You know, I find iPhone development to be a big pain in the rear end.The framework and language are crap. The fact that you have to pay $99 per year for a development membership is scam. The membership is required to put your app in the app store, no matter if it’s freeware or not. Doesn’t Apple make enough already… Why charge developers to be able to share their creations? Did I mention the SDK is only for OS/X? I love how the .NET framework is 100% free and there is even a free IDE! There are no charges for sharing your .NET creations. So why the hell does Apple charge? Just because people are making apps and selling like crazy, doesn’t mean you have to profit off students or enthusiasts who don’t have the money. Did you know Apple takes 30% of the money the developer makes, each time a user buys an app? Thirty percent, that’s a good chunk of hard earned money. They already charge the ninety-nine dollars per year and then they add in 30% of your profits. Your profits!

If you make a freeware application, you still have to pay the $99 a year out of your pocket just to keep it in the store. I mean, you don’t make any money from it. I don’t see how you could earn the money back. The only thing you get out of it is the satisfaction of knowing people can download and use it. You might as well throw the money in the garbage or down the disposal. You’ll never get them back if you make your apps free. So you’d have to make a free version and a paid. Or, at least one free app and sell another (paid) app on the side. Talk about stupid choices on Apples behalf.

Selling your application, I haven’t gotten as far as actually putting one in the app store yet. I’m still waiting for my parents to set me up with a brand spanking new bank account. However, from what I read, you don’t have any guarantee that your app will make it into the app store. There are unwritten rules (or at least I sure as hell can’t find any) as to what your app can do and can’t do. The app store decides whether the creation is worthy of publication and will accept or deny your submission. It could be denied for the smallest mistake. I do not know however, if you can re-submit your app for review.

Apple’s iPhone SDK is only for OS/X (Mac) and will not run on Windows. You could try and spend hours getting a slow and potentially pre-destined-to-crash VM, or you could go the OSx86 route and install OS/X 10.5.x on your Windows machine. I went the hackintosh route, I installed a copy of Leopard on my laptop, splitting the space reserved for Windows 7 to my new HFS+ formatted partition. Then you have to go worry about finding working drivers for each device on the system. In my case, the distribution I used had LAN and GFX drivers already included. I had to go find the right audio driver and modify the NVIDIA driver to get my external monitor to work. My sound driver isn’t perfect. I get static through the speakers when I raise the volume up enough. My Intel 4965 ABGN WLAN card doesn’t have a fully working driver and most likely never will. So I’m stuck using my old XBOX 802.11g gaming adapter connected to my Ethernet card. What’s wrong with using the gaming adapter, you ask. Well for starters, it isn’t wireless.. It uses an external power adapter, so I’d have to find a close enough (available/working) power socket. I’d have to lug this big black adapter + a power cord + my laptop + the laptop’s power cord + an Ethernet cable = PITA. Don’t get me wrong, I like the OSx86 project. I just hate the fact that drivers are scarce because there are so many different types of hardware and so little driver developers. So much less for the OSx86 project than say.. Windows.

Anyway, I love the iPhone. I just hate the way Apple setup the developer aspect. They made a lot of mistakes when they laid it out the way they did. They don’t care, and it will never change.