This is quite similar to my experience. I installed Adobe Builder 4.5 beta trial too, which after a bit of fiddling around (and confusion on my part about the differences between 4.0 and 4.5 while following the tutorials) does eventually get you a Build and Run button.
We've been frustrated to the point of abandonment on trying to install a Blackberry simulator to test out jquery-mobile apps. Similar story to tell--just kept hitting wall after wall of poorly thought-out and poorly documented steps.
It's a shame because most of our customers use Blackberries but it's just not practical for us to support Blackberry on our mobile apps.
Thank you for showing me that I wasn't the only one that had the same HORRIBLE experience! I gave a valiant effort for a good 3 solid days, at which point, I was much MUCH further along with the same tasks on iOS. For shame, RIM.
Ah, you definately have never developed for any sort of linuxy or embedded hardware that requires a full moon and the right software version every step of the way.
Oh, and the Android installer isn't flawless either: it does require some setting up of cumbersome paths, but the installer of individual SDKs (which to be fair are seperate files/downloads) works like a charm...
Guilty as charged on the first point :) The separate files/downloads was a minor annoyance, but fairly insignificant in the grand scheme of things. On the whole, I just found it to be an very frustrating experience.
I actually have an approved app for the PlayBook and actually found the entire process quite straight forward, especially considering that both the sdk and simulator are both in beta.
Articles can often be summarized in a few lines which make them seem trivial. What really counts for me is why those points mentioned above are worth complaining about.
The summarized points are good, but the article is great. I might read those points and think "hmm... not too bad", but read the article and think "hmm.. wtf!"
You did well to pull out early if you found this part of the process painful, unfortunately end to end it feels like death by a thousand paper cuts. Theres nothing glaring wrong through out but lots of annoyances which really add up, when compared to iOS or Android development
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!
I feel that RIM is still missing the big picture. If RIM makes a phone/tablet that is 3x superior to the iPad and half the price, they'll still sell next to nothing.
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?
Judging by the fact that the dev kit shipped with an ISO for running the simulator, I suspect you would need some kind of VM package in Windows as well. However Windows has the free VMWare Player.
Until RIM makes its own desktop operating system I don't think it's comparable at all. And, once again, iOS is the market leader. They get to be different. RIM doesn't.
False dichotomy. Everyone knew that RIM and Nokia weren't even playing the same game. This is clear from the fact that neither had App Stores. You'll also remember that when the iPhone was introduced there was only web development, meaning iPhones had no special restrictions.
That same thought occurred to me when I was writing it. The conclusion I came to was that if RIM is going to offer an SDK for Mac (or any platform for that matter), they need to do it in an integrated way, just like their competitors. I have no problem with NOT offering an SDK for a specific OS, but if you make the decision to do it, don't do it half assed.
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.
Why not just say Mac is unsupported? A friend of mine's company spent months developing a BlackBerry app, when he got me to do their iPhone app it took half the time and worked 100s of times better. Why? Because their developers were busy writing code trying to figure out what kind of connection the device had so they could open a TCP/IP connection, seriously the network interfaces aren't abstracted away from the developer.
This is a fair point, but its a fair point that completely misses the point. If RIM wants to attract the huge numbers of developers that are flocking to iOS (and, presumably, doing all of their dev work in OS X), they should be doing everything possible to make the switch from iOS development to Playbook development as smooth as possible. And there is no way to do that without addressing the question of Playbook development on OS X.
Maybe they want to attract the huger-still number of developers who aren't flocking to iOS. It's obvious they won't get the rock star developers, but there's a lot more non-rock stars. How is the experience on Windows?
The question is: do they want to compete with Apple for developers? Given Apple's huge success, I can't see how the answer to that question could be anything but "yes".
If RIM's strategy doesn't have some component that involves trying to woo iOS developers to their platform, I predict they will fail.
At the risk of sounding xkcd-esque, what is your definition of "fail"? I agree that RIM attempting to duplicate Apple's consumer-focused strategy is unlikely to yield Apple-like results in terms of market share and immediate profit, but let's remember that that's not where RIM started out. There's always a lot of money to be made in B2B, which just happens not to be the competition's strong point.
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?
