iPhone Development Blog

The TSA has come up with one useful rule: you are allowed to pass through the security checkpoint without removing your iPad from your bag. (Brilliant move by Apple marketing, BTW.)

As a self-respecting geek and iOS developer I of course travel with plenty of electronics. On a recent trip I happened to have two iPads in my backpack while going through security. That was however too much for the TSA to swallow. (”Is that two iPads in your backpack??”) The iPads had to be separated and take another trip through the x-ray machine.

I honestly don’t know if the “iPad exception rule” is a general free pass for all tablets. I doubt it. The iPad is relatively easy to identify, but how would a TSA drone distinguish between the plethora of devices that get marketed as tablets these days. But that’s irrelevant for this story, since I can’t imagine anyone actually owning two Android tablets?

written by Nick \\ tags: iPad, traveling tips

I came across this incredulous article in NY Times. After recovering from the shock that you can actually pay for legislation at such a detailed level, it struck me that this process would be a great way to deal with the patent trolls that we love to hate.

All we would have to do is to get our highly paid iOS developer lobbyists in Washington to write legislation that specifically invalidates Lodsys’ patents. Or while we’re at it, generally make the App Store a patent free zone.

Then, as it appears, it’s just a formality to get the legislation passed by Congress.

written by Nick \\ tags: humor, patent

On Wednesday June 29, 2011 my colleague David Foote will be conducting a webinar for iOS developers. If you want to learn how to create an automated build process for iOS projects, this webinar is for you.

You can sign up here.

Here’s the full text of the announcement:

Are you currently building applications for Apple’s wildly popular iOS platform, or planning to do so in the future? If so, it is important to understand the unique lifecycle management challenges you will face in iOS app development for mobile devices and the solutions available to overcome those challenges. Aldon and Pervasent invite you to attend a webinar on how to create an automated build process and application distribution system that will accelerate the development and testing of your iOS applications.

Managing the build/test process during application development is one of the great challenges of developing iOS apps. Builds are typically created by hand. Mobile provisioning profiles containing the device IDs of all testing hardware must be created and distributed to testers and executive stakeholders. Each new build must be installed on each testing device by attaching it to a PC running iTunes. These manual processes are time-consuming and error-prone.

During this webinar, you will learn how to create an automated build system that will enable anyone in your organization to dramatically simplify the build and deployment process within the iOS application lifecycle.

written by Nick \\ tags: build, webinar

No New Hardware

Apple had been unusually proactive in hinting that there would be no new hardware announced at WWDC. But still the gadget blogs were disappointed. The original iPhone hardware was exciting, I’ll admit that. But since then, the hardware changes have been minor and incremental. A new iOS version will also have significantly larger impact on the iPhone ecosystem since more than a hundred million customers will enjoy the new features and benefits immediately, whereas a new iPhone will only benefit a small fraction of that.

iCloud

The architecture decisions Apple made with iCloud are quite interesting and are in many cases in stark contrast to their competitors’ vision of “the cloud”.

