Programming for the iPhone is still pretty new. It might be a bit tougher to find iPhone developer resources, but we found a bunch that will get you through building any iPhone app you might be starting on. Check out our list of our favorite developer books, blogs, podcasts, screencasts, open-source libraries, communities, forums, conferences, training, and more!

Books

Beginning iPhone Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK

This is the go-to book for beginning iPhone developers by Jeff Lamarche and Dave Mark. It takes you from downloading the SDK to creating your very own apps. The official page and support site: http://iphonedevbook.com/

Programming in Objective-C 2.0

This is the book to get if you’re just starting out programming. It assumes you have no prior programming knowledge before picking it up. It’s highly recommended for people who don’t know any programming and want to learn Objective-C. Not a lot of iPhone-specific stuff in this one, but a lot of this knowledge will carry over when you do want to create iPhone apps.

Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X

This book assumes you know a bit of C/C++, and it’s a really good book for getting started with Apple’s developer frameworks. There isn’t a lot of iPhone-specific stuff in this book, but a lot of what you learn carries over into iPhone development.

Pragmatic Programmers iPhone SDK Development

This book is in beta still, so you can only get the PDF. It was originally scheduled to be released by now, but they are updating it to include iPhone SDK 3.0. It’s still worth it to get the PDF. I’ve gone through it, and it is fantastic. The book is now set to be released in September.

The iPhone Developer’s Cookbook: Building Applications with the iPhone SDK

This book is full of code snippets that will help a lot of people with common tasks that Apple’s iPhone SDK doesn’t provide. There are some code blunders in this book, but luckily they’ve fixed the code and put it up here. They also have movies at this site that demonstrate what each mini-project does.

iPhone in Action: Introduction to Web and SDK Development

The iPhone in Action book covers both native and web programming in step-by-step tutorials. It’s a complete primer to iPhone development.

Blogs

Mobile Orchard

The best iPhone developer blog I’ve seen. It’s written by Dan Grigsby and Ari Braginsky. I recommend you start with the top posts on the right sidebar and go through all the archives. Pretty much all of the articles are gold.

iCodeBlog

This blog has some of the best iPhone app building tutorials on the web. They have newbie tutorials as well as multi-part advanced tutorials ranging from Hello World to game development. The “ToDo List Using SQLite” tutorial series is a good start for a new developer to learn a breadth of concepts.

iPhone Development Central

The meat of this site is the video tutorials. The videos are separated into different levels of complexity. Good site for audio/visual learners.

Dr. Touch

Dr. Touch gives us a mix of specific programming solutions as well his experiences with the App Store and his sales. The recipes section of his blog have really useful code snippets to help you build your app.

iPhone Development

Jeff Lamarche is also the author of Beginning iPhone Development: Exploring the iPhone SDK. He keeps his blog updated constantly with cutting-edge code and even a guide to surviving WWDC.

Keyvisuals iPhone Development

This blog isn’t updated as often as some of the others, but the articles that do come out are really useful. My favorite recent one is How to Detect Network Availability.

71squared

71squared has some great iPhone game development tutorial collections. It is updated quite often, and anyone interested in iPhone game development should check it out.

How to Make iPhone Apps

It’s a fusion of iPhone app marketing and coding. Most of the site is focused on marketing your app.

iPhone SDK Articles

This blog isn’t updated that much these days, but the articles are still useful. It’s 100 percent dedicated to code tutorials.

148apps.biz

Jeff Scott writes about various iPhone app marketing tips and analytics. The blog is focused on the business side of iPhone apps. It’s fairly new and looks very promising.

iPhone developer:tips

A how-to focused blog run by John Muchow. The posts are put together in nice bite-size pieces.

PrEV

Bill Dudney is an author/screencaster with the Pragmatic Programmers family. The books and screencasts he makes are good for beginners, but a lot of the stuff on his blog address more complicated coding issues and bugs in the SDK.

Podcasts/Screencasts

Stanford iPhone Application Programming Course

Stanford open-sourced its lecture, slides, and course material to the world. It’s available for free in iTunes. Watch the presentation by Loren Brichter of Tweetie fame when you get a chance.

Mobile Orchard Podcast

Awesome podcast series with iPhone app developers and their successes (and struggles) running iPhone app businesses. They always have A-list guests.

