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Weekly Mobile News #1
Welcome!
This post officially starts a new service: electronMobile’s Weekly Mobile News.
Every Saturday we will be offering you a quick glance to the most important events in the mobile world from the previous week. We will be focusing on news about the iPhone, Android and Blackberry platforms, as well as other systems (with a slight preference for the iPhone, why not saying it!). There will be news for developers, decision makers and everyone interested in mobile technologies, including links to more expanded coverage.
Having said that, this is Weekly Mobile News #1:
1) Skype for the iPhone Released
This is the most important news of the previous mobile week. The Skype iPhone application was probably the most wanted one ever in the App Store, and it has reached the top of all download charts in just… a couple of minutes. Literally. The release of the application was suggested by several rumors over the last weeks, and then confirmed on Monday by CNET (relayed later by TUAW and others). As we write these lines, Skype is breaking all download records all over the world, and on Tuesday (April 2nd) it was reportedly being downloaded once every six seconds, with a staggering one million download count in just two days.
It was somewhat unfortunate that the Skype team would take so long to release an official application for their service, which translated in a serious advantage for outsiders like Fring (released last October) and Truphone (released last January) to provide similar services in the meantime.
There were also reports about crashes, but these are apparently only happening on “jailbroken” devices, which prompted Skype to add the following disclaimer on the App Store:
Please note: Skype is not responsible for errors orcrashes which result from changes to the underlying iPhone OS.
In any case, Skype on the App Store is really interesting news in many fronts. Mobile Voice over IP (VoIP) is a hot topic, not really because of the technological problems (which have been solved long ago), but because of the political and economical turmoil that it represents: needless to say, bypassing cellular networks is not a good idea… particularly from the Telco’s point of view.
But VoIP clearly represents a big win for consumers, without any doubt. There is an organizational and business clash happening right now, completely foreseen (everybody knew this would happen some day), and given the current economic crisis, the pressure on the Telco’s is likely to increase day by day. Pressure groups are even advocating to unblock the usage of VoIP over 3G networks, something that, it seems, is possible to do with the iPhone OS 3.0 Beta. Will this “feature” be unlocked as soon as the iPhone OS 3.0 is released in June?
Right now, the rumor mill swings to the side of some video chat capabilities to be available in the next generation iPhone, though it seems that current data networks would not be able to handle the massive amounts of data required for such a feature (and we at electronMobile we believe that’s true). Maybe in 2010?
2) iPhone 3.0 Beta 2 Released
In the iPhone software development world, it seems that Apple has activated the turbo boosters in its development team. Shortly after presenting the iPhone SDK 3.0 Beta on March 17th, Beta 2 was released last Tuesday with a huge amount of new capabilities. Given the strict NDA covering the current Beta SDK, we will not provide any details, but suffice to say that the platform looks really promising, as a welcome update, with many new features, some of which, we believe, should have been available already in version 2.0.
In any case, here is a quick roundup of some relevant news for iPhone software developers, both in versions 2.0 and 3.0 of the iPhone OS:
- Wayne Pan reports a huge increase in the performance of JavaScript on the iPhone OS 3.0 (via Mobile Orchard)
- Jeff LaMarche (@jeff_lamarche on Twitter) wrote an extremely interesting “WWDC First Time Guide” in his blog. Jeff is the co-author of “Beginning iPhone Development”, a great book about the iPhone SDK 2.0, which is currently being updated with the latest changes on the iPhone OS 3.0.
- Fraser Speirs, a prominent figure in Cocoa programming circles, has posted an interesting article about the integration of Xcode, Git and the LLVM/Clang Static Analyzer using post-commit hooks. If you have not understood a word about what’s written in the previous sentence, that’s OK!
- It seems that the Apple Xcode team is hiring! We wonder what are they preparing under the hood…? (via @MichaelJurewitz)
- Apple has announced the Apple Design Awards 2009! Developers can send their ideas for submission, and the ceremony will be held during WWDC. electronMobile will be there and will report LIVE from the very center of the Apple galaxy!
Have a nice mobile week! As usual, follow us on Twitter: @electronMobile!
Sooshi - ElectronMobile’s first iPhone App
SOOSHI IS ALIVE!
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You can send private messages, share your contact details, exact position, web address and your preferred online profiles. With full Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Tumblr, Flickr and del.icio.us integration SOOSHI is the perfect social networking tool.
SOOSHI is proper cool and we think that it’s going to be a big one…
Take a look at www.socialsooshi.com for further information.