Honestly as an ex-indie PalmOS developer, I'm having trouble being sympathetic. I don't do blackberry myself, and don't have any particular affection for RIM, but this is just a little much.
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?
It's not a question of whether you CAN make it work, but whether you should have to. RIM is in competition for developers with Apple and Google. Why would a developer choose to go with RIM when the experience is much better elsewhere. I think we can all agree that apps are one of the things that will make or break a smartphone platform in the current market conditions. If RIM can't attract talented developers to write apps for their platform, the outlook can't be good for them.
(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.
I'm not sure the first advantage really makes a difference though. Corporate users are not buying a lot of apps. This is shown in the latest market share data, where the App Store took in $769 million in revenue, with RIM App World in second place with only $36 million. This is especially significant because RIM has a similar smartphone market share as Apple. So you've got two companies with similar market shares, and one is doing 21 times the app revenue than the other.
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.
To add on to your first point, I know people who have company-provided-and-paid-for blackberries, and they buy their own iphone out of pocket and use that more. the BB is just for the bare minimum compliance at work - all their downtime is with their device of choice - and that's where their money gets spent (on apps, add-ons, etc).
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?
Not to mention this market segment is usually behind a product iteration, or two, due to corporate security policies. This bunch probably won't have the Playbook or whateverphoneisnext--that can actually do anything remotely worth purchasing--vetted for them until RIM's all set and done.
#1 is a big disadvantage. Those devices are all locked down by IT staff and software won't install. RIM is a tricky platform. I found that the market is split mostly between consumers who text and corporate/government employees who have their devices locked down.
Depends on the employers. Lot more employers now are willing to switch away from BB.
There were some reports few months ago that was showing how the BB market on corporate/enterprise was declining.
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.
> 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.
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.
As an old Palm OS developer and someone who wrote code for BlackBerry OS, I can tell you that BlackBerry is much much much much worse than Palm OS ever was.
Everything I've read and heard indicates it's really not that cut-and-dried, what with the founder of Kik having been an intern at RIM and then basically re-implementing BBM.
The post mentions that the fee is currently waived. And it’s not like the author made up the 10-app limit, just because he wasn’t aware it’s currently not enforced.
The post doesn't claim that the fee isn't waived, or that the limit is enforced, it just claims that there is a fee, and there is a limit. Whether they are enforced in the future is of course still possible.
Yeah, the $200 was a major blocker for me. As a student, I just want to make silly free game apps. $200 for $0 income? Well that's certainly not appealing. On the other side, don't they not take any cut of your income from their app store?
I was participating in a developers survey by Rim around a year ago (one of those where they grab 10 engineers and put them in a room for some cash) and the complaints were exactly the same!
One thing I am surprised to not see in this list is that, as an individual, you are required to have your form faxed back after been signed by a notary. AFAIK, this is not practice of Google or Apple either.
If you're a business, you do have to fax in your business documents before your app will go live in the App Store (and it takes a couple of weeks to process), but it's most likely going to take you at least a couple of weeks to develop your app and get it approved so it's not so bad. And you don't need to get it notarized.
Hmm, I expected something ... well ... something really bad. But it looks like the guy has just a very thin skin.
I'm an iPhone developer who signed up with the program as soon as it became available and I can tell you: Becoming an iPhone developer was a major PITA. It started with the registration (Apple let you wait for weeks after you purchased the membership), then with taxes formalities (as a non us-citizen I had to call the I.R.S. and get a w8-ben number ... mix a polish name with a german address and an overseas phone call and you get a really fun time). Oh, and I had to print out all my contracts, sign them and send them via snail mail to some Apple subsidiary in Texas.
And then the fun just started - I spent days getting all the provisioning profile stuff working (only to get my app to run on my device). Uploading the finished app to the store was another story (there was no build & archive & submit 3 click way - you had to build the distribution package yourself).
Considering RIM has just started their developer program for their playbook I'd say that the blog post is exaggerated. The only thing that I think he's right on is the 10 app/$200 limit ...
Yeah, I mean the process is a little complicated, but it works perfectly if you just follow the instructions step by step (and you don't need to do any of that to run your app in the simulator).
I think it took me about an hour the first time, and it takes maybe 10 minutes to generate the certificates and profile after you do it a few times.