• The PC has been demoted to just another device that syncs with the cloud. The PC is no longer the center of the universe (Microsoft’s dogma). iCloud is another big step towards the post-PC world.
• Syncing is between smart devices and these devices are the primary means to access your data. Compare this with Google’s idea that you put all your data on their servers and then access it via a browser. Yes, Google provides APIs to access your data, but in the big picture they really want you to use a browser so they can shovel ads at you along with your data.
• There is no streaming of audio or video from iCloud. A one-time sync of data places a lot less load on the network. This reduces the operating costs of Apple’s server farm, as well as the mobile operators’ wireless networks. Since you need to still keep your media on all your devices, you are “encouraged” to keep upgrading to larger storage capacity every year or so. More hardware sales for Apple.
• iCloud is primarily a storage cloud and not a computing cloud like Amazon’s EC2 and many other companies’ computing cloud offerings.
• With the iCloud API Apple will harness the energy and ingenuity of the iOS developer community to tie customers even closer to iCloud and Apple’s ecosystem.
• In the context of iCloud it makes total sense that Apple recently released versions of Pages, Numbers and Keynote for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Many reviewers were at the time asking: why would you want to compose large documents on such a small device. The idea is that you should be able to pick up any one of your devices, or sit down at your computer, and continue working on your document. With the API Apple wants us developers to do the same with our apps for iOS and Mac. The emphasis in OS X Lion on not having to explicitly save your documents, also makes a lot more sense in the iCloud context.
• Since the basic iCloud service is free, developers can assume that practically all of their customers will have iCloud. This is very important. Compare this with the “workarounds” developers have resorted to in the past with using MobileMe or Dropbox for syncing data.
• Another interesting iCloud benefit is backups for iOS devices. How this will work in practice over wireless networks remains to be seen. Obviously you will not be sending 8/16/32/64 GB of data for the backup. In checking my current iTunes backups (~/Library/Application Support/MobileSync/Backup) it looks like I have 0.5 – 1.5 GB of data backed up for each of my 32 GB devices that are filled to the limit with apps and data. App binaries are not part of the backup. Just as your local iTunes has a copy stored of all your apps, Apple certainly has a copy too on their iTunes servers. I just hope they keep old versions of apps around so that you’re not forced to upgrade to the latest version if you need to do a restore.
• What will happen to battery life when your device is constantly syncing iCloud data and making backups in the background?
• Apple did not talk about sharing iCloud data between customers. This severely limits the use of iCloud for collaborative work. I’m sure Apple is already thinking about this. But for now services like Dropbox still have a niche.
• iCloud is the next big step in the platform evolution. First Apple perfected app sales and distribution with the App Store, and they still have the most number of apps. But Apple has moved on. Even if/when the Android Marketplace reaches or surpasses the number of iOS apps, it matters less if the Android platform can’t do what iCould offers.

iOS 5

Lots of new and interesting stuff in iOS 5. As Marco Arment calls it: The iPhone feature-checklist steamroller.

• iMessage – Mostly interesting because it transparently bypasses the carriers’ antiquated and ridiculously expensive SMS system. Another land grab by Apple. Nice touch that the carriers first learned about this at the keynote, just like everybody else.
• Newsstand – One of our larger clients is in the magazine business, so this announcement caused some heart palpitations before we realized that Newsstand is mostly a glorified folder that shows recent magazine covers from other apps that you have installed on your device. The background downloading is nice though. Wish Apple would extend that as a general service to all apps.
• Reminders – This is an odd app from Apple. Geolocation aware reminders/alerts is certainly cool. But what’s the bigger play for Apple here?
• Twitter integration – Single sign-on to Twitter is nice. From the screenshots it looks like you can add multiple Twitter accounts. I think this opens the path for single sign-on to multiple other services in the future. Facebook is the obvious one. Now that Twitter received a boost in the battle for global identity management, maybe Facebook will come to terms with Apple too.
• Safari Reading List – Another feature pioneered by third party developers becomes part of iOS. I don’t see any reason to switch from Instapaper.
• Cut the cord – This is probably the most important new feature in iOS 5. It will open the market to millions of people who want to use an iPad as their only home computer. And to millions (billions?) more who live in countries where computers are generally uncommon.

WWDC Sessions and Labs

Everything that took place after the public keynote is under NDA so I cannot talk publicly about it. But there is even more new and exciting stuff under the hood for us developers, than what has been revealed publicly. I encourage you to view the WWDC session videos as soon as they come out.

Personally I did not spend very much time in the sessions. I don’t want to learn and get excited about new APIs that I realistically cannot use for several months. And as I mentioned before, the sessions will be available on video soon. For me, the most valuable part of WWDC is the labs. There you can ask pretty much any technical question about iOS (or Mac OS X) and it’s very likely that you’ll end up talking to the engineer who wrote the code in question. You can bring code, and they will help you debug it. Even if your question is not very precisely formulated, they are happy to talk to you to get a sense of how developers are using their APIs and what issues we are struggling with. Invaluable!

Other News

Apple decided to relax the rules for in-app subscriptions. I’m happy to say that I was wrong in my earlier prediction that Apple would not change and publishers would have to accept the new rules or walk away. Imagine being a fly on the wall listening in on the internal debates at Apple over these changes. Lacking such access, here are a few reasons postulated by an analyst.

