JWZ Unable to Distribute Two Free Pre Apps | Hacker News Reader

JWZ Unable to Distribute Two Free Pre Apps

jwz.livejournal.com

176 pointssutro90 comments

I like all the Android FUD in the comments section.

I don't feel like engaging anyone there (as they think they are funny by calling Google "Skynet"), but you don't need to have any interaction with Google to distribute or sell Android apps. Any user, even with a carrier-locked phone, can download a file to his computer and use free utilities to install that on his phone. (I am not 100% sure that the computer is even required; there is probably an app that will install apk files that are on the phone's SD card.)

Example where I have done this: Sipdroid. The version in the Market does not support VoIP over 3G. The version on their website does. So you download their version, run adb, and now the Sipdroid on your phone supports 3G. If the Sipdroid website wanted to charge me for this transaction, they could.

No Google needed.

If you want openness on your phone and still want a good user experience, Android is the way to go. Other phones have a good user experience, but they are only "open" when compared to game consoles or microwave oven firmware.

Any user, even with a carrier-locked phone, can download a file to his computer and use free utilities to install that on his phone.

It's my understanding that the process is even easier than this. If you alter one option in the phone's settings, you can install Android programs downloaded directly through the phone's web browser -- no additional hardware needed.

It's even better when they provide QR codes so you can just take a picture with your phone and voila

" ... there is probably an app that will install apk files that are on the phone's SD card.)"

Yes, there is.

That's how I got the very handy Tetherbot app installed, when Google did not want to carry it in their marketplace.

You can also use the SDK to install apk files.

It seems the one advantage over the iPhone would have been an open app platform. They're copying the wrong features from apple.

Yep. Talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of (potential) victory. If I was in charge of Palm I would even let people email/mms/BT free apps to each other just to make it that much easier than Apple to install apps.

Well, according to jwz they have two potential advantages. The other being ease of development.

"This is the subject of an upcoming post that I haven't finished writing yet, but let me just point out that the WebOS port of Dali Clock -- a program that does some moderately complicated realtime graphical tricks -- took me a couple days to do, but I've been dicking around with the iPhone port of it off and on for, like, a year. Note that I know ObjC really well, and I have already written a Cocoa version of Dali Clock that runs on OSX, and porting that version to the iPhone has been such a monumental pain in the ass that I keep giving up on it before I finish.

"So yeah, WebOS is easier.

"Certainly less powerful (no OpenGL, for example) but holy shit is it ever easier."

So we trade faster development time for a longer review process time. So instead of hiring more developers for your app, you hire more lawyers -- sounds like a definite fail. With business acumen like that, I'm not surprised why Palm is failing.

Well to be fair to Palm, it sounds like their app submission & review process is very much a work in progress. Fortunately processes like these seem to converge towards sanity and pragmatism over time.

Are these people idiots? As soon as you realize jwz is one of your early adopters, as a company you should fly him first class to your labs, let him interact with the developers themselves, get feedback from him, ask him how can you make his experience better, etc... If you want to go the extra mile. If you don't, at least be particularly careful not to piss him off.

He owns a bar now. His apps are a tip calculator and Dali Clock, an application which spreads over all conceivable computing surfaces like yeast fungi; just leave your device out in the open for awhile, and it'll ferment its own Dali Clock.

I'm not sure jwz is quite the developer draw you're making him out to be.

He is still has a significant influence, regardless of the usefulness of his apps, as highlighted by the position of this article on Hacker News. Had he written a blog entry called "Developing for WebOS is awesome", the submission would still be wildly popular and quite a few people would be compelled to give WebOS a shot. And of course, he would be much less likely to talk trash about them.

Tip calculators have been best sellers on the apple AppStore. Just sayin'. ;-)

I don't understand tip calculators, and I suck at math. I'd feel like a cheapskate sitting there punching numbers into my phone. I divide by ten then double.

20% tip in your country? Ouch. I’m guessing US: is it true that waiters/waitresses can be paid below the minimum wage on the assumption that tips can bring it up?

Yes, that is the case. I think it's dumb and wrongheaded, but it is what it is.