I know it's unfair, but as an overseas developer you should probably expect a bit more pain when working with such a US-centric company (correct or not).
I've also been an iPhone Dev right from the start and I didn't find it that difficult. Sure, the provisioning stuff took some hours, and uploading an app to an actual device was as simply as clicking 'build & run'.
Publishing an app was a tad more difficult, what with the distribution profile and whatnot, but the developer in question didn't even get that far with RIM.
Dude. The documentation for configuring your provisioning profiles and other faffing around was 60 pages long. If you messed up any single step in the 60 page long process you had to go back to the start.
Also, yes, everything was love and kittens for North American devs, but the process was (and still is) a major PITA for devs outside of NA.
I've definitely heard the horror stories of the early days of iPhone development. I don't think I exaggerated though. I pretty much stuck to the facts of what happened, with some sarcasm sprinkled on of course :)
It's important to remember though that RIM isn't competing for developers with the Apple of 3 years ago. They're competing with the Apple (and Google) of today. As a developer who's time and sanity is valuable, I'm going to have a hard time justifying the added frustration, when there are other options that are much simpler, and have much more profitable markets to sell apps to.
Sure, but those were the early days of the whole mobile platform craze. Today Apple and Google have a huge lead and RIM is trying to play catch-up. RIM's offerings have to be competitive with what the other players have now, not what they had three years ago.
The great thing about open platforms is that there is no one to get in your way. So if you are going to stand between us and our development, you best make it a good experience.
> You wanted me to print off a notarized statement of identification form....it goes without saying at this point, but neither Apple nor Google require you to do anything even close to that.
Actually, just a few months ago when renewing an Apple Developer Connection membership, they asked me to do the exact same thing.
To their credit, I emailed, summarized my history with ADC, bitched a little bit, and someone took care of it the next day.
"Knowing what a pleasure it is to use Apple and Google’s tools,"
I haven't used the iOS SDK, but the Android SDK is far from "a pleasure to use". The 3.0 emulator is so unusably slow that it makes it practically impossible for me to adapt my app to the new tablet UI without going insane in the process.
Well, apart from the Honeycomb issues, it is a pleasure to use. If you don't have your phone plugged in and hit Run or Debug, it installs it to the emulator and runs it. If you do have your phone plugged in, it goes there. It's one button for either phone or emulator.
As a side note, I assume it will be this easy with 3.0 as well, so the slow emulator may not be a problem if you have a tablet plugged in. Even with the current emulator, I prefer to just use my phone; it's faster and gives me a better idea of how it really looks and runs.
No, because the Android tools were exceptionally easy to install and use. The point of this rant is that RIM's tools are the opposite. Anyone can get used to the tools they're given to accomplish a task, the point here is how easy is it to accomplish said getting-used-to.
The Android emulator is a full ARM processor emulator. Very slow and probably always will be. My experience is that Android development is mostly impossible without the real hardware. This Android x86 port looks promising though: http://www.android-x86.org/documents/virtualboxhowto
Yeah, I'm really hoping that they switch over to x86 for the emulator soon, the way Apple does it. It's not awful for simple apps, but it is genuinely impossible to develop an OpenGL ES application on the Android emulator.
Use a real device, and the whole process is quite painless.
The fundamental problem is that their devices works the same way as their developer model. It's unintuitive, clunky and overpriced. The only thing RIM has left is BBM. It's not worth developing for.
I got the legal bullshit from Apple too. Seriously, it had to be notarized, I had to send Apple docs that had some kind of embossed type seal (I'm surprised they didn't require it in wax) like I was delivering a proclaimation from the King in the 12th century.
Were you registering as a business? I saw other commenters mention that they had to jump through additional hoops when registering as a business, but I had no trouble at all as an individual. Just put in my name, address, etc., pop in my credit card number, and I was good to go.
I went through the same process, but didn't think it was that bad.
RIMs web signup download process needs to be cleaned up, and the Mac installer thing was a bit weird, but I thought the docs were straightforward, and only took me a couple mins to get the sample app deployed.
My gosh.. A command line program to remote install to the vm image! At least there is a full intel compiled image, and not some buggy emulator.
You can also build decent apps using HTML and JavaScript, much like webos.