Pragmatic Programmer’s Screencast Series

If you’re more of a video learner, start with the Coding in Objective-C 2.0 and Becoming Productive in Xcode screencasts. Follow that with the five-part Writing Your First iPhone Application screencast. If you really want to get fancy with transitions and animations, check out the Creating a Compelling User Interface with Core Animation screencast.

Objective-C for Rubyists

Peepcode is usually known for its Ruby resources, but it has a great screencast that teaches you about Objective-C. It’s edited by Scott Stevenson of great Objective-C resource, CocoaDevCentral.

The App Show

Great conversations about everything related to iPhone apps. The podcasts are about an hour or so long.

iPhone Alley

The iPhone Alley Podcast is a weekly roundtable with different iPhone app media peeps and creators. Each episode is very entertaining.

Schenk Studios

This site has some great video tutorials — and a lot of them, too. He’s made 25 of them, including a sneak peek at some new 3.0 features.

Open-Source Libraries

Joe Hewitt’s Three20 Open-Source Objective-C library

Three20 is a collection of iPhone UI classes, like a photo viewer, and general utilities, like an HTTP disk cache. Three20 is derived from the Facebook iPhone app, which is one of the most downloaded iPhone apps ever.

Bullet Physics Engine

Bullet is a free, professional 3D game multiphysics library used in some popular games in the App Store.

Cocos2d Framework

Cocos2d for the iPhone is a framework for building 2D games for the iPhone and iPod touch. There’s a great community around this open-source engine, so there’s plenty of support to help you get your iPhone game out there.

Matt Legend Gemmell – Cocoa Source Code

Matt Gemmell has some great code out there for the community, including MGTwitterEngine, the Twitter API used in iPhone apps Birdhouse and Twitteriffic.

Appsamuck

An open-source collection of 31 mini-iPhone app projects to get you up and running fast.

Communities/Forums

iPhone Dev SDK

The greatest iPhone developer community on the Internet. Chris Stewart’s site boasts nearly 6,000 registered users. The forums are very active. You’ll find yourself visiting this site at least once a day.

Stack Overflow

Stack Overflow is a collaboratively edited question and answer site for programmers — regardless of platform or language. Every question asked on the site will almost always get a correct answer.

MacRumors Forums for iPhone Programming

Great community of developers on this forum. They even include some nice guides for getting started with iPhone development.

Conferences/Training

Apple Worldwide Developers Conference

WWDC is Apple’s official developer conference. All the cutting-edge programming topics are taught here. The 2009 one runs from June 8-12. WWDC is the Mac daddy of all iPhone conferences. Get it? Mac daddy? I’m here all night, folks.

360|iDev

360|iDev is the premiere iPhone, iPod touch developer conference in the world. The next one will be a four-day event and will take place September 27-30, 2009 in Denver, Colo. They have a call for papers right now if you want to make a debut as a conference speaker.

Pragmatic Studio’s iPhone Development Course

Here you will learn how to build iPhone applications from experienced iPhone developers Bill Dudney and Daniel Steinberg in this four-day training course. The next one runs August 4-7, 2009 in Reston, Va.

iPhoneDevCamp

iPhoneDevCamp is the brainchild of Raven and Dom. The event format is “unconference” or Barcamp-style, featuring content from the participants themselves. There are satellite events held all over the country. The next one is this August.

Game Developers Conference

This conference is for all game developers, and there’s an increasing number of mobile app game developers. If you’re a game developer or want to be one, this is the one game developer conference to go to.

StackOverflow DevDays

This is more of a general developer conference, not just iPhone developers. The beauty of this conference is that it’s in multiple locations and dates, and it only costs $99. Plus, you get to hang out with Joel Spolsky.

Other Collections Of Resources

Apple’s Official iPhone Dev Resources

The Apple engineers give us a lot of information to get started with app development. There are a lot of resources that Apple provides including documentation, how-tos, videos, code samples and forums.

iPhone Flow

This site is updated daily with the best iPhone developer links on the web. It’s driven by the community submissions, and all the links are top-quality here. The site is maintained by the Mobile Orchard crew.

XCake iPhone Dev Resources

MattJ’s collection of iPhone developer resources. A lot of good stuff here including our very own Create A Drum App tutorial.

The Flying Jalapeno Lives

Great list of iPhone development blogs written by Corey.