Twitter - http://twitter.com/SocialSooshi
iPhone SDK 3.0: A New Beginning
Last year I blogged about the upcoming SDK 2.0 for the iPhone 3G, and boy did it change my life. For those who haven’t followed closely everything that happened in my blog lately, there’s been this (that’s me in the WWDC keynote main room at the Moscone center) and then that (yours truly talking at the first ever European iPhone conference). All of this has been the result of going to San Francisco last June. That particular trip changed everything; I never thought that a simple plane ticket could generate this much.
The iPhone has literally changed my professional life. But it was only the beginning. Last Tuesday, Apple announced the iPhone SDK 3.0, and I’ll expose here some thoughts about what’s coming next.
To put it bluntly, I think that the iPhone SDK 3.0 is a jump to the realm of the desktop software platform. By that I mean that the next generation of iPhone applications will look more like small versions of more complex desktop-like systems, rather than mobile applications. Pasteboard, local Bluetooth networking, Undo support and Core Data are just some of the elements that will take the iPhone platform to the level of a small desktop platform (and no, I’m not breaking any NDA here, I’m just enumerating some of the “1000 new APIs” announced by Apple last week).
Much has been written about the App Store review process, about the lack of X, Y or Z features on the SDK, about the various problems and limitations of the platform; however, constraints are liberating. All of the limitations of the iPhone SDK have allowed lots of developers to come up with creative ideas to overcome them, and to create applications with a seriously distinctive taste to them; we wouldn’t have had Ocarina or Shazam or the Facebook iPhone app otherwise.
Have there been a similar breakthrough in the Google Android platform? Let’s be very clear about this: the answer is no. I’ve personally seen the Android SDK in action, and even if the Android platform seems promising, Apple’s own SDK is years light ahead. As an advocate of open source solutions, I am sorry to say this, but Android is not a direct competitor of the iPhone SDK, at least not right now.
And not only that, but there’s one important factor that’s generally overseen: the strict approval factor for getting into the App Store has generated one of the most secure and stable software platforms ever delivered to the public. Have you heard about iPhone viruses? You haven’t, right? Well, I’ve heard about Windows Mobile ones, if you ask me. And you can buy antivirus software for Blackberry and Android, by the way.
Heck, the first iPhone “virus” was the 1.1.3 firmware, it was released by Apple… and it screwed jailbroken iPhones. Big deal.
The platform might not be perfect, but hey, I can’t think of working on any other right now.
And then, there’s the programming language choice; as a geek and developer I can’t think of a nicer choice than Objective-C’s dynamicity and speed to deliver great software. Java-based platforms are limited by, well, Java itself. Want speed? Use straight C. Want object-orientation? Use Objective-C. Want compatibility and reuse? Mix C++ with your Objective-C code. Let’s go back to the basics: the iPhone is delivering what no other mobile platform has dared doing before.
And, oh, by the way, don’t rant about not having background processes (or any other feature, for that matter); I really don’t think that the lack of support for them will hinder the development of this platform. Rather the opposite, we’ll see a new generation of applications popping up in June, when the OS 3.0 will be released to the public. I’m more confortable with a platform with defined boundaries, rather than with a behemoth of unknown and undefined behaviour. I’ll be glad to use the notification service.
The iPhone SDK might be limited, but it delivers what it promises. I have yet to see a platform from another vendor (or even from the open source realm) to be as coherent and as well defined from the very start.
The real power of the iPhone remains yet to be seen. This platform is beyond anything that we’ve seen so far, and all the elements for success are already present in the beta downloads.
To summarize: the iPhone is the next desktop platform.
In a more personal note, since last February I’m in charge of the software and business development of electronmobile, a new endeavour spinning off electronlibre, targeting businesses with the aim of providing a way to leverage the immense power of mobile applications in the fields of marketing, entertainment and social networking. Not only that, but we’re going to deliver custom, brand new experiences to the iPhone SDK, with applications beyond anything you’ve seen before.
The iPhone is just a first step, but boy, what a jump. And Electronmobile will set the pace in the Swiss (and global) landscape to take things further. Our objective is to create a center of excellence in mobile software development, and the prospects so far leave me speechless.
Finally, what about Google Android, Symbian or Blackberry? Of course, they are interesting alternatives. The iPhone is by no means the right answer for everyone, but there’s no doubt to me that Apple is setting the standard, here and now. Apple is leading the way, and iPhone shows what mobile smartphones should have been (and done) from the very beginning.
Please stay tuned for more goodies. You ain’t see nothin’ yet.
