So is anyone planning on developing for the iPhone? I got an iPhone soon after they were released (before the $200 price drop [bawling]), and although I love it, I always thought the lack of user created software was really holding it back. I got excited when I they announced they were releasing an SDK for the iPhone and now it's out and I saw what some companies are able to do, I'm definitely on board. I was just wondering if anyone else was planning to develop iPhone apps.

How to??

Quote:Original post by loorr
How to??

As implied in the original post, by using Apple's SDK.

Just me? I do have to say I'm surprised more people aren't as excited as I am about writing custom software for the iPhone. Especially seeing it's powerful, popular and currently a has a bare market for 3rd party apps...games included. Plus Apple's plan for distribution is very appealing and their cut of the profit (if you want to charge) is quite reasonable.

I just figured there would be a bit more buzz on this site about it. Perhaps since it requires a pretty modern Mac for development and most people have Windows PCs.

I'm all for it, in fact I nearly downloaded the SDK immediately after the announcement...However, my problem with this is that Apple has forced developers to use a Mac as the SDK does not support anything other than OSX. I'd love to develop games, in fact if I were to do it seriously I'd even consider the fee for the program, but I don't want to have to spend 2k on a Mac to do it.

[Edited by - trojanman on March 15, 2008 10:10:27 PM]

Sadly there are several issues with the SDK as it stands,

1) it runs on a Mac...ok well you can buy a mini for a few hundred so that's a reasonable investment.

2) The Emulator is currently unable to run any graphical programs (no OpenGL ES support) so you are limited to the onboard graphic types...buttons, lists, png's, etc...not very useful for games. It can't even rotate on screen!!! Despite the options being listed in the menu, it won't rotate.

3) The certificates needed to run your apps on hardware are being rationed.. Currently only "SOME" US, applications are being supplied, most are getting a standard, we're sending them out shortly email. Outside of the US nothing at all.


So basically, you can fire up the IDE, play with the hello world progs and thats about it for now....

I'm more than a little upset about it, but at the moment, its not a viable games dev platform.

I'm sure it'll improve, but if anyone from Apple is reading this...seriously guys what were you thinking? A dev system that can't actually run graphics...poor show...get it fixed ...soon!

[Edited by - Homers Pal on March 16, 2008 9:48:02 AM]

Quote:Original post by PsychoPumpkin
Just me? I do have to say I'm surprised more people aren't as excited as I am about writing custom software for the iPhone.

Not that many people on this site have iPhones. Not that many people on this site have Macs. The potential iPhone development audience is the intersection of those two groups.

I'm interested in iPhone development, but I wouldn't classify myself as "excited." I have far too many other things to do first.

I'm very excited about developing games for the iPhone. Unfortunately I don't currently have one, and the OpenGL issue with the simulator is a real shame, else I'd be tapping away at getting something up and running on it. I'm very interested in the idea of making games with multitouch functionality, seems like there's so much potential with that interface.

The SDK does have some shortcomings but it is a beta release. I figure the device simulator will never be able to completely simulate the real device. I don't see a good way to do multi-touch actions or simulate using the 3-axis accelerometers with a mouse and keyboard, especially simultaneously. Perhaps some level could be done by some pre-defined macros but at some point, you'll need the real thing.

So far I am pretty happy with the tools in the SDK. I spent most of my weekend learning how to use my MacBook (the last Apple computer I used was an Apple IIe), learning the XCode IDE and getting up to speed on Objective-C. I really wish they chose to use C++. I don't really have anything bad to say about Objective-C as a language (not yet anyway) other than it's another C-derived language to keep rattling around in my head since I use C++ and C# daily at work.

Well, I was hoping for at least a few iPhone developers on this forum so I didn't have to rely on some of those Anti-AnythingButMacintosh sites to bounce issues/ideas off. [smile]