Those are my favorites. I’m not a human Google, so I may have missed some gems. What are your favorite iPhone developer resources?

The real core of the video game industry has long been Japan, where it enjoys a pop culture status that Western studios can only hope to one day achieve. It stands to reason, then, that a good barometer for the iPhone’s success as a gaming platform would be Japanese industry interest in the device. A recent survey by Japanese middleware developer CRI suggests that interest is very high indeed.

CasualGaming.biz details the report, which found that of 102 game studio representatives surveyed, 87 percent responded in the affirmative when asked if they were interested in developing for the iPhone/iPod touch platform. Nearly 20 percent had, in fact, already done so, and another 16 percent already had games in the works. Thirty-eight percent said there was corporate motive, but that they’d yet to make any concrete moves. Maybe they’re holding out to see what exactly iPhone OS 3.0 is capable of.

Either way, the survey reveals other interesting details about why the iPhone is the most popular smartphone platform for development among Japanese game companies — and also about how far behind its competitors are lagging. Android, the next most appealing platform in the survey, garnered interest from only 47 percent of respondents, while the much-hyped Pre intrigued a dismal 6 percent. I suppose not having really seen the device in action in the real world tends to lessen its appeal to profit-driven businesses.

In case Apple wants to increase its developer base, the survey also asked about what were the biggest impediments to iPhone development, and at least one of the answers suggested that Apple is either very clever, or foolishly stubborn. Half of those surveyed felt that the biggest drawback to iPhone development was that they had to do so on a Mac.

So, Apple could probably add even more apps to its extensive library by opening up development to other platforms but, on the other hand, the respondents said it was a drawback; they didn’t say it deterred them completely. The appeal of iPhone development is probably actually driving Mac sales to game studios, which is likely worth more to Apple financially than the addition of yet more content to the already very healthy App Store.

It may only be circumstantial evidence, but a lot of comments I saw on Twitter led me to believe that many developers didn’t have the spare cash to attend Apple’s World Wide Developer’s Conference this year. That was an incorrect impression. The truth was actually quite the opposite, with WWDC ‘09 selling out faster than ever before. Credit Apple with yet another shot in the eye of the continuing global financial crisis.

Sounds impressive, but it actually only has to beat one previous year. 2008 marked the first time the conference ever sold out, a feat accomplished no doubt on the strength of the introduction of iPhone development to the roster. Last year it took two months for all the WWDC tickets available to get snatched up. This year, it only took half that time. If you’re looking for reasons, you need only look as far as a certain recent milestone achieved by the App Store that ends in nine zeroes (hint: 1,000,000,000).

It doesn’t hurt that Apple was also offering a discount of $300 for those who signed up early (by April 24). That brought the total price to $1,295, down from $1,595. I’m not sure I’d call that a “deal,” but it was probably an enticing incentive to those who make (or hope to make) their fortune thanks to Apple’s various development platforms. The rest of us who aren’t lucky enough to have nabbed a spot aren’t completely out of luck, though, since Apple promises to make session videos available following the conference itself.

Some server administrators set share drives to auto disconnect users after a set time of inactivity (ie fifteen minutes). As a user it’s super frustrating to connect to a server every time you need access. I’ve written an AppleScript that first checks to see if the share is mounted, if it is mounted it does nothing; however if the share is not mounted the script will auto-mount it.

Let’s first start out by downloading the script from here:

Timeout Apple Script (ZIP)

After your download is complete unzip and open the script the script (double click it to launch the OS X script editor). To being using this script you will have to know: the IP Address of the server you are connecting to, the name of the folder you want to connect to, your username, your password, and the amount of time in seconds that you want between connection attempts (idle time). All of the items in purple in the picture below are the ones you are going to need to edit (Make sure to remove all the parenthesis – completely replace everything in purple).

Once you have input all your information, go ahead and click the “Run” button to test it. If everything is working properly the share should mount. After you confirm your script is working, it is time to save it as an application:

1. Go to File > Save As
2. File Format: application

   

3. Check the following Options: Run only, Stay open

   

4. Click save

Ok, now we have an application so go ahead and drop it into your applications folder on your Mac. I have a folder under Applications called “scripts,” to help stay a little more organized. To take this to the next level, I went ahead and put it in my Login Items so that it launches when I start my Mac, and I’m immediately connected to the shares.