There is a separate minimum wage for servers. Last time I saw it (years ago) it was like $2.75USD

I'm still under the impression that standard tip in the US is 15%, but I usually tip 20% if the service is good, if only because it makes calculations is easier. Shoddy service that's not bad enough to notice is 15%; anything less jumps a quantum level down to zero.

Yes, though many states have their own rules http://www.dol.gov/esa/whd/state/tipped.htm

Officially, you're supposed to tip 15%. 20% is just easier to calculate.

Waitstaff in any restaurant you've heard of are probably not being paid below the minimum wage. I'm pretty sure the waitress we tipped at L2o was making solid money without my gratuity. It's just a social convention.

We've all read this article, it made the front page of HN. I'm sure it's swayed opinions of the Palm app. review process.

jwz says this in the comments:

An important point here is that Palm-the-company used to not be stupid in this way. The way this worked on PalmOS was completely sane. They went and fucked up their whole process when they switched to WebOS.

I assume this is because they hired the majority of the WebOS management team from Apple, pushing out the people who did it right in the PalmOS years, and those new people are idiots.

I'm not sure it's safe to assume that this process is stupid. Palm did, indeed, copy all of this straight from Apple's playbook. Apple's App Store is wildly successful. It may have issues from the perspective of some developers, but that's not the only perspective that matters. Palm isn't trying to make a bunch of developers happy. They're trying to sell phones and make users happy.

Whether you can make users just as happy without requiring developers to jump through hoops remains to be seen. One could easily argue that it's possible, but I'd like to see evidence of that in the real world. I don't think the software ecosystems for desktop computers are a fair comparison. The ecosystems for older Palm devices, which jwz references here, were never nearly as successful as Apple's App Store. Maybe that suggests that the hoops somehow help the user experience? I don't know. But it looks like Palm is assuming that it does.

I agree that this whole process seems completely broken from jwz's perspective, but it's hard to say that Palm had people "who did it right in the PalmOS years" when they never got it right in the category that matters: number of app sales. That could be 100% attributable to the iPhone's superiority, not the App Store's, though.

I think any platform can make both developers and user's happy. I agree and empathize with jwz in that its got to be incredibly frustrating to write two relatively simple apps only to have to jump through hoop after hoop to get them published.

I know I'd be equally as frustrated if I couldn't just get my apps on the store.

I have 2 very simple apps up on the catalog and the "hoops" he's referring to took me a total of 25 minutes to "jump" through.

I understand why having a place where users can get verified applications installed in one step is a good user experience. From my point of view, one of the biggest advantages of modern Linux distributions is that most software installation is handled through a common package manager with an integrated update system, dependency tracking and a large repository of software.

That said, I don't see how making it difficult for developers to submit apps, or preventing users from installing apps by other means makes for a better user experience.

Yes, I imagine that users not being afraid that the software they install is malware does quite well for overall sales.

That's a good reason for Apple to run their own app store; it's not a good reason to prevent any other way of getting apps.

In this respect, the iPhone development experience is somewhat better. You sign up for a dev account (which costs 99 bucks a year), then you can submit free apps to the store. There is a lot more paperwork and hoops to jump through if you want to submit paid apps, but it's all optional.

$99 bucks a year? And developers pay that? Damn... I didn't know. I, for one, won't develop for someone's proprietary platform unless I get free PR for my efforts or have my feet kissed. iPhone programmers have their relationship with a platform vendor completely backwards.

But in the end it is Apple who'll pay for this absurd, not them.

Note that anyone can download libraries for XCode that let you compile and simulate iPhone apps---but you must have their dev kit to actually transfer this over the wire to your iPhone. And the dev kit is $99.

There is, supposedly, another way: there is a program by which universities can get free iPhone developer kits for use in classes. Sounds great, right? Don't you believe it. The signup process is poorly conceived and a flaming mass of pain that, after a month and a half of trying, caused me to give up making an iPhone/iPod app be the final project in my HCI class. Good job, Apple!