Apple has filed a motion to intervene in Lodsys’ lawsuits against seven small developers in the court in Eastern District of Texas. Short of Lodsys crawling back into the hole they came from, this is the best news iOS developers could have hoped for. Keep your fingers crossed that the court will allow Apple to intervene.

written by Nick \\ tags: WWDC

After my previous posts on the Lodsys debacle, Sam Abadir contacted me. Sam is the Chairman and CTO of appMobi, and is a patent expert. Below are his comments on one of the patents in question. Please note that I’m not an attorney or a patent expert, so I cannot vouch for the legal accuracy of Sam’s text, and nothing here should be taken as legal advice. But I think he raises some interesting points that I have not seen covered elsewhere.

- – - – -

There are a lot of commentators that have provided analysis of the strategy Lodsys is taking in terms of going after small developers. Likewise, there’s been detailed analysis of what protection, if any, the Apple terms of service might provide. Those protections, if any, relate to issues around licensing. Currently Apple claims to have licensed the Lodsys technology. However, just because they licensed something from Lodsys doesn’t mean they, or their developers are actually using that technology. To that point, I haven’t seen any analysis of whether the underlying patent infringement claim has any real merit. That is, are the developers really using Lodsys’ invention? What is the invention anyway? While the license based defense has certain allure – it allows you to say “whether there is use of the patented technology makes no difference” – it doesn’t leave the satisfied feeling of a non-infringement argument where you can say “we’re not using your stinking technology.” So, as a retired IP attorney I figured it was worth reading the claims.

Claim 1 of patent 7,222,078 says the following (my emphasis included), my comments in []:

1. A system comprising:

units of a commodity [e.g. an iPhone] that can be used by respective users [owners of iPhones] in different locations,

a user interface, which is part of each of the units of the commodity [the iOS UI???], configured to provide a medium for twoway local interaction between one of the users and the corresponding unit of the commodity [e.g. touch input on the iPhone], and further con-figured to elicit, from a user, information about the user’s perception of the commodity [e.g. - they would claim this is constituted by the choice to purchase in-app],

a memory within each of the units of the commodity capable of storing results of the two-way local interaction, the results including elicited information about user perception of the commodity,

a communication element [e.g. 3G connection or internet connection] associated with each of the units of the commodity capable of carrying results of the two-way local interaction from each of the units of the commodity to a central location, and

a component capable of managing the interactions of the users in different locations and collecting the results of the interactions at the central location [e.g. iTunes In-App purchasing system in the Apple cloud].

To violate the patent claim, you must violate ALL aspects of the claim. So, you can now make the analysis yourself – does an app like PCalc qualify as a “user interface, which is part of each of the units of the commodity”. Is it reasonable to claim that PCalc is a user interface which ships with every iPhone? That patent is really concerned with the seller of devices (like Apple selling the iPhone) a means of improving the product [in the patent they talk about Fax machines] – not with improving thirdy party applications that are later installed on the product.

There are some torturous arguments that you can make that apps are part of the iPhone – but its a real stretch given that patent requires “each of the units of the commodity” to have the user interface.

Claims 2 through 59 are all essentially dependent claims – meaning that to violate them you have to violate claim 1. Claim  60, the next independent claim, uses the same “user interface, which is part of each of the units” language. Claim 69, the next independent claim says the following:

69. A method for gathering information from units of a commodity in different locations, each unit of the commodity being coupled to a remote database on a network, the method comprising:

eliciting user perceptions of respective units [e.g. what do you think of this iPhone's 3G antenna] of the commodity through interactions at a user-interface of the respective unit;

generating perception information based on inputs of the users at the respective user-interfaces;

transmitting the perception information to the remote database;

receiving the transmitted perception information from

different units of the commodity; and collecting and storing the received information at the

remote database.

Again, this claim really is about a distributed way to survey and use the survey information to improve the product. It’s hard to claim that in-app purchasing is a form of surveying. Furthermore, is it fair to say that a 3rd party app is part of the product (the iPhone)? What would a jury decide – you’re probably the best judge!

- – - – -

Thank you Sam for this timely information!

written by Nick \\ tags: patent

Over the weekend the patent troll that made headlines on Friday created a blog to defend themselves.