To add the application to the Login Items:

1. Go to Applications > System Preferences
2. Go to Accounts

   

3. Go to the Login Items tab

   

4. Finally, drag and drop your application into the Login Items list.
5. Congratulations! Your computer will now auto-mount your share when you start her up, and keep you connected throughout the day.

As a side note, this script is far from perfect. When it’s running it freezes finder for a few seconds, and it must be force quit when restarting, but it’s a great solution if you do not have administrative access to the share. Have fun!

While primarily due to being ill *yet again* (I’m beginning to think Seattle is the nation’s cold/flu incubator), last week’s blogging was further disrupted by the preparations for and celebration of our last child’s second birthday. As you can imagine, children of geeks tend to get more geeky presents and Ian is now the proud user of his own age-appropriate “Leap” device and the plethora of add-ons that go with it. This is also the age where we have tended to start our kids on interactive computer software (that is, if you don’t count Baby Banger). Besides Winnie-ther-Pooh, one of his favorite stories is The Cat in the Hat by the venerable Dr. Seuss, so I grabbed a copy of MacKiev’s electronic version at the Alderwood Mall Apple Store and had it ready to go on the MBPro for the big day.

We’ve purchased other versions of this interactive Cat for his brother and sister, but MacKiev did an outstanding job on this version with enough distinctly Mac touches to warrant a post. What did the developers get right?

A solid installer

While I am – and other experienced Apple users are – fully comfortable dragging applications around, newer Mac users and switchers tend to like installers. Good installers do the heavy lifting for you, make sure you know what’s going on, possibly do extra work (more on that in a bit) and provide an easy way to un-install the program. MacKiev definitely got this right.

Keeping up-to-date

“Registering” children’s software – or any other type of software for that matter – on Windows boxes was usually a task I would avoid since it tended to be little more than a request for spam. The MacKiev installer gave me the option to register and I took a chance since (a) it’s a Mac program and (b) it provided a means to opt-out of spam-like messages. Immediately after registering, I received an e-mail letting me know there was a Leopard update to the program, which I promptly downloaded and installed. While a “check for updates” menu item (*cough* Sparkle *cough*) would have been even better, it was refreshing to get useful mail right from the start.

Choices & control

The Cat in the Hat software has two primary modes, interactive (click on things during the story) or “movie-mode”, which is just an animated reading of the book while words are highlighted. You really don’t need software for the latter, and the book/content publisher finally understood this since the installer asked me if I wanted to upload supplemental content into iTunes. This “supplemental” content was actually the full audio and video of the book, which was copied in DRM-free format into my library where two playlists were also created, ready to sync to my iPhone, iPod or Apple TV (it’s now on all three).

For quite a while, Ian will just be sitting with me as we watch the story unfold or as I click on images to make them do unexpected tricks, but now he’ll also be able to hunt for it on my iPhone (he already knows how to call his mother on it and can get to music he likes without help from anyone, which is a tribute Apple engineers UI design/implementation) or request it as an option for the infrequent TV time the kids get.

MacKiev’s great work has guaranteed a purchase of The ABC Book when Ian is a little older and is definitely something other developers & publishers should seek to emulate in their offerings. If you’ve had some good experiences with other children’s software, be sure to drop a note in the comments (hey, it’s for Ian after all!).

Craig Hockenberry (of Icon Factory/Twitterific) give us a glimpse of what development will be like for the iPhone via his personal/development blog. What can we expect?

• Tossing most of your current UI code
• Being way more careful about object/memory use
• Relying on your Objective-C & Cocoa skills for visual element design since NIBs are non-esistent
• Learning a whole new way to get input from the user and info to the user

He goes into a decent amount of detail (as much as he probably can given the lack of a public API release) and leaves the reader with a good sense of what it will be like in the brave, new iWorld.

Leopard (OS X.5) was one of those big releases that while I was excited about it on principle, there weren’t many of the announced features that [on the surface] got me purring. The feature that garnered the most excitement for me was Spaces. I’m a longtime virtual desktop user and have gone through all of the offerings for the Apple platform. So the idea of having the functionality baked-in was an attractive one to me.