> but you must have their dev kit to actually transfer this over the wire to your iPhone

That pretty much sums up the problem, in my opinion. Those things aren't cheap, and if it's mine, I should get to install what I want on it. I can understand weeding things out of their store - that's fine - they want to control the quality. However, if I want to put something on my own device via a usb cable, I ought to be able to.

> Note that anyone can download libraries for XCode that let you compile and simulate iPhone apps

As far as I know you can only develop for the iphone on a mac.

Is that true?

I believe, you can do it on a Hackintosh, as well, although the cheapest legal platform is the old Mac Mini.

Old Intel Mac Mini. PPC Macs won't work.

I really don't think 99 bucks a year is much of a deterrent to anybody who is serious about this. It's a drop in the bucket, compared to all the other stuff you need to do any kind of development at all, really. And according to the comments in jwz's post, there is a one-time fee to get stuff listed in the Pre app store as well.

"I really don't think 99 bucks a year is much of a deterrent to anybody who is serious about this. "

A developer shouldn't need to be "serious" to code a small app and deploy it on his device. By this logic, I couldn't write an app for my Linux laptop without paying Linus & co a "development" fee, or my Windows machine without paying Microsoft, or deploy a J2ME mobile app on my Nokia smart phone without paying Nokia.

Apple is just greedy. Soaking developers is sick. Asking annual (vs a one time) fee is pure evil. It will eventually be their downfall.

> It will eventually be their downfall.

We can only hope.

You're making the wrong comparison. Compared to things like game consoles and portables, or most phone platforms (e.g. BREW), Apple's deal is quite favorable to the developer.

"or most phone platforms (e.g. BREW), "

So what's the situation with brew? Does one have to pay annual development fees? I've never developed a BREW app so I wouldn't know. I don't know if BREW is particularly widespread either.

I do know that I can code and deploy on my Nokia phone and Android phone (ordered, on the way). I used to write and deploy apps on a Windows ME phone(not a great experience but I didn't have to pay any money, least of all annually).

I'll be damned if I pay an annual fee to deploy my app on my phone. F$%^ that. Developers paying platform vendors to be "allowed" to develop for a platform is completely backward.

Others can make a different choice. Fine by me.

I think BREW is some crap mostly used in the US (and even there it's not as widespread as J2ME). Phones here in Europe don't ship with it as far as I know.

With BREW you pay $400 at a minimum to be able to sign applications, which is required to run on the device. Consoles and portables invariably end up in the thousands (assuming you're an established developer). Even Microsoft's XNA platform for the Xbox360 is $99/yr. and doesn't even allow full access to the device.

In terms of openness, the iPhone and Pre are somewhere between these and desktop operating systems. From one side they appear terribly draconian, but from the other, very appealing. This is why you see Apple putting a lot of effort into courting game developers over, say, hobbyists.

I'll be damned if I pay an annual fee to deploy my app on my phone.

I understand where you're coming from, but if all you want to do is deploy your own app on your own phone, then you're not really using most of what that $99 ostensibly pays for. The people who are paying are generally those who are going to make use of what else it affords them, e.g. the ability to distribute or sell that application to tens of millions of others. They don't really have it backwards--they're just paying for something more than what you're wanting to do.

Basically, that means you won't develop for any proprietary platform.

"Basically, that means you won't develop for a proprietary platform."

Last I heard, you didn't have to pay Microsoft to write a "ToDo List" app for Win XP (or a Win ME phone).

You don't, but enrolling in any kind of developer program, or buying any kind of developer software, is going to cost north of $99 a year, which any developer hoping to make even that amount of money will do.

The situation for iPhone developers have a lot of well publicized flaws, but the cost of participating in the developer program (which includes development software and publishing in the App Store) is not one of them.

You don't need to enroll in a dev program. You can develop .NET apps with freely available tools if you don't want to spend money on Visual Studio.

And jwz isn't trying to make money--he just wants to make his apps available for others to use.

Considering the prevalence of todo-list and flashlight apps, it doesn't seem like the $99 is holding anybody back.

