WWDC
I’m in San Francisco this week for the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference, soaking up tips and tricks for developing on the iPhone, enjoying the company of fellow developers, and taking advantage of the huge number of Apple engineers and many other interesting people in attendance. The week has been a blast so far, and I’m looking forward to even more before heading home to apply everything I’ve learned. If you’re at the conference and would like to say hello, shoot me a message on Twitter – I’d love to talk to you.
July 2nd, 2008 at 9:25 am
Hey Matt, any news on a new version on the horizon (Or even a native app in the works?) The system preferences idea you’ve mentioned before would be great.
Cheers
Dan
July 2nd, 2008 at 9:44 am
Yep, both a new version and native app are in the works. I don’t have any set release dates for these as I don’t want to rush them, but they’re definitely on the way.
July 2nd, 2008 at 6:14 pm
There are several screenshots of the upcoming iTunes 7.7 displaying an option to use the iPhone or iPod Touch as a remote. Do you that Apple will be releasing a native app that duplicates your efforts, or do you think that those options are being added to iTunes to allow 3rd-party apps like yours to work more smoothly?
7.7 screen shots:
http://gizmodo.com/5021378/iphone-20-video-walkthrough-and-itunes-77-confidential-screenshots
The readme file in the 7.7 pre-release seems to indicate that Apple themselves will be releasing the app for free on the app store:
http://www.macrumors.com/2008/06/26/apple-to-offer-itunes-remote-control-app-for-iphone-and-ipod-touch/
July 2nd, 2008 at 11:51 pm
Until something is actually released it’s hard to say what Apple will or won’t do. One would hope that they would not simply replace a segment of applications from the community with their own solution, but it wouldn’t be the first time. We’ll just have to see what actually shows up on the 11th.
July 3rd, 2008 at 1:36 pm
That’s pretty crummy, in my opinion, that they didn’t at least offer (with an NDA) to give you a heads-up on what’s going on. It discourages people like you from putting in the effort to fill a gap like that in their functionality, if there’s a track-record of them just clobbering your work with their own free replacement out of the blue.
I mean, I’m happy that they will be providing this thing (if indeed they are) – I was looking forward to a native app that does what Signal does, but perhaps taking advantage of the standard iPhone-iPod UI (e.g. coverflow, etc) which you were understandably unable to do when limited to the web app. I just think it would have been classy to give you some advance warning / information / job offer / etc, especially since you played by their rules, in terms of not releasing a native app for jailbroken phones.
July 3rd, 2008 at 7:24 pm
I can’t argue with that!
I’m not going to jump to any conclusions until we see what if anything is actually offered, but if Apple has essentially made a native app clone of Signal then I certainly agree that it would have been nice to get a note, heads-up, or something, especially considering the effort that has already gone into the native version of Signal. I can’t say that I’m surprised that they wouldn’t though – talking to me about an upcoming product doesn’t get them anything, and stepping on one indie developer doesn’t really cost them anything either. For all its innovation and focus on the customer in its products, when it comes to the business Apple is a lot like any other.
That’s not to say that I think Signal’s existence hinges on this potential competitor. As an independent app Signal will always be able to do things that Apple can’t or won’t, and I’ve had a lot of ideas for the product that I think could provide some exciting new capabilities. And who knows, Apple’s efforts in this space may mean that they’ll finally fix some of the remote control-related bugs I’ve had open for years
July 7th, 2008 at 11:34 am
There are tons of examples of people using Apple’s ideas as a springboard to creating some great apps – look at Coverflow for example.
Matt, hopefully iTunes7 will give you the frameworks you need to be able to talk to certain parts of iTunes a little more directly than say the accessibility route currently used.
Look at it this way – do Apple have a blog like this where we can interact with their developers… That’s why apps like Signal are relevant even when the big boys do wade in themselves. If Apple do implement anything I’d like the ability to use the iPhone as an airtunes streamer itself so I can plug speakers into it when outside and stream anything not just what I remembered to sync to m phone.
July 8th, 2008 at 12:55 am
And customer interaction is without a doubt one of the best parts of being an indie developer! I’ll be sure to follow up here with some other thoughts once we get a chance to see what actually shows up later this week.