Is it just me, or has the HN crowd deteriorated to "enterprise-ey bad, apple good"
There is a lot of opportunity in this platform, but not for consumer apps. They will be very prevalent in business environments, and the os is damn responsive.
It's a shame the term "enterprise" is used as an excuse for poor quality. This isn't an attack on you I see it where I work too. Companies like Apple, Blizzard, and surely others have shown being big doesn't have to impede quality and user experience.
The simulator in the BB SDK reloads the BB OS every time you run an app. This lead to a 60+ second delay every time I updated the app and wanted to run or debug it. I gave up and thankfully someone else wrote the app: http://code.google.com/p/google-authenticator/source/browse/...
As developers, we don't want all of these platforms. RIM is very developer-unfriendly, and frankly so is Adobe, so I propose that we all do the sane thing here; ignore RIM to hasten its death. Or at least make them switch to Android.
RIM is a very developer hostile company, and they definitely don't care.
Most of the listed issues still exist for "legacy" BlackBerry development, plus about 100 other things that we could go into (e.g., still no way to do HTTP without having to worry about 6000 different connectivity methods and managing them all is up to each and every app).
The way I understand it, the $200 price is for 10 submissions, not 10 applications. So if your app has a bug, and you submit a version of the same app which fixed the bug, and/or added features, that counts against the limit.
Think of it as a $20 fee for app review, bought in blocks of 10.
So they're essentially discouraging improvements to the apps in their ecosystem because it costs the developer money to push out upgrades/patches/fixes?
All of this rings true, with the exception of having some forms notarized.
My name on my forms did not match the name on my credit card when I paid for my Apple Developer account. A short time later Apple deactivated my account and left it in that state until I could provide them with notarized proof of my identity. That is not terribly unusual, as far as I am concerned.
Ok, as an iPhone + iPad app developer (I created Trainyard), and as a Flash developer who has created a PlayBook app, and as a fellow Canadian, I feel I should weigh in on this.
Despite the whiny tone and bizarre "Bueller?" moments, there were a bunch of valid points made. Yes, the amount of forms you have to fill out is ridiculous. Yes, the fact that the simulator .iso has an installer is crazy. With those things, I absolutely agree with you. They're just silly... but they're also not a big deal in the grand scheme of things.
It took me less than 2 hours from when I decided I wanted to make a Playbook app to when I had something running in the simulator. You're correct that the iOS SDK is easier to get started with, and it's only a single download... but it's also 3.5 gigs, every single time. I'll take three 100mb downloads over a 3.5 gig download any day.
Ok, as for the cost of things... You only need to pay for VMWare if you're on a Mac, on a PC it's free. I've talked to some guys at RIM about this, and they said they were trying to work out a deal with VMWare to make it free for Mac users as well.
There's no more $200 fee. I don't know why anyone still brings it up. The 10 app limit is a GOOD THING, and keep in mind that you're also getting a 100% free Playbook if you make an app right now, surely that's gotta be worth something.
As for the notary thing, I'm guessing that's because of the free Playbook offer. They don't want to give away 10 Playbooks to the same guy. If you're a company, Apple's process is even more painful. You actually have to snail-mail all your forms in and wait until they get them before you can publish anything.
All the other complaints were just petty. Who cares about the IP address and the password? That stuff takes 2 minutes to figure out.
There are a lots of positives about developing for Playbook that you didn't mention. For example, an interesting (and not well-known fact) is that application updates do not require approval on App World. That's a huge plus over iOS in my book.
Anyway, that's my thoughts on it.
TLDR: You definitely had some good points, but the rest of it got blown WAY out of proportion.
I think it all comes down to lack of polish. Even in the early days, the iPhone SDK was leagues above the Playbook SDK in terms of polish. My personal anecdote is that the tools only run on 64 bit Macs but I could find no mention of that in the documentation. It was not a big deal, but these things add up. The free Playbook offer will probably help more than a few developers look past these flaws and try it out.
I absolutely agree, although the iPhone SDK was pretty rough when it started too. Keep in mind that Apple had a massive head start in that department, even at that point, because they'd been putting out OSX developer tools for years.