I develop .NET I can use notepad and csc for free or I can buy tools from MS that save me time. Halfway house is SharpDevelop which is free but not as good as Visual Studio. I don't mind paying for cool tools but it sucks to have to pay to release software.

Yeah, it was just truly awful to pay $99 to make $1000 from an app that basically took me a day to develop and a couple of weekends to tune.

/sarcasm

I can install his apps trivially. I wouldn't because they're largely worthless (there are already a dozen tip calculators) but Palm has said that they'd allow homebrew apps and so far have stood behind it.

If your parents or grandparents purchased a Palm, would they be able to? Anyone who posts on HN is by definition almost certainly a power user.

If my grandparents purchased a Treo 650, which they wouldn't, they wouldn't have ever found them. So this is nothing new.

Clearly, one of the higher-ups at Palm told the company they needed to find ways to surpass the iPhone's user experience, and forgot to specify "but only the good parts".

More duct tape!

Seeing Pre's early troubles and Rim's App world ( see review at GigaOm [1]), not sure there is anyone getting app stores right (besides APPL).

Between phone companies having to negotiate with platform and phone developers the market is too complicated. Makes Android look like the only long term, viable competing platform. Even though Balmer said MS got Windows Mobile wrong [2], even if the next one is better not sure the next version will be open enough, and cool enough to gain wide adoption.

[1] - http://gigaom.com/2009/09/28/app-world-will-be-crucial-for-r... [2] - http://wmpoweruser.com/?p=8170

Edit - just saw this via @timbray http://openandroidalliance.com/

Wow. If this is a battle over developer mindshare, Palm is definitely losing an early opportunity. Apple may also be shooting itself in the foot.

Any crazy Android stories like this?

This sort of thing is unlikely on Android. As I understand it (I haven't actually put an app on the Android Market yet), the only cost or hoop you need to go through to put an app on the Android Market is a $25 one time fee.

Also, it's pretty simple for users to install non-market apps on their Android phone - instructions for doing so can be found here: http://phandroid.com/2008/10/17/how-to-download-non-market-a...

I have heard so little about Android development that it leads me to believe it's nonexistent or extremely painless. The only main stream story I even remember hearing was the malware Google had to use the kill switch on.

There's a book at my local Barnes & Noble about Android development. Maybe you should cruise on over to the book store and see if there are any hints in the book about how the submission process works, if you're that curious.

If not, you're in the same boat as me -- sitting around waiting to see if some developer's going to pipe up with a story.

Instead of understanding there is a problem in the way Apple is handling this stuff, trying to exploit it creating a market that's more free and easy for developers, Palm is doing the same errors, with the difference that they are nowhere as successful as Apple, so it's even worse.

Anyone care to speculate as to why they would require developers of free apps to have a verified PayPal account? Is it just incompetence / lack of attention to detail ?

I would guess it's because the same account could be used to distribute paid apps. So incompetence in the fact that they don't have two users types, or just an unwillingness to deal with any of those complexities?

Or they want people spending money on apps so they are making it a bit harder to make just free ones?

All speculation though. I imagine it's just simpler for them to have one type of account, and giving them your info is the only way to have it, regardless of what you do with it.

Looks like the grass isn't always greener. I do wonder why they decided to close their app distribution, I enjoyed the little bit of PalmOS development I've done.

In long run open platform is the way to move forward

Sure but then you lose the hired guns that Apple has to keep the spam/malware/spyware out.

Quality control is definitely an essential feature for me. It just seems like Apple hasn't figured out all of the bumps yet in providing it.

The amount of effort he was willing to put in to release free software amazes me.

Have an idea of how many "man-years" of effort there are in things like Ruby, Python, Linux, Apache, Postgres, GCC, etc... etc... ?

Yes, but in this case the software in question is a tip calculator and Dali clock.

But now he's seen that it's not worth spending the time developing a full application.

Writing a toy program is how most developers explore a new framework start to finish. In this case, submitting a "Hello World" or "Tip Calculator" application as a test was very revealing.

They want to Fail. So they would!

It seems clear that writing application for ANY mobile device will require jumping through some obscure corporation rules. Symbian is no exception to that, nor it is RIM. Maybe it is time to relax and accept it as one of the facts of life...