A sad side-effect to the news of Spaces however, was the announcement that a former favorite in this space – Virtue Desktops – would be shutting down further development. The story of Apple taking the best ideas and applications and baking them into the Mother Ship isn’t anything new – but generally the developers of these applications hang in there a bit before throwing in the towel. The most unfortunate part however is that competition is good for the consumer, typically resulting in better quality, more features, and plenty of options to fit any user. I completely understand being busy and not wanting to make time for a side project that would most likely be Apple’s victim, however I do wish the competition against Apple’s Spaces would make a fight out of it.

I don’t want to rehash all the gripes with Spaces that have accumulated around the internet these past couple of weeks, but let’s just say I agree with basically all of them. Mostly the issues stem from the ridiculous lack of configuration options. But the whole zooming me from one Space to another when I OPT+TAB is gonna send me over the edge one day in the not too distant future. Seriously. Why on earth would I want be bounced back and forth amongst my Spaces each and every time I want to work in a different application? My personal workflow has me using the Virtual Desktop concept as a division for my projects, not my tasks…But I digress. I do get it though – Spaces is meant to bring Virtual Desktops to the masses in a way that they can all get it. Unfortunately that leaves the rest of us starving for more.

The real shame here is that some great applications have faded into the background as Apple has released their own replacements. So those of us who loved those third party apps are left wanting when Apple’s solution doesn’t cut the mustard. When those great developers forsake their code – and consequently, their users – the spirit of competition and innovation in that particular application space is generally lost…Or at the very least, left up to Apple and their timeline to update. I’m fearful that Spaces is a prime example of this.

I’m greatly saddened by the fact that my two favorite [Pre-Leopard] Virtual Desktop apps are no longer getting any love from developers. Desktop Manager hasn’t been touched for a couple years, and Virtue Desktops (which hatched from the Desktop Manager code base) which – as I mentioned earlier – was the first casualty upon Spaces’ announcement. (I do however feel that I should point out that Tony Arnold – former Virtue Developer – is working on a companion to Spaces, called, HyperSpaces.) So the two freeware options are no longer. How about the shareware side of the house?

I sent a couple of quick emails off to CodeTek (makers of CodeTek VirtualDesktop) and You Software (makers of Desktops) to see what their intentions were on this front. Being that they’re selling their wares and have a user-base that has invested in them, I was glad to get responses that they will continue to bring the fight to Apple’s door with updated versions of their applications for the Leopard platform.

While the forthcoming enhancements to CTVD 4 will bring Universal stability to the application, Bill Goldstein from CodeTek informs me that CTVD 5 will be when the real enhancements and features become available. Meanwhile You Software sees this opportunity as a great one to capitalize on the new visibility that will be brought to the Virtual Desktop concept and will definitely be working to bring more advanced feature-sets to those seeking more than Spaces can offer. At $40 and $30, respectively, they’re clearly not free options when compared to Spaces, but those looking for more control shouldn’t mind too much I suspect.

I think this is a better time than ever for these developers to be coding their hearts out (and encourage any other enterprising and talented developers to jump on the opportunity as well), as Spaces will indeed bring Virtual Desktops to the masses. And when those masses become accustomed to the concept, my guess is that many of them will undoubtedly be hungry for more… Not to mention that fact that the continued competition will hopefully serve as a prodding to Apple to bring added functionality and configurability to their own Spaces application within OS X.

Back in the early days of TAB, one of our fellow writers was one, Chris Holland. Chris is a pretty smart guy, knows a little too much about too many super geeky things, many of which revolve around Apple technology. He’s since moved on from TAB, but continues to rant about technology on his own time, and from time to time we’ll exchange some IM’s to discuss these things. (If you’ve ever had the extreme pleasure of chatting with Chris, you’re already fully aware of the toddler-like energy levels and spastic excitement he displays for this stuff!)

Well Chris is at it again, and recently wrote up his own take on a topic that I took a stab at a few months back. While my guess at Xcode dropping on the Windows platform was received with both favorable and not-so-favorable comments (Chris pu-pu’s my idea toward the end of his article…why am I even linking to him?), Chris offers up his own thoughts on the subject, fingering some of the underlying technology behind iTunes and Safari as the real key to the future of Apple software on the Windows platform.

Webkit is an open source browser engine that powers Safari, and several other applications found in Apple’s stable of program offerings. Seeing as how it helps run Safari, and iTunes (see comments 1 and 3 below) which is now available to the Windows users of the world, Chris surmises that it wouldn’t take much more to offer up a way for Windows developers to test the waters of the OS X development world without having to make a full jump to the new platform first.