Here are some of the more interesting revelations:

• Apple has already licensed the patent in question from Lodsys. I’m not a lawyer, but I’m pretty sure that means Apple cannot participate in any efforts to declare the overly broad patent to be invalid. So for us independent iOS developers, we should not expect Apple to be the knight in shining armor that rides to the rescue.
• The standard licensing fee requested by Lodsys is 0.575% of US revenue. It’s not clear if that wonderfully exact percentage is calculated on the gross sales or the net that we receive from Apple.
• They would like to be treated in a human matter and for us all to live by the golden rule.

Fair enough. Let’s apply some golden rule reciprocity to them. I suggest that every iOS developer with an app that uses In App Purchase, and which has revenues of less than say $1,000, contacts Lodsys to “engage in a licensing discussion”. It will be interesting to see how much time they will want to spend on each case to collect $5.75.

written by Nick \\ tags: In App Purchase, patent

Today the interwebs have been full of reports of small iOS developers receiving legal threats from a patent troll. Here are two good blog posts with analysis that go deeper than the breathless reporting of arriving FedEx packages.

• Small iOS Developers Targeted over In-App Purchase Patents
• What will Apple do? Second patent attack on app developers in only six weeks

This sucks on so many levels.

Many big corporations have multiple patent related lawsuits ongoing at any given time. See this spider-like diagram of some of the disputes that Apple is currently involved in related to Android (not all of them are software related). To these companies, it’s just a cost of doing business. To us small developers it could mean the end of business.

The patent system was created with the direct intent of providing a common good to society. An inventor enjoys protection for his invention for a limited time in exchange for a public, detailed description of the invention. The idea is that other inventors can build upon this and innovate further, faster. This is good for society.

I feel that software patents are one of the more perverted parts of the patent system. One of the few things that you cannot patent is a mathematical algorithm. In my opinion software is very often quite similar to mathematical algorithms. I would love to have the patent on basic addition. I would graciously charge a very nominal fee each time anyone makes use of addition. I think everyone agrees that this would be absurd (except the owner of the patent of course). But in the world of software patents someone actually succeeded in basically patenting XOR.

Back in the olden days, companies applied for copyright protection for their software. I think this is a perfectly reasonable way to protect software from theft. As long as software has existed there’s been public domain and open source software as an alternative to copyrights and patents. Now there’s a definite common good.

Today I have purchased apps from these independent developers as a small token of support from one developer to fellow developers who were directly affected by this legal travesty.

• Computer LogicX
• mobileAge
• TLA Systems

written by Nick \\ tags: patent

With tech companies amassing ever larger hordes of cash, there are increasing temptations to spend it. In the iOS market there have been several acquisitions lately. (Here’s a list of iOS related acquisitions that I’ve been compiling over time.) But the whopper of all transactions must be the $8.5 billion cash purchase of Skype that Microsoft announced yesterday.

You’ve got to admire the Skype founders deal prowess. First selling their company to eBay for $2.6B, a price that was generally criticized as being to high, leading eBay to later write down the assets by more than a billion. Then participating in a group of investors who bought a majority of the company back from eBay (at a substantially lower price). Again a deal that was roundly criticized as being risky. And now flipping the company to Microsoft for $8.5B. For all the criticism of eBay, they sure know a thing or two about buying and selling – they made two billion and change on the deals.

So what does this have to do with iOS development?

Let’s look at what Microsoft is planning to do with Skype. One idea that has been brought forth is to deeply integrate Skype into Windows Phone 7 to compete with Google Voice on Android and Apple’s Facetime on iOS. But Skype has to be anathema to the AT&Ts and Verizons of the world. I can’t think of any technology/company that has cost phone companies more in lost revenue than Skype. So when Microsoft and their OEMs come to a mobile operator and asks them to sell their fledgling Windows Phone 7 devices, will having Skype deeply integrated into the OS really help them? (It’s probably not a coincidence that Google Voice is not preinstalled on Android devices.) But I guess Microsoft still has plenty of cash available to grease the tracks for deals…

Microsoft has a history of providing lots of APIs to developers. So maybe they will create an OS level API for apps to access Skype. Imagine if your app could easily make VoIP and video calls via the vast Skype network as well as to regular phones. I have lots of ideas of how I would use that in our apps. That’s why I have been asking Apple to create an API for Facetime. Hopefully competitive pressure might entice Apple to do this sooner.

