App Developers Skirt Apple’s Limits With Work-Arounds

If you didn’t know, Apple restricts developers to 100 beta devices per year. That isn’t 100 per app. That’s 100 per company per year. And deleting devices doesn’t give you back devices until the next year. Infinity Softworks has 10 apps plus two new ones in development. That means a very restricted list of beta testers.

I can kind of understand why Apple did it. They didn’t want developers “side-loading” apps by using an open-ended beta program. But Apple doubled the devices — adding the iPad — without increasing the limit. I feel like I am constantly juggling projects and requirements to see who gets devices. And that is time wasted, as far as I’m concerned.

I will say that the detail and attention that Apple gives to their end-user programs never seem to be given to their developer programs. Besides this 100 device limit, I have spent hours trying to get re-authorization certificates working correctly after they expired last night, something that worked perfectly fine for the last year.

There are very few reasons I would develop for Android over iOS at this point. But if I had a mobile app I was writing for both and didn’t have a business reason why iOS should come first, this restricted beta program would tilt the scales toward Android.

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p.s. It was pointed out via email that we could technically use an enterprise account. It costs $299 and opens up the users, although technically to employees only.

p.p.s. Another thought: this program must be changing. With iOS 5, Apple deprecated UDIDs. Without the UDID there is no way for us to assign a device in the profile. Makes me wonder what Apple has planned.

RIM leaning toward new chairman: sources

The Financial Times reported yesterday that RIM was likely removing co-Chairmen Mike Laziridis’ and Jim Balsillie’s titles, installing an independent chairperson. The two would remain co-CEOs.

There is a great story in the Steve Jobs biography involving Larry Ellison of Oracle, Gil Amelio who was at the time CEO of Apple, and tech journalist Gina Smith:

That spring Larry Ellison saw Amelio at a party and introduced him to the technology journalist Gina Smith, who asked how Apple was doing. “You know, Gina, Apple is like a ship,” Amelio answered. “That ship is loaded with treasure, but there’s a hole in the ship. And my job is to get everyone to row in the same direction.” Smith looked perplexed and asked, “Yeah, but what about the hole?”

Yeah, RIM. What about the hole? [1]

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[1] The problem is execution and mixed messages from the CEOs. Who gives a damn who is running the Board right now?

In Flop of H.P. TouchPad, an Object Lesson for the Tech Sector

Two days ago, Brian X. Chen wrote an article for The New York Times regarding the flop of webOS. I’ll sum up the article for you here: it is the operating system’s fault that Palm and HP failed. The world of hardware and users weren’t ready for a web-based operating system.

Excuse my french but… bull shit.

The operating system was fine. I remember rushing over to a Sprint store to play with it and really enjoying the OS, actually. I thought it was smartly designed and although it had a couple of learning curve issues it was a solid system. While I have had my moments hating on Palm, I really was excited about developing for it because it used technologies I could use in other places, too. The hardware was good enough in my opinion (although I do remember there were some device manufacturing issues that took a few months to iron out).

Even the strategy of starting on Sprint, in my mind, was not a bad one. Focus on a smaller niche that you can dominate and then, with momentum, spread to other niches. Sprint is the smallest of the big four niches here in the US. Sprint helped with marketing and gave Palm time to work out any problems before also adding AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile to their platforms.

Palm (and HP) failed because Apple sucked all the air out of the room. Then Google did a good enough job of copying Apple that any remaining air went to Android. webOS went cyanotic almost immediately [1]. And the one thing any good pyromaniac knows is that you can’t start a fire without any oxygen [2]. It’s that freaking simple.

Folks at HP and Palm can come with all the complicated reasons they want to make themselves feel good. But the reality is the software and hardware failed because there just wasn’t any oxygen left in the room. Sometimes you make history and sometimes you are made by it.

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[1] My 5 and 3 year old love that word. I always wanted to use it in a blog post.

[2] I’m not one but my wife might be.