Admittedly this is a teaser into that world at best. But it could be a nice foot in the door for Apple to bewitch current Windows developers with the great features and power available to them on the Cocoa side of the house. Coupled with the available frameworks within OS X and the accessibility of Apple’s hardware features, a whole new wave of developers could result from a move such as Chris suggests. And of course more third party developer support for a platform can only be a good thing.

So take a few minutes to read what Chris has to say about “Apple’s Decoy into Microsoft’s World” and see what you think. Does the idea hold water? Or is it as out of left field as my guess of Xcode on Windows was?

Quicksilver is my hands-down favorite application for OS X. (Seriously, if I were stranded on a desert island, it would be the one thing I brought with me!) However with the exception of becoming Leopard-ized, it hasn’t made many forward strides in recent months. I’d venture a guess that a large reason for that is that Alcor – the brains behind the braun – has taken up a job at Google. Whatever the reason, Quicksilver hasn’t gotten the attention that many of us wish that it would.

Well now, Alcor has released Quicksilver as an open source project under Google Code repository. This is very exciting news as with many more hands in the bucket, we should soon see a boatload of exciting growth out of the launcher-app that is loved by so many.

As if it couldn’t do it all already, there are many things that users in the blacktree forums have been asking for, for some time now. From the standpoint of the base application alone, I would love to see a little more stability out of Quicksilver – though it’s generally been pretty reliable for me. My guess is that as coders are able to get their hands dirty in the code, the number of plugins that will become available will skyrocket. This of course may cause some bloat, but with so many brilliant and creative minds out there, I’m excited to see what the future holds for this incredible application.

So what features are you hoping to see out of a future, open version of Quicksilver? If you’re a coder, I’d love to hear your plans for the newly open source as well.

And if you’re one of those who aren’t familiar with Quicksilver yet, or have tried it now and again but haven’t gotten the point, you may be interested in viewing some of the screencasts we’ve posted here on The Apple Blog in the past. And as a small teaser – and a kick in the pants for me to deliver on something I’ve been promising for a while – look for a Quicksilver Show-off Screencast of the myriad of things it can do in the not too distant future.

LifeClever posted 17 Bookmarklets that iPhone users should be using. For the most part they are simple functionality that would be ideal to have built-in to Safari, but for now these 3rd party solutions will have to suffice. Get the ability to search a page for words/phrases, open links in a new windows, list links, and find similar sites. Further, there are bookmarklets for searching for just about anything without having to explicitly hit those sites first.

I don’t have an iPhone (no, I’m fine, really) to test these out on, but assume they work pretty well. It’s nice to see the user/dev community stepping it up and taking care of the things that Apple has left out (at least in the Rev A). Interesting too, to see the way people have been altering their development to address the iPhone’s limitations framework. The likes of bookmarklets and iPhone/Safari-specific web apps such as Leaflets and nytimesriver.com are proof that a tilt toward developing for the Apple-made mobile device is indeed in progress. I guess that’s the answer to my question posted a few weeks back…

The CookBook application which was one of the 3 top spots in the My Dream App competition has some updated details. The pictures sure are pretty, and it looks like things are really coming together nicely. From the post, it sounds like it’s nearly decided to be Leopard-only, so we’ll assume no release until at least October of this year. Looks mighty tasty – check it out!

Clearly Apple has shown their affinity for putting software out there for the Windows crowd. To date Apple has produced nearly a half dozen software applications for the Windows platform. These offerings include Quicktime (and the Pro version), iTunes, Software Update, and most recently, Safari. So what is to be Apple’s next foray into the Windows software arena? Let’s take a deeper look at the situation.

With the exception of Quicktime Pro, the software in question is all freely available to Windows users. Offering these programs up with no obligation creates the perfect opportunity for would-be Apple consumers to test the waters and get a feel for what ‘the other half’ are raving about.

iTunes is obviously a companion to the popular iPod music player (though I’m not sure ‘popular’ cuts it with more than 100 million sold in the past 5+ years…), but gives a decent view into the simplicity that the marriage of Apple hardware and software are known for. The iPod has proven to be somewhat of a ‘gateway drug’ in terms of converting users of the mp3 player to Apple computer owners. (see, Halo Effect as a Business Model)

Safari (version 3, beta) was released to the public not quite a month ago on both the OS X and Windows platforms. The Windows version was immediately found to be quite buggy, but was just as quickly patched-up. It is beta software afterall, and that’s the purpose for which it’s been released! But now Windows users fed-up with Internet Explorer can get a taste of the speed and ingenuity that Apple offers in it’s wide array of software products on the Apple platform.