Thanks for the response Matt. As the author, I'm gonna have to disagree about the whiny tone, haha, but obviously you have the right to your own interpretation. I realize the Bueller thing probably came across as bizarre if you're not familiar with the reference (to Ferris Bueller's Day Off), in this case it just kinda means "What? No response?".
The wording on RIM's site sure made it seem like the $200 fee would be coming at some point, so as a new Blackberry developer, I'm not sure you can fault me for not having the inside track on RIM's policies. If they don't want people to get turned off by the prospect of a $200 fee, I would suggest they take it off their registration page.
Overall, you are correct though. I did mention a lot of little things. But a lot of little problems add up to a big problem, especially when those problems aren't an issue with RIM's competitors. You have to keep in mind that RIM is not operating in a bubble. They are the underdog in a race where Apple and Google are pretty far ahead in terms of developer mind share. If they want to lure developers to the platform, putting out inferior tools and processes is not going to help them at all. The underdog never wins by maintaining the status quo.
And come on Matt, where's the national solidarity? We Canucks gotta stick together! :)
All I meant about the whiny tone is that it seemed like it was written in a bit of a sensationalist way, rather than giving both sides of the story. That being said, your intention was to get RIM's attention, and so I think the sensational tone paid off, because it's here on Hacker News and on DF :)
Hah, I know Ferris Bueller, so I get the joke, don't worry, I just thought it seemed redundant after the first one.
I agree that it's way easier to get an app running in the Simulator with iOS development, but to actually test apps on a device, and publish to the App Store, it's an awful process. Apple's been working to improve it a lot in the past year, but it's still pretty painful.
To be honest I think RIM is just trying to make a giant transition. Keep in mind that all the Playbook stuff came from QNX, so I imagine it's a bit of a nightmare merging it all that stuff into RIM's bizarre system. There's a ton of room for improvement, but it actually works quite well once you get it all set up. I think that was part of the idea with the free Playbook offer, trying to make up the gap between themselves and Apple/Google.
RIM's also tapping into the unloved but massive group of Flash Developers out there. You're gonna see a ton of apps from developers that haven't made apps before. These are developers for whom the App Store really isn't an option. A ton of the apps will be total crap (just like on the App Store), but there'll be some gems too. Having used the device myself, I can safely say that the hardware and the OS are solid, and so if the apps are good too, RIM will be doing very well, and the process will only get better.
I contacted RIM regarding the whole notarised deal. Here's what they said:
Me: As an independent developer I can afford neither to become incorporated, nor to get a notary signature. Could you explain the reasoning behind this?
RIM: We require our vendors to be 18 years of age or older. This is why we require a notary form.
Me: Is there not a way of proving that I'm over 18 other than spending £200 on a lawyer? I could send you a copy of my drivers license?
RIM: We do not except photocopies unless they are notarized. You can try a local bank or family doctor to see if they will notarize your documentation.
Me: OK, but what you ask for is a certified notary i.e. someone legally authorised as a notary (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notary). Are you saying that this is not actually the case?
RIM: Correct, we would prefer a certified notary but sometimes it is difficult for people to find them so we make exceptions.
Hopefully helpful to someone. Having dismissed PlayBook development altogether, from what I've learnt since my blog post (http://rizergames.com/blog/2011/02/11/developing-for-playboo...), I might be tempted to give it another go, although the number of things that don't actually work on the simulator is still a massive hurdle.
In California, at least, most cities have 1-2 that sell boxes, packing material, a drop off point for shipping UPS, and notary services. Perhaps that would be cheaper than hiring a lawyer?
Just thought I should point out that RIM has now removed the notarization requirement entirely.
bq. Previously we required Individuals to provide us with a notarized document to validate their identity. While this is still an option, we will now begin accepting a scanned copy (front and back) of any official Government Issued Identification. This document must clearly show your Full Name and Date of Birth. bq.
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[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 166 ms ] threadEdit: This page looks new, at least it lists all the downloads in one place: http://us.blackberry.com/developers/tablet/adobe.jsp
This is the reason why shortcuts (not making well integrated system) always fail.
It's a shame because most of our customers use Blackberries but it's just not practical for us to support Blackberry on our mobile apps.
$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
Although you can browse BlackBerry App World with your current browser, some features may not be functional.
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?
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?
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.