This isn't the case for platforms that don't have a compulsory 'app store' model. I can write an app for Android or Windows Mobile (and probably many other platforms) and distribute it any way I see fit.

When you develop for these platforms, does your code have to be signed before you can give your app to other people to run?

If yes, who controls access to the capability of issuing/revoking certificates?

Android apps can be self-signed and published in the Android Market.

Windows Mobile doesn't have/require signing. I'll wager most Symbian phones are like this as well.

I have a Nokia S60.

I can install apps by downloading a program file and copying it to the phone. Or I can install apps "over the air". In neither case does _anyone_ have to authorise me installing the application.

Nor will I buy any phone that makes me jump through that hoop.

Ditto Windows Mobile. Just find it and download and install it, either on your desktop machine or via the web on the phone/PDA.

Can you write apps yourself without using some Nokia code signing tool?

Certainly. Where signing comes into J2ME is that it pops up dialogs asking the user before the application does certain things if it's not signed, like "hey, this app is about to use some air time - is that ok?". With signing, you can get around that.

On Blackberry, you have to pay 20$ to get code signing certificates, and without that you can still write basic apps, just not ones that access most of the 'interesting' features.

Android lets you self-sign applications.

All those platforms have free development tools, and in Android's case, I believe most of it is actually open source.

It's really annoying to find out what you cannot do with non-signed midlets.

For example:

1. Your app cannot browse directories without the user being asked for permission on every change of directory. Try deveweloping a file browser with that restriction.

2. You cannot use a SocketConnection to connect to a remote host to port 8080 (only HttpConnection is allowed without beeing signed). Try developing an http-proxy with that restriction, when you want to forward every connection to another proxy on port 8080.

And the Problem with being signed is that you have to have about 5 different certs on your key to be accepted on any phone by any manufacturer on any carrier.

Those certificates are not free. They cost about 300$/year each.

This was really annoying.

I am so glad I do not have to do this on Android.

Yeah, J2ME is not perfect, but at least you can do something with it. The certificate prices are definitely way too high. And yes, Android is by far the best so far.

With Symbian code signing can be done with an easily obtained developer certificate. At least it was easy and free when I tried last.

BUT: For a lot of the interesting APIs you need more than that. To send ICMP Packets you need a manufacturer certificate (for NetworkControl capability).

I understand that I need a different level of trust for DRM related stuff. But ICMP? Come on.

Like JWZ, I've been a happy user of Palm products and (importantly) their un-corralled app ecosystem, since before Palms were phones. I have a Centro because I had a Treo because I had a palm pilot, AND because the app ecosystem that my Centro lives in is the same un-corralled ecosystem that it's been for years. The ecosystem is an essential part of what the product is to me.

The apparent desire of Palm to embrace and confine Palm's once open ecosystem means that the Pre, which I had been looking forward to as another shiny Palm device, is now for me just another piece of noise like the iPhone. As a customer I'm not interested in a closed ecosystem, and I'm beginning to realize that in the end the thing in my pocket is just a phone and I can get a really cheap one (with text!) from Cricket. If I need a restaurant or movie somewhere, I can look it up before I get there, and I can listen to my own farts in the elevator without having to buy them from Steve Jobs or his counterpart at Palm.

So Palm's task is to figure out whether they'll make enough money on apps to make up for lost phone sales from people like me. Because in the end, they have no responsibility to customers, employees or outside developers; their only responsibility is to shareholders.

And if they decide to go with a closed system, then like Jean Kirkpatrick, I will wave fondly as they sail into the sunset, and look wistfully at the Palm devices in my sock drawer.

As far as I can tell, there's no obscure corporate rules required to put an Android app in the Android Market. Also Android users don't have to jailbreak" their phones to load apps directly without going through the Market/App Store.

Is there a good anti-iPhone rant somewhere that avoids logical fallacies and would help me understand why some people are averse to iPhone development? I don't get it.

Central point of control == bad?