So back to the question at hand: What may be Apple’s next software release for the Windows platform?

The knee-jerk answer might be, “Well iLife of course!” There are however, a couple problems I see with this answer. First off, it costs money. Granted, $79 for the amazing range of functionality and consumer-power-tools that iLife includes (iPhoto, iTunes, iMovie HD, GarageBand, and iWeb) is a steal, but when Windows and 3rd party developer offer similar software on the Windows platform (in many cases, free or nearly so), it may be a hard sell convincing a Windows-user to plunk down the money. The second, and much larger problem, is that iLife is so simple because of it’s tightly-knit connection with the Apple-developed hardware platforms. The user experience is heightened ten-fold when all their hardware works seemlessly with their software. Without direct control over the wide array of hardware that Windows users are working on, iLife may seem more like a black eye than a reason to take the next step into the Apple World.

iWork may be slightly more viable as a Windows software offering from Apple. There’s less hardware integration to hold it back, but it relies quite heavily on Core OS X functionality, not to mention the tie-ins with the iLife apps. The design capabilities are extremely easy and fun to use, but there could be an awful lot lost in translation without the operating system and ‘companion’ applications support found on the OS X platform. Oh, and it’s also $79, so there’s that fiscal barrier-to-entry yet again.

There are a host of other applications that Apple puts out that may be hits on Window as well – Final Cut, Motion, Shake to name a few – but I believe there are three keys to the most plausible answer. The software in question needs:

1. To be interesting to a large cross-section of the user population
2. To be free, or nearly so
3. To create a desire to move to the Apple platform completely

Based on these criteria, I believe Xcode will be the next software offering from Apple for the Windows operating system. Software developers are becoming a dime-a-dozen (not a bad thing, mind you) and the number of Windows devs around must be tremendous. (At WWDC 07 there were many comments about the huge number of developers – new to the platform – that were there.) Xcode is currently offered for free under the Apple Developer Connection, so it wouldn’t require potential developers to ante-up just to see if they liked it. And most importantly, the great tools that Apple builds to hook-into the vast power and functionality of OS X should be a great argument for a developer to make the Switch and pounce on a new Mac.

I realize there are many more requirements behind the scenes for something like Xcode to work as intended, on Windows, but I wouldn’t put it outside Apple’s reach. They’ve shown their desire and commitment to powering their company forward, and I feel Xcode on Windows is the next big step they’ll take in doing so.

Web developers have been more and more concerned with coding for mobile devices. Now that the iPhone is here, I wonder if that may change further. The iPhone – unlike most other cellular phones on the market – browses using a wide-screen web browser and the touch interface makes it easy to do so.

I’ll be interested to see if web developers will come up with a pseudo-mobile development process specifically for Safari on the iPhone. Meaning, will designers embrace the iPhone’s click-to-zoom interface, making some elements a certain size for optimal viewing/reading, leading to an Apple-specific mobile development practice?

Will the use of web 2.0 apps (the standard SDK for the iPhone…) see a slight transformation so as to be optimized for iPhone viewing? I’ve got to believe there’s going to be a noticeable shift of some kind that results from this new piece of technolust.

If you’re developing mobile web pages/applications, I’d love to hear your take on this possible shift in development practices.

EDIT: Thanks to Tom for pointing out an error that was published. I accidentally posted with 2 different thoughts combined in 1 and it sounded likea broad and absolute statement which was not intended. It’s been udpated.

So for everyone who’s ever complained about the .Mac service, someone is finally trying to do something about it. The notMac Challenge is offering up a choice bounty (at least $10k!) for anyone who can develop a .Mac alternative that’s as easy to use as Apple’s offering, but robust enough to be useful for everyone, and worth the equivalent cost.

