $600,000 in a single month with hot sales of his game iShoot, and he immediately quit his job. Because of these success stories, many technology observers have deemed the mobile app opportunity a digital gold rush.

Google’s Android Market, which opened in October 2008, has been around almost as long as the iPhone’s App Store. But only in recent months, with the introduction of the Motorola Droid and Google’s Nexus One, has the Android platform been gaining serious momentum. In February, Google announced that 60,000 Android phones are shipped each day.

Still, stifling Android developers is the lack of a simple market for third-party apps. Google doesn’t own a prominent platform for distributing apps, as Apple does with iTunes. And some developers have shied away from the Android platform in fear of fragmentation — having to develop and support several versions of the same app for various different phones from several manufacturers. By comparison, the iPhone offers a relatively clear-cut audience of 75 million iPhone and iPod Touch customers, with smaller differences in features between the various models. (Though the advent of the iPad, with its larger screen, may complicate Apple’s market further.)

Citing Google’s weaknesses, Gameloft, a major game company, said in November 2009 that it was significantly cutting back its investment in Android.

“It is not as neatly done as on the iPhone,” said Alexandre de Rochefort, Gameloft’s finance director, during an investor conference. “Google has not been very good to entice customers to actually buy products. On Android, nobody is making significant revenue…. We are selling 400 times more games on iPhone than on Android.”

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Against that background, Kim’s success story is all the more impressive.

So what exactly did Kim do to rake in some serious dough? First, he employed a “freemium” strategy, offering a free version of Car Locator for users to try out, in addition to the paid version of the app, for which he charged $2 at first. Kim’s sales started out small, netting an average of about $80 to $100 per day. Then, his app became featured in the Android Marketplace, at which point Car Locator began netting an average of $435 per day. Kim then gradually raised the price to $3, and then to $4, and surprisingly, sales grew even stronger. (Kim illustrated his progress in the chart below).

What’s more, Kim doesn’t find developing for Android particularly difficult. He said the concerns about fragmentation are overplayed: There are currently four different versions of Android, and it’s not hard to account for a few variations of the same app.

“It’s not a huge pain in the butt for developers right now,” Kim said.

At this rate, Kim is set to earn a six-figure yearly income. But he said he doesn’t plan to quit his job or start churning out Android apps. After all, luck was a big factor in helping Kim’s app succeed, just like it was for Demeter and Nicholas. (In an interview with Newsweek, Demeter says he only really struck it rich after investing his App Store earnings in the stock market. Nicholas hasn’t come out with a big hit like iShoot ever since, and he told Newsweek he’s “very worried about being a one-hit wonder.”)

For now, Kim hopes to ride on Car Locator’s success for as long as he can.

“Just from last month’s sales, it’s making more money than when I was employed as an engineer at Volkswagen, though I’m not sure how long it will last,” Kim said.

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Photos: Jon Snyder/Wired.com


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Mar 01

Older Windows Phones Can’t Be Upgraded to 7 Series

Posted in: developers, Microsoft, mobile, Phones, Today's Chili, windows phone 7 series

Even the newest and fastest Windows phones won’t be upgradable to Microsoft’s next-generation mobile operating system, Windows Phone 7 Series, when it lands later this year.

Natasha Kwan, general manager for Microsoft’s Mobile Communications Business in the Asia-Pacific region, told APC Mag that current phones running Windows Mobile 6.5 OS will receive incremental upgrades, but they can’t be upgraded to Windows Phone 7 Series because they don’t meet the hardware criteria that Microsoft has mandated for phones running the new OS.

That will inevitably lead to some buyers’ remorse for current Windows Mobile users, such as those who just bought the brand new HTC HD2. The HD2 meets most of the hardware criteria that Microsoft is mandating for Windows 7 Series phones: It includes a 1-GHz Qualcomm processor, a high-res capacitive touch display, a 5-megapixel camera and a 3.5-mm headphone jack. However, the phone is being ruled out because it has five buttons rather than the three buttons mandated for all Windows Phone 7 Series devices.

Microsoft last month introduced Windows Phone 7 Series at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. To address the issue of fragmentation — a complex hardware ecosystem that requires developers to code several versions of one app to sell on one platform for different types of phones — Microsoft is working more closely with manufacturing partners in the design process of their hardware. Microsoft has been vague about exactly what the required specifications would be for Windows 7 Series phones.