Finally, let’s hope that Apple uses their mountain of cash more wisely.

written by Nick \\ tags: acquisition

In honor of Apple’s founding on April 1, 1976 I usually try to come up with an April Fools joke here on the site. However, the past couple of months I’ve been heads down working on a very large project, so no time for pranks this year.

So instead I’ll just link to some of the better collections of April Fools jokes this year:

• 35 years of ‘Apple’ Fools Day fun
• PLAYMOBIL(TM) Apple Store Playset
• Who’s Got the Best April Fool’s Pranks?

And of course there’s Scoopertino – funny year round.

I hope to be able to announce the big project real soon now, and get back to more regular blogging.

written by Nick \\ tags: humor

The iPad 2 introduced today brought few surprises. The obvious new hardware was there (camera) and obviously unrealistic rumors were confirmed to be false (e.g. retina screen).

The CPU and graphics speed bump is nice, and in line with Apple’s customary incremental improvements in performance for new hardware models. But pure specs and statistics don’t mean much. It will be interesting to see how much this will be noticeable when you’re interacting with the new iPad. The speed improvements in the first generations of the iPhone were really noticeable, the later ones, not so much. The question that many developers is asking is if there’s more RAM memory to go with the other hardware improvements?

HDMI output and screen mirroring is also very nice. I can see a new category of social games you play gathered around your large TV with an iPad as the central game machine, and each player using their iPhones and iPod Touches as game controllers. (If you add up all the hardware costs this seems like an ridiculously expensive console game, but I think that we’re at the point were many people have older generation of iDevices laying around – perfect for game controllers.) But even though this setup sounds cool to us geeks, it still feels that there’s something essential missing in the Apple entertainment system ecosystem.

The new thinner and lighter iPad 2 design will make the iPad shine when you’re comparing tablets side by side. But it’s hardly specs that you’ll base your purchasing decision on. And the iPad 2 is not yet close to Kindle territory in this aspect. But hold on to the “comparing tablets” thought, well get back to that.

Apple knows that the relentless Android copy machine will churn out many new devices this coming year. They will come in every conceivable combination of hardware specs, form factors and price levels. With the iPad 2 revision, Apple is ahead of, or on par with, the major competitors’ announcements. So when they eventually ship their devices, they cannot claim hardware superiority against the iPad. Thanks to Moore’s Law it’s very unlikely that any competitor will be able to launch a competing tablet in the next year with twice the hardware at the same price as the iPad, or similar hardware at half the price. So over the next year there will mostly be small, incremental changes in theses areas.

The major differentiating factor between competing tablets will be software. Consequently this was the theme of Apple’s event.

You can always argue if the number of iPad optimized apps (65,000) vs. the number of Android Honeycomb apps (100) are the right numbers, or if they are even the right categories to compare.
(We know that Steve has an affinity for nice, round numbers.) But it’s a fact that the iPad has a huge lead in tablet OS maturity and third party software.

Today Apple expanded that gap into a chasm, with the introduction of iMovie and GarageBand for the iPad.

These apps are fantastic in their scope, polish, target audience and aggressive price. How long will it take for equivalent apps to appear on Android? Or anything even remotely close? At the $4.99 price point those apps will have to be sponsored (especially given the size of the Android market for paid apps). Google are not exactly known for creating product with this level of finish. Who’s going to step up to the plate? Motorola? HP? Asus? Dell?

The notion that the iPad is just for consuming content is becoming increasingly silly. (But not as silly as Microsoft’s idea of differentiating tablet OS brands by this criteria.) The ease of creating music and video with these new apps is going to usher in a new era similar to the desktop publishing revolution started by the first Macs. And the cool creative people, teenagers and moms are all going to learn how to do this stuff on an iPad.

Back to comparing competing tablets: Imagine a store with the iPad on display next to several other tablets. The iPad runs iMovie, GarageBand, Pages, Numbers and several of the great 3rd party apps. With similar hardware specs, who in their right mind would pay more (a few hundred dollars more?) for one of the other tablets with a lot fewer apps, and definitely no apps as cool and as polished as the top of the line iPad apps?

Game over?

written by Nick