Written by Stephen van Egmond.
Filed under technology.
Friday, December 04 2009
We attended the Apple-run "iPhone Tech Talks" event in Toronto. The guys there asked us not to blog about it, so I won't, but I do have some reflections from the day.
Mobile application development is a long list of trade-offs. For instance, if you want accurate positioning, you will drain the user's battery. You can sync with servers out on the Internet, but the sheer number of ways your network connection can fall apart is amazing, which means your testing burden is enormous. There really is no free lunch.
Programming for the iPhone reminds me a lot of programming for the Commodore 64, back in my very geeky youth. The environment is very restricted in terms of the amount of CPU and disk, and you can't just ignore problems like using too much memory. The operating system will warn your application, and then kill it, if you're not careful.
Essentially, if you program the iPhone like you program a desktop or web application, you'll make an application that nobody likes, that earns you either an app store rejection or a lot of negative reviews. Much of the advice from the Tech Talks boils down to: don't write your software like you own the place.