- $200 per registration fee is waived for now. In fact its been waived for over a year now.
- 10 app limit is not enforced either.
"5.1 Application Revenue Fee
Vendor shall pay to RIM thirty percent (30%) of Application Revenue..."
I'm an iPhone developer who signed up with the program as soon as it became available and I can tell you: Becoming an iPhone developer was a major PITA. It started with the registration (Apple let you wait for weeks after you purchased the membership), then with taxes formalities (as a non us-citizen I had to call the I.R.S. and get a w8-ben number ... mix a polish name with a german address and an overseas phone call and you get a really fun time). Oh, and I had to print out all my contracts, sign them and send them via snail mail to some Apple subsidiary in Texas.
And then the fun just started - I spent days getting all the provisioning profile stuff working (only to get my app to run on my device). Uploading the finished app to the store was another story (there was no build & archive & submit 3 click way - you had to build the distribution package yourself).
Considering RIM has just started their developer program for their playbook I'd say that the blog post is exaggerated. The only thing that I think he's right on is the 10 app/$200 limit ...
I think it took me about an hour the first time, and it takes maybe 10 minutes to generate the certificates and profile after you do it a few times.
Also, yes, everything was love and kittens for North American devs, but the process was (and still is) a major PITA for devs outside of NA.
It's important to remember though that RIM isn't competing for developers with the Apple of 3 years ago. They're competing with the Apple (and Google) of today. As a developer who's time and sanity is valuable, I'm going to have a hard time justifying the added frustration, when there are other options that are much simpler, and have much more profitable markets to sell apps to.
Actually, just a few months ago when renewing an Apple Developer Connection membership, they asked me to do the exact same thing.
To their credit, I emailed, summarized my history with ADC, bitched a little bit, and someone took care of it the next day.
edit: typo
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1959433
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1463000
I haven't used the iOS SDK, but the Android SDK is far from "a pleasure to use". The 3.0 emulator is so unusably slow that it makes it practically impossible for me to adapt my app to the new tablet UI without going insane in the process.
As a side note, I assume it will be this easy with 3.0 as well, so the slow emulator may not be a problem if you have a tablet plugged in. Even with the current emulator, I prefer to just use my phone; it's faster and gives me a better idea of how it really looks and runs.
Use a real device, and the whole process is quite painless.
But is there a honeycomb variant yet? The best I've been able to do reliably is Froyo.
I got the legal bullshit from Apple too. Seriously, it had to be notarized, I had to send Apple docs that had some kind of embossed type seal (I'm surprised they didn't require it in wax) like I was delivering a proclaimation from the King in the 12th century.
RIMs web signup download process needs to be cleaned up, and the Mac installer thing was a bit weird, but I thought the docs were straightforward, and only took me a couple mins to get the sample app deployed.
My gosh.. A command line program to remote install to the vm image! At least there is a full intel compiled image, and not some buggy emulator.
You can also build decent apps using HTML and JavaScript, much like webos.
Is it just me, or has the HN crowd deteriorated to "enterprise-ey bad, apple good"
There is a lot of opportunity in this platform, but not for consumer apps. They will be very prevalent in business environments, and the os is damn responsive.
Disclaimer: I work for a possible competitor.
Most of the listed issues still exist for "legacy" BlackBerry development, plus about 100 other things that we could go into (e.g., still no way to do HTTP without having to worry about 6000 different connectivity methods and managing them all is up to each and every app).
Think of it as a $20 fee for app review, bought in blocks of 10.
Genius.
My name on my forms did not match the name on my credit card when I paid for my Apple Developer account. A short time later Apple deactivated my account and left it in that state until I could provide them with notarized proof of my identity. That is not terribly unusual, as far as I am concerned.
Despite the whiny tone and bizarre "Bueller?" moments, there were a bunch of valid points made. Yes, the amount of forms you have to fill out is ridiculous. Yes, the fact that the simulator .iso has an installer is crazy. With those things, I absolutely agree with you. They're just silly... but they're also not a big deal in the grand scheme of things.
It took me less than 2 hours from when I decided I wanted to make a Playbook app to when I had something running in the simulator. You're correct that the iOS SDK is easier to get started with, and it's only a single download... but it's also 3.5 gigs, every single time. I'll take three 100mb downloads over a 3.5 gig download any day.
