$200 price to develop with 10 app limit.
Multiple registration forms.
Requiring multiple downloads.
Requiring to purchase vmware fusion.
Installer that just copies an iso.
Having to password protect the simulator.
Bad documentation on how to load an app on the simulator.
The comparative ease with which you can do these things with android and ios.
We recently developed this so speaking from some experience http://appworld.blackberry.com/webstore/content/28561
The bb version took far far longer than the equivalent iOS, simply because of other nonsense such as the pain in the signing process (isthesigningserverdown.com the fact it exists tells you all you need to know). Random exceptions being thrown that have no useful meaning and of course the joy of RAPC throwing errors such as "CreateProcess error=87, Parameter is incorrect" which we eventually found was due to the classpath being too long for RAPC to handle
However once complete the application it is something we are very proud of!
Our apologies:
It looks like you are using an unsupported Operating System. BlackBerry App World was designed to support the following:
Windows
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To their credit they did let me continue.
http://failblog.org/2011/02/04/epic-fail-photos-blackberry-a...
Why? The answer is quite simple. Their software is shit. Their developer relations is shit. They are competing not vs hardware, but vs hardware + software.
They made great decisions too... lets ship the "Curve" model with such shit hardware and new software it was a downgrade from the previous top BB model (the one with side wheel). Old model = 3 seconds cold boot, new model = 3 minutes. The curve could not run any software that was remotely useful. It turned into a glorified email/phone device. The internet browsing sucked so bad I had no use for it. Not to mention that the hardware could barely handle the rendering.
So with good decisions like that, can you really expect any more out of RIM?
As I understand, RIM's gonna do all the fulfillment & billing for you in the app store? This is the SDK for an unreleased product? On a new, unreleased OS? On a different architecture than your dev machine? Yeah, it may require some paperwork, and the SDK & dev docs might not be where all their developers' attention currently is.
Actually, the 10 app limit impressed me. I don't want my apps as #13 in middle of 25 variations of the same app from another developer. $20 a product just isn't expensive.
Also, why do you have to use VMWare fusion if it's an ISO? Couldn't you use any of its competitors if it's not in a proprietary file format?
Finally, as for all the 'cryptic commands'... write a shell script. ( http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/ )
If you want a button, write an applescript app that shows a button & runs the shell script. ( http://www.mactech.com/articles/mactech/Vol.21/21.04/IntroTo... )
(1) Employers often pay for the BB, and the data plan. You're getting access to a lot of users who wouldn't otherwise be customers in the smartphone arena.
(2) As the phones are already part of the business's primary operations, you have some nice opportunities to sell apps that integrate with the business.
Considering that RIM's product isn't even out the door yet, and the specific strengths RIM holds, it's not 100% comparable to the iOS & Android side. You've got the chance to provide something that isn't a (a) fart app; (b) casual game; (c) train schedule; or (d) local wrapper for the website.
Frankly, the superficial weaknesses of the form fillout and download procedure just aren't substantial. That's what, half a day? The next few months are gonna be in the APIs, and the next few years are gonna be in the customer base, app market, maintenance, and support of the app.
The 2nd point is definitely valid, but it's a niche market. I'm not saying ALL developers would abandon RIM, but just that most would. I don't think a major player in the smartphone market can afford to only go after a niche market.
I agree that a lot of the stuff I mentioned is small. But a lot of small problems add up to a big problem. It's well known in the development community that Apple and Google have superiors SDKs in terms of ease of use, as well as tools and APIs. With the Android growth explosion, they will have a much bigger app market, and Apple will probably have the most profitable market for some time to come because Apple customers have demonstrated their willingness to spend money. RIM is going to have to really up their game if they want to lure some of the talented developers away from the other platforms.
Would people using company-provided blackberries - the kind companies love because they can be 'locked down' to the 'enterprise's' needs - even be allowed to purchase apps on their own?
For me personally, I own both Droid and iPhone, and bought lots of apps as well, with my own money. There's no way I will do that on BB.
Completely agree. It's like if email spammers had to pay 1 cent per spam email - spam would go away. With Android as an example, when there's no cost to publish per App, you get a ton of garbage. I think $20/app is a good value to discourage spam.
I think it's less important how "good" an SDK is unto itself, and more important how good it is relative to it's competition. In this case you have to compare the Playbook SDK to Apple's and Google's because when developers are making decision about which platform to work with, they're going to be choosing between them.
If RIM's strategy doesn't have some component that involves trying to woo iOS developers to their platform, I predict they will fail.
Finally, the whole smartphone area is ten years old, consumer-focused part of it less than five years old: less than mature, and way less than settled. In another ten years, this all might have turned out to be a silly bubble as Moore's law erases any effective differences between smartphones. Will Apple "fail" when its percentage profit per device and market share falls to current Macbook values?