Mobile Executives on the iPhone's Software Distribution
Mobile executives at a Silicon Valley roundtable discussion exchanged some colorful comments about the iPhone and its impact on the mobile space. Some application developers, in particular, have been very pleased with the distribution model provided by Apple.
Pandora Media's free Radio application [App Store] acheived 350,000 installations on the iPhone within the first 6 days. Pandora plans on monetizing their iPhone application through ads in the future. In contrast, over the past 18 months, Pandora has only achieved 12,000 paid monthly subscriptions through all other mobile platforms. Apple is apparently the only provider that will allow developers to offer a free ad-supported distribution model.
Facebook and Loopt have also seen impressive adoption over the course of a week. Loopt claims the average iPhone user is 47 times more active on their network than other platforms.
When discussing the promise of Google's Android mobile platform, some developers were skeptical about the experience:
"I need Android like I need a hole in the head," said Pandora's Conrad, picturing it as "another OS platform that sits on top of buggy firmware, with devices with hundreds of manufacturers, with different characteristics."
Meanwhile, Loopt's CEO was optimistic at the relative openness of the Android platform, as compared to the iPhone platform.
Apple has been undergoing considerable criticism from developers about the ongoing non disclosure agreement (NDA). The NDA is preventing developers from publicly discussing iPhone development and is also holding up a number of iPhone programming books from being published.
Popular Stories
Game emulator apps have come and gone since Apple announced App Store support for them on April 5, but now popular game emulator Delta from developer Riley Testut is available for download. Testut is known as the developer behind GBA4iOS, an open-source emulator that was available for a brief time more than a decade ago. GBA4iOS led to Delta, an emulator that has been available outside of...
Last September, Apple's iPhone 15 Pro models debuted with a new customizable Action button, offering faster access to a handful of functions, as well as the ability to assign Shortcuts. Apple is poised to include the feature on all upcoming iPhone 16 models, so we asked iPhone 15 Pro users what their experience has been with the additional button so far. The Action button replaces the switch ...
The lead developer of the multi-emulator app Provenance has told iMore that his team is working towards releasing the app on the App Store, but he did not provide a timeframe. Provenance is a frontend for many existing emulators, and it would allow iPhone and Apple TV users to emulate games released for a wide variety of classic game consoles, including the original PlayStation, GameCube, Wii,...
A decade ago, developer Riley Testut released the GBA4iOS emulator for iOS, and since it was against the rules at the time, Apple put a stop to downloads. Emulators have been a violation of the App Store rules for years, but that changed on April 5 when Apple suddenly reversed course and said that it was allowing retro game emulators on the App Store. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel ...
The first approved Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) emulator for the iPhone and iPad was made available on the App Store today following Apple's rule change. The emulator is called Bimmy, and it was developed by Tom Salvo. On the App Store, Bimmy is described as a tool for testing and playing public domain/"homebrew" games created for the NES, but the app allows you to load ROMs for any...