Ok, as for the cost of things... You only need to pay for VMWare if you're on a Mac, on a PC it's free. I've talked to some guys at RIM about this, and they said they were trying to work out a deal with VMWare to make it free for Mac users as well.
There's no more $200 fee. I don't know why anyone still brings it up. The 10 app limit is a GOOD THING, and keep in mind that you're also getting a 100% free Playbook if you make an app right now, surely that's gotta be worth something.
As for the notary thing, I'm guessing that's because of the free Playbook offer. They don't want to give away 10 Playbooks to the same guy. If you're a company, Apple's process is even more painful. You actually have to snail-mail all your forms in and wait until they get them before you can publish anything.
All the other complaints were just petty. Who cares about the IP address and the password? That stuff takes 2 minutes to figure out.
There are a lots of positives about developing for Playbook that you didn't mention. For example, an interesting (and not well-known fact) is that application updates do not require approval on App World. That's a huge plus over iOS in my book.
Anyway, that's my thoughts on it.
TLDR: You definitely had some good points, but the rest of it got blown WAY out of proportion.
The wording on RIM's site sure made it seem like the $200 fee would be coming at some point, so as a new Blackberry developer, I'm not sure you can fault me for not having the inside track on RIM's policies. If they don't want people to get turned off by the prospect of a $200 fee, I would suggest they take it off their registration page.
Overall, you are correct though. I did mention a lot of little things. But a lot of little problems add up to a big problem, especially when those problems aren't an issue with RIM's competitors. You have to keep in mind that RIM is not operating in a bubble. They are the underdog in a race where Apple and Google are pretty far ahead in terms of developer mind share. If they want to lure developers to the platform, putting out inferior tools and processes is not going to help them at all. The underdog never wins by maintaining the status quo.
And come on Matt, where's the national solidarity? We Canucks gotta stick together! :)
Hah, I know Ferris Bueller, so I get the joke, don't worry, I just thought it seemed redundant after the first one.
I agree that it's way easier to get an app running in the Simulator with iOS development, but to actually test apps on a device, and publish to the App Store, it's an awful process. Apple's been working to improve it a lot in the past year, but it's still pretty painful.
To be honest I think RIM is just trying to make a giant transition. Keep in mind that all the Playbook stuff came from QNX, so I imagine it's a bit of a nightmare merging it all that stuff into RIM's bizarre system. There's a ton of room for improvement, but it actually works quite well once you get it all set up. I think that was part of the idea with the free Playbook offer, trying to make up the gap between themselves and Apple/Google.
RIM's also tapping into the unloved but massive group of Flash Developers out there. You're gonna see a ton of apps from developers that haven't made apps before. These are developers for whom the App Store really isn't an option. A ton of the apps will be total crap (just like on the App Store), but there'll be some gems too. Having used the device myself, I can safely say that the hardware and the OS are solid, and so if the apps are good too, RIM will be doing very well, and the process will only get better.
Me: As an independent developer I can afford neither to become incorporated, nor to get a notary signature. Could you explain the reasoning behind this?
RIM: We require our vendors to be 18 years of age or older. This is why we require a notary form.
Me: Is there not a way of proving that I'm over 18 other than spending £200 on a lawyer? I could send you a copy of my drivers license?
RIM: We do not except photocopies unless they are notarized. You can try a local bank or family doctor to see if they will notarize your documentation.
Me: OK, but what you ask for is a certified notary i.e. someone legally authorised as a notary (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Notary). Are you saying that this is not actually the case?
RIM: Correct, we would prefer a certified notary but sometimes it is difficult for people to find them so we make exceptions.
Hopefully helpful to someone. Having dismissed PlayBook development altogether, from what I've learnt since my blog post (http://rizergames.com/blog/2011/02/11/developing-for-playboo...), I might be tempted to give it another go, although the number of things that don't actually work on the simulator is still a massive hurdle.
- Luke
bq. Previously we required Individuals to provide us with a notarized document to validate their identity. While this is still an option, we will now begin accepting a scanned copy (front and back) of any official Government Issued Identification. This document must clearly show your Full Name and Date of Birth. bq.