From one of today's Macworld news:
"iPhone development seemed to take a back seat to Mac development at this year's annual C4 conference as developers found themselves frustrated with the platform."
That's exactly how I felt after I did a cost/benefit analysis on developing iPhone apps. Not the cost/benefits of Apple BUT ME. Yes, ME. And hence, I have not done much about it since taking the class in Singapore. The reasons are reflected are:
- rigid Apple control on approval process
- Apple mandated pricing and the 30% cut on your app
- The development kit coming out are so fast and then your "small shop" must conform to the new firmware before the App store will accept you.
- With the low price point on apps, how many can you sell before one recovers cost and make money? 99cents to 1.99. How many can a developer sells before recovering cost at about 150-180 dollars an hour? Well, if you have an entire sweat shop of iPhone developer in the Commieland, maybe.
I still have to eat and pay bills. That business model does not work for me. Apple, though, will work with so many new developers taking the place of others. Not too bad creating a "hard to get in" aura and then sit back and charge 30% handling fee. Last I remember, loan sharking is pretty close to that. And then, like the last episode of problem: Apple rejected a developer's app after it has collected thousands of dollars in "handling fee"; and then it made the developer to refund the "entire" cost of the app back to all customers because Apple rejects the apps AFTER it HAD approved it and collected the "fat".
A complete article can be viewed here: http://www.macworld.com/article/143054/2009/10/c4_iphone.html?lsrc=nl_mwnws_h_crawl
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