Later, Microsoft Australia developer evangelist said in a podcast that Microsoft has drawn up three “chassis” for standard specifications that three different types of Windows Phone 7 Series will have to meet. ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley explained that Chassi 1 will be for “big touchscreen phones,” Chassi 2 will be for handsets with sliding keyboards and Chassis 3 will be for candybar-style phones.

Long story short, the bad news is current Windows Mobile users won’t be able to upgrade to Windows Phone 7 Series. The good news is it appears Windows phone developers will be able to code apps for three different types of phones — as opposed to making apps for all sorts of different handsets from various manufacturers, like they had to do with Windows Mobile 6.5. Ideally, the new implementation of three standard chassis should spell out to easier development, and thus more Windows Phone 7 Series apps for users.

Microsoft will be disclosing full details on development tools for Windows Phone 7 Series at its MIX developer conference this month.

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Image courtesy of Microsoft


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Feb 23

Apple Explains Semi-Ban of Sex Apps

Posted in: Apple, developers, Phones, Today's Chili


Apple last week began banning iPhone apps containing “overtly sexual content.” But on Monday the company said it intends to leave apps from major publishers, such as Playboy and Sports Illustrated, untouched.

In an interview with The New York Times, Apple’s vice president of marketing Phil Schiller explained the company was responding to complaints from concerned parents and female customers.

“It came to the point where we were getting customer complaints from women who found the content getting too degrading and objectionable, as well as parents who were upset with what their kids were able to see,” Schiller told NY Times’ Jenna Wortham.

Though the move is sure to mitigate complaints, and even please some developers turned off by raunchy content cluttering the App Store, it’s questionable why the Playboy and Sports Illustrated apps, which contain images of partially nude women, wouldn’t offend the same customers. Schiller explained that the Playboy and Sports Illustrated apps came from more reputable companies.

“The difference is this is a well-known company with previously published material available broadly in a well-accepted format,” Schiller said.

The retroactive kind-of-sort-of ban of sex-tinged apps is certainly leaving some developers sore. Wortham interviewed Fred Clarke, co-president of a small software company called On the Go Girls, who lost 50 apps as a result of the ban. Clarke had been making thousands of dollars off the App Store, but no longer.

“It’s very hard to go from making a good living to zero,” he said. “This goes farther than sexy content. For developers, how do you know you aren’t going to invest thousands into a business only to find out one day you’ve been cut off?”

Apple from day one has said porn was not allowed in the App Store, so developers instead coded apps that contained only partial nudity. (Some were able to sneak full nudity into their apps, but not for long before Apple slammed the ban hammer.) Apple last year implemented a Parental Controls feature to prevent children from downloading content that Apple deemed “17+.” However, the feature still allows the App Store to display search results for 17+ content even if an iPhone has been configured to prohibit downloading such apps. Clearly, the Parental Controls tool has not been effective in addressing parents’ concerns.

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Feb 21

Microsoft’s Challenge With Windows Phone 7 Is Wooing Developers

Posted in: apps, developers, Microsoft, Phones, speculation, Today's Chili, windows phone 7 series, Wireless

Developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers. Recruiting a ton of them to create a rich app experience for Windows Phone 7 Series is going to be Microsoft’s toughest challenge if it wants to get its groove back in the mobile space.

Demonstrated last week, Microsoft’s new mobile operating system Windows Phone 7 Series looks elegant and immaculate compared to its predecessors. The OS blends together Xbox Live gaming, Zune multimedia, personal media (photos and videos), social media utilities, productivity tools and third-party apps, which are organized into categories called “Hubs.”


Even so, a neatly packed user interface doesn’t fully address the fundamental weakness of the previous Windows Mobile OS: a fragmented platform that made coding and selling apps for Windows Mobile a challenge for smaller developers.

In other words, Microsoft has long lacked the sort of widespread, enthusiastic support from independent developers — not just enterprise coders within large organizations — that made the iPhone and its App Store a blockbuster innovation.

“They’ve been doing such a miserable job for a while now,” said Peter Hoddie, CEO of Kinoma, which creates software that makes Windows Mobile easier for users to navigate. “I would be thrilled if they could turn it all around and tell a story that makes sense, but they have a long way to go.”

To help address fragmentation, Microsoft said on Feb. 15 that it would be more involved in the hardware design process of its partners’ phones running Windows Phone 7 Series. Each Windows Phone 7 Series handset, for example, will include a built-in FM radio tuner and a physical button to access Bing search.