I don't buy it. JWZ is a central point of control for DNA Lounge, I assume; PG is a close to a central point of control for YC news; Linus is a central point of control for Linux kernel enhancements -- or was, for a while; I haven't been keeping up so if I'm wrong, please understand the general point, which is: we happily accept central control as long as there is good will.

DRM == bad?

Again, though I agree, Apple's implementation of DRM for Apps has gotten it far closer to right than any other, with family sharing of one purchase on multiple devices, refunds, DRM-free music, free updates, remembering your purchase so you can re-download purchased items for free (remember the phone companies' model, buy a game, run out of memory, delete it, then if you want it later you have to buy it again?). Definitely iPhone is not free, in the freedom sense, and downright scary, in the your-app-can-be-yanked-at-any-time sense, but I believe the same is true on Android; we just haven't seen the test case yet.

iPhone is not open == bad

OK... but it's a platform. Lots of platforms are open only down to certain layers. Google is a platform. But it only exposes certain parts of itself for developers to use. And we understand that. So why do we not understand it when it comes to a phone? Maybe because it's such a personal device?

It doesn't let us do everything == bad

I think this comes closest to being an answer. This would be the answer for me. But, neither does any other device. I continue to think that Android developers are naive to assume they are not going to bump up against limits imposed by carriers and by Google. They just don't have the critical mass to have hit all the nooks and crannies yet.

Apple is not friendly to open source == bad.

Grand Central Dispatch, LLVM, Clang (probably there are more) all would indicate otherwise.

So, what am I missing? Not trying to troll here. I'm sure I have exhibited some ignorance in this long post, seriously. Why are (some small number of smart) people pounding their heads against the wall rather than develop for iPhone?

It's not the centralized control but rather how Apple is applying it to further their business agenda at the expense of their users' access to an awesome Google technology.

Since Google blocks some rural numbers, and I do believe I am in a region where they block, I am thinking it is not very awesome at all.

>I don't buy it. JWZ is a central point of control for DNA Lounge, I assume; PG is a close to a central point of control for YC news; Linus is a central point of control for Linux kernel enhancements -- or was, for a while; I haven't been keeping up so if I'm wrong, please understand the general point, which is: we happily accept central control as long as there is good will.

I think what you're looking for is right here:

>as long as there is good will.

I don't think nearly as many people would be angry over the App Store if the approval process were sane.

Also...

>OK... but it's a platform.

Sure, but before the iPhone, application development for phones was, in general, significantly more open. If I wanted to deploy a Symbian OS application three years ago, I wrote it and let people download it. Windows Mobile was similar. It's not the fact that it's not open, but it's the fact that it moves the industry towards less openness that's concerning.

Based on what I've read:

Apple's decision-making process on what gets into the App Store is completely opaque, and has a hugely variable turn-around rate. Developers need to push updates out quickly, and Apple's approval process is actively hampering such efforts.

There have been many posts detailing horrible cases of delays in approval, where the developer has been unable to have anyone to contact at Apple. Also, there has been no word from Apple as to what they are doing, if anything, to fix the long and inconsistent approval process

"So, what am I missing? Why are (some small number of smart) people pounding their heads against the wall rather than develop for iPhone?"

Annual development fees == bad !

I hope that helped you understand why a few of us have reservations about developing for the IPhone.

I developed Win32 apps once, including for WinME phones. I didn't have to pay annual fees to Microsoft. I (for one) will never develop for the IPhone as long as they charge annual development fees - basically I have to rent the right to develop from Apple annually.

No Thanks!

I don't buy it. JWZ is a central point of control for DNA Lounge, I assume; PG is a close to a central point of control for YC news; Linus is a central point of control for Linux kernel enhancements

But the point is, JWZ is not a central point of control for all nightclubs, PG is not a central point of control for my startup, and Linus is not the central point of control for every Free operating system.

Apple controls devices that you own whether or not you want Apple to have that control. If I want to pay a friend to write an application for me, I have to get Apple's permission. This is a different kind of control than "if I want pg to give me free money, I have to convince pg to do so". Apple is injecting itself between parties that do not want Apple in the middle. (The word "wiretapping" comes to mind.)

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