I actually just signed up for the 30-day trial of .Mac the other day, to see if there were any features that would be especially useful to me. So far, not seeing it. But who knows. The notMac Challenge is a big one, and I think the bounty – which at this point is $7500 which will be matched, up to $10,000, so upwards of $20 thousand! – will be much deserved if anyone can crack that nut.

Thanks to Chris for sending this tip over.

Last week I wrote about my failure to understand why everyone and their dog seems to be churning out FTP and Text Editor applications. The discussion that was generated in the comments was a good one, and many good points were brought to my attention that I hadn’t considered previously. The point that seemed most common was that developers feel they can do it better and thus the glut of similar apps we have to choose from. (Definitely not a bad position for the consumer to be in!)

But I did get one email from a developer, explaining his position on the topic. Brian Amerige is the developer of an as-yet unreleased FTP application named Flow. He feels that current FTP and Text Editors (as they tend to go hand in hand) just don’t get it right and so he’s set out to solve that problem. The 2 interesting features Brian highlights (check out the screencasts) are the ability to remotely edit files directly on the remote host (seen it done), and the especially cool one – concurrent uploading of files. The latter taking full advantage of high-speed broadband connections and their multiple streaming capabilities.

From the little I’ve seen, and what I’ve read, it sounds like an interesting take on the FTP market. If you’re interested in checking out Flow for yourself, Brian has just posted the Private Beta details to his webpage. Go sign up and if you’re one of the lucky ones chosen to test-drive this workflow-altering FTP client you can decide for yourself!

Clearly there’s an active Developer Community for the Apple platform. I love that my favorite apps are regularly updated – being constantly made better, feature-rich, and all that jazz. But the process of updating some of these apps can be somewhat of a drag at times.

Let’s just put it this way: If your app can tell me that it needs to be updated, it better also tell me to install & restart. I really don’t love when I choose to grab the update, and it launches a browser window for me to do the whole process manually…

I realize all developers aren’t at the same level, or that they’re doing real jobs and fitting their software development into ‘free’ time, but it sure would be nice for everyone to unify on the way applications update themselves.

It’s Monday morning, and I’m a bit cranky – so while I mean what I say, don’t take it too personally…

Anyone who’s been using a Mac for a few months has probably noticed that there is a glut of text editors available for the OS X platform. If you’re in the web/design category, you’re undoubtedly familiar with the similar situation of too many FTP client options. What gives?

I’ll take the latter issue first. The funny thing is, 4 years (or so) ago when I got back on the Mac side of things, finding a decent FTP client was next to impossible. Interarchy, Fetch, RBrowser and Cyberduck seemed to be the viable solutions. Then Transmit (from Panic) came out and the show was over (as far as I’m concerned). But in recent months – maybe the last year – it’s crazy how many FTP options are available to us. Yummy FTP, Captain FTP, and Forklift come immediately to mind. (There are plenty more though…)

Having options is great and all, but how many do we need? Is one really that much better than the other? The core functionality is all essentially the same, so I guess pick the best UI and plunk down your card to make a purchase.

Worse yet is the Text Editor scene. My favorite couple are TextMate (de facto winner in this space?) and SubEthaEdit – I tell you because I can see you care. But then there’s an endless line of other options here – xPad, TextEdit, TextWrangler, Mori, Jedit, Smultron, to name a few. The list goes on… I understand where apps such as WriteRoom offer something slightly different. But geez, it’s still just a text editor that’s aimed at the more easily distracted – hey look, squirrels!!!

But what is it about FTP apps and Text Editors that seemingly attract developers – the experienced and green alike? Every developer’s gotta practice on some project, and [guru] Scott Stevenson has a great tutorial on CocoaDevCentral for creating your own Text Editor (the tutorials here are hands-down, some of the best you’ll find on the web). So I get that – it’s an easy jumping-off point where you can get your feet wet and work your way up. But what drives every developer and their mother to try to sell their code as if it were so earth shatteringly different from the next 5, 10, 15 competing apps?

My intent is not to blast these developers – heaven knows I’m no application coder! I’m just trying to wrap my brain around the reasoning behind everyone trying to sell more or less the same program. (I understand that everyone wants to make a buck, but still!) I invite any coders – especially of Text Editors or FTP Clients – to either sound off in the comment here, or better yet, contact me directly (nick[dot]appleblog[at]gmail[dot]com) and lets get a conversation going on this topic.