But the question remains whether Microsoft can make Windows Phone 7 Series a compelling platform, giving developers the tools and audience they need.

Microsoft was mum on details about its third-party app development platform at the Mobile World Congress last week in Barcelona, Spain, but developers have already leaked some of the company’s plans regarding its third-party development tools, which include Silverlight, Microsoft’s cross-platform web application framework, as well as a limited set of native application programming interfaces and managed APIs. (For a more detailed explanation translating nerd speak to normal human talk, see Mary Jo Foley’s article on ZDNet.)

Mobile developers polled by Wired.com had mixed reactions (to say the least) about Windows Phone 7 Series’ development tools, based on the leaked documents.

Kai Yu, CEO of BeeJive, was pessimistic. He said his independent company, which makes apps for the iPhone and BlackBerry, wrote off Windows Mobile years ago because of “incomplete, half-assed” developer tools and a lack of support from Microsoft, and he doesn’t see those problems changing with a new operating system.

“I think it’s just royally fucked,” Yu said of Microsoft’s phone platform. “That place is so big: The tools, the people, it’s all so fragmented…. What’s the advantage of having these hubs and cool-looking UI? In the end, I don’t know if that gives you anything.”

On the opposite side, Jim Scheinman, COO of Pageonce, which makes productivity apps for BlackBerry, iPhone, Windows Mobile and Android, said his company was excited about Microsoft’s reboot of its phone platform.

“My speculation is that Microsoft has some incredible platforms they can tie all together with the new mobile platform,” Scheinman said. “If one developer can write across all the other platforms, that would be easier for us and all the developers…. If you want to attract hundreds of thousands of developers, it would behoove Microsoft to try to make that happen. That would be a very, very exciting opportunity for all of us.”

But Hoddie wasn’t enthused, either. Regarding the new Windows Phone 7 Series OS, Hoddie said adding Silverlight into the mix wouldn’t help much. He explained that similar to Adobe’s Flash, Silverlight was a technology made for desktops, and it’s bound to cause performance issues when transplanted into mobile devices.

“Silverlight, geez,” he said. “Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water.”

Hoddie echoed some of Yu’s concerns, complaining about how “horribly” Microsoft treated its mobile developers. For example, Hoddie recounted an incident when one of his apps had a problem with text input on a specific phone running Windows Mobile. When he finally got in touch with Microsoft’s support team, Microsoft said it was only responsible if the text-input problem appeared in the Windows Mobile emulator software — and if it didn’t, Hoddie would have to contact the Japanese manufacturer directly to address the problem.

Poor developer support? That’s strange, because Microsoft understands more than any company how important developers are. (Steve Ballmer made that loud and clear in the video above.) The Windows PC operating system, after all, won the desktop OS war early largely with the help of software developers that made programs only for Windows.

But perhaps the problem for Microsoft is that the definition of “developer” has changed in recent years. Apple’s App Store popularized a business platform that made developing software a viable and even sometimes highly lucrative career choice for small, independent coders working in their bedrooms, whose quirky apps have made the iPhone one of the most innovative inventions yet.

By contrast, mobile developers working on Microsoft’s Windows Mobile platform have largely been laboring in the bowels of large corporations, creating mobile front ends for enterprise applications like SAP.

Can Microsoft attract the small developers as well, to create another app boom?

Independent developer Dave Castelnuovo, whose iPhone game Pocket God is one of the App Store’s all-time top sellers, said he and his peers had no plans to develop for Windows Phone 7 Series. He explained that fragmentation — a complex hardware ecosystem that requires developers to code several versions of one app to sell on one platform for different types of phones — will always be a major problem with Windows phones.

“Fragmentation ends up making development more expensive,” Castelnuovo said. “Microsoft is trying to solve some of that by being a little more hands-on…. They all have multitouch and the same three buttons, but the problem is I don’t know what kind of other options there are. Is there a camera option? What is the minimum CPU speed or amount of RAM? If you’re an independent developer, you’ll have to code to the lowest-possible common denominator in order to get to the biggest-possible market.”

There are still plenty of questions in the air surrounding Windows Phone 7 Series and its overall mobile strategy. Microsoft declined to comment on the purported leaks about Windows Phone 7 Series’ development tools. The company plans to preview its development tools at its MIX developers conference next month. Until then, developers will just have to wait and see.

Photo: Charlie Sorrel/Wired.com

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Feb 18

Windows Phone 7 development policies and guidelines leaked?

Posted in: developers, leak, Today's Chili, windows phone 7, windows phone 7 series, WindowsPhone7, WindowsPhone7Series, Wp7

We expect to learn a lot more about Microsoft’s plan to entice developers to Windows Phone 7 at the MIX 2010 developers conference. Until then (March 15-17), aspiring WP7 devs have to rely upon rumor and innuendo to feed their curiosity. So here you go: three purportedly official Microsoft docs from January that provide a glimpse into Microsoft’s Windows Phone OS 7.0 Application Platform. First up, the docs claim that WPOS 7.0 is built around Silverlight, XNA (like the Zune HD), and the .NET Compact Framework — a mostly clean break from WinMo’s past as far as developers are concerned. Native apps are restricted to OEMs and mobile operators in order to extend the experience and functionality specific to a phone or network. Even then, they’ll be limited to a set of managed APIs that Microsoft will audit during the app submission and provisioning process. Sound familiar?

As you’d expect, the OS supports preemptive multitasking — not that Microsoft will necessarily allow its devs (OEMs, mobile operators, and independent software vendors) to send their apps to the background. The primary development tools include Microsoft’s Visual Studio 2010 and Express Blend used in combination with a Windows Phone emulator. Check the docs in the gallery for the full read and be sure to hit up XDA-Developers if you want to commiserate with your like-minded peers.

Gallery: Windows Phone 7 development docs leaked?

Windows Phone 7 development policies and guidelines leaked? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Feb 2010 05:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Feb 15

Carriers, Manufacturers Buddy Up for a Wholesale App Store

Posted in: Apple, developers, iPhone, Mwc2010, Phones, Today's Chili

Cellphone carriers worldwide are apparently sick of Apple’s iPhone App Store hogging all the attention and loot in the mobile software market. Two dozen of them are teaming up to open a cross-platform app store.

Carriers on board include Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, China Unicom, China Mobile, Softbank and Vodafone, among several others. The group has also partnered with three manufacturers — Samsung, LG, and Sony Ericsson — to support the initiative.

Announced at Mobile World Congress 2010 in Barcelona, Spain, the alliance’s goal is to create a “Wholesale Applications Community,” offering an open ecosystem that will enable developers to create one app for one store that’s accessible on a broad range of phones. Combined, the carriers serve 3 billion customers to date, which could be the potential audience for the wholesale app store.

The move, then, would free developers and consumers from vertical business models like Apple’s App Store. The App Store is exclusive for iPhone customers. Develop an app for the iPhone OS and it only works on iPhone OS devices (iPhone, iPod Touch and the upcoming iPad). Likewise, if you buy iPhone apps, you lose those apps if you switch to a non-Apple phone.

“The GSMA is fully supportive the Wholesale Applications Community, which will build a new, open ecosystem to spur the creation of applications that can be used regardless of device, operating system or operator,” said Rob Conway, CEO and Member of the GSMA board. “This is tremendously exciting news for our industry and will serve to catalyse the development of a range of innovative cross-device, cross-operator applications.”

As promising and beneficial as a wholesale app store sounds, it would be naive to expect it to arrive anytime soon. Cross-platform mobile operating systems, like Windows Mobile, already suffer from the issue of fragmentation: You can’t develop a single app for every Windows Mobile phone, because they vary in features such as screen size, buttons and more. The Wholesale Applications Community’s goal is to create an app store working on an even broader range of devices, and fragmentation will be an even more severe challenge to overcome.

The Wholesale Application Community also appears to be ignoring the fact that vertical integration was a key strategy that drove the App Store’s success. iPhone developers code apps that work only on iPhone OS devices, and thus they’re able to hone the quality and optimize the performance of their apps. In turn, because developers only have to code one type of app that reaches out to a large audience of iPhone OS users (about 75 million to date), many of them believe they have a better chance to make money this way. Vertical integration appears to be succeeding so far: The App Store has served 3 billion downloads and claimed 99.4 percent of the mobile-software market.

The Wholesale Application Community is aware that it would take a long time to achieve its goal.

“Ultimately, we will collectively work with the [World Wide Web Consortium] for a common standard based on our converged solution to truly ensure developers can create applications that port across mobile device platforms, and in the future between fixed and mobile devices,” the Wholesale Application Community said in a press release.

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