Sep 25

Apple released the first Beta after iPhone OS 2.1 surprise release. As usual, we don’t have any additional information about when the push services will be made available for developers. As of now, the release note mentions that this release covers the compatibility (iPhone OS 2.1 ?) and bug fixes. I haven’t played it yet with the new SDK and hoping to see the things soon.

Version History:

Due to NDA, I cannot publish other things like README or Release Notes. Hope to see good things with this release and resolve lots of other issues with previous versions. Cut/Copy/Paste will be nice too !!!

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Sep 19

I decided to find a better way to get some money out of my 1.5 yrs efforts behind Apple’s iPhone. I tried simple apps and asked for a buck! People didn’t like it and few went too far. Then i made most of them in a lite version. Then I see a sudden change in Downloads. I realized one thing that, it’s all behind the value users expect out of $1.

I started thinking at AdMob to get implemented in my iPhone applications. I read a lot about it in the Web. It’s still early. There are few things which will discourage you to use it. One of the blogs which is very valuable on that topic is http://www.doipod.com/ipod/2008/08/admob-still-not.html. But I wanted to give a shot anyway.

I added the advertisement and posted it for Apple’s approval. Eventually, it will take another few more weeks to get it published and see the response. I will keep it posted here. But I am thinking that if this works (as it says), I may get some revenue coming back with the effort. Worst case i will get $1 a day which is another $300 overall !!!

Look at AdMob at http://www.admob.com/.


Jul 29

Man, being in iPhone SDK Developer program is like having no sex after getting married. Whole fun is gone. Its like fight club. “Do not talk about iPhone SDK…”. Anyway, i installed 2.1 on my phone and i had several issues on my phone. I desperately wanted to get back to iPhone OS 2.0. I tried all possible ways and this worked.

CRASH THE PHONE. Try to restore the phone back to 2.1 and disconnect it at the middle of it. Now connect iTunes and get the recent 2.0 update automatically when you sync.

Easy !!!


Jul 21

I liked the way the first generation phones were. I hardly had a crash or hang ups. Recently, Apple updated with iPhone OS 2.0. I installed several applications (which are free) to try it out myself. Whenever, i try to do anything to image related application or using internet resources in them (obviously, most of them are), the phone reboots itself.

I was worried about this before. This will be a great invite for hackers and competitors. I tried several application and most of them reboot my iPhone. I hope apple is looking at it for clearing out those show stoppers. It’s really ugly to see a Phone (~ $500) reboots itself handling simple Hello World style programs.

The OS didn’t look stable because of the memory management issues. It looks like it’s all because of Memory Management. Objective-C added lots of things for Garbage collection though. Hope to see Apple fixes the iPhone OS 2.0 with a new one iPhone OS 2.1 (assuming…).


Jul 15

What to consider before you buy iPhone 3G?


 

Battery is not exchangeable - So if you are using phone a lot and on travel, this will not work. You will be frustrated after few hours of usage.

MS Exchange support - We have to wait and see how many corporates are allowing its users to get push services on their new iPhone. My company doesn’t…

MobileMe - This is a killer. It was really unreliable. I had issues before and i cancelled for couple of years and got recently. There are some advantages if you are a beginner. But if you use computers often, i wouldn’t recommend buying it.

AppStore - There are some joke applications which take some time out of you. There are few good applications and i am not sure the direction where they are heading towards. There were more social web applications and tip calculators than anything else. And some of the paid applications are not that great. So far, there is no WOW on any free applications.

GPS - Drains your battery and no existing application to help you start getting thrilled. There are some “WHERE am i” applications and the accuracy is questionable as of now. I guess Apple will fix those issues soon. One of those applications show me that i am in Seattle even though i am in Boston (slight mistake !!!).

PUSH services - It’s not pushing upto the minute like blackberry. Instead it does it every 15 minutes. Well, do we still call this PUSH service ? I guess Apply must be working on this. Let’s wait and see.

There are lots of other glitches. I have the old iPhone and i exchanged it 4 times already and i am on the 5th phone. So, please get the warranty to keep it smooth (actually, one of those phones stopped working on the next of my 1st year warranty).

 

There are several other missing feature on the hardware, phone and software side. I guess they may come back with iPhone OS 3.0 for Christmas which can fix quite a set of bugs and features.


Jul 10

I have a chance today to download those free iPhone applications to my mobile which has 2.0 OS. I will add each application into my comments with pros and cons. Is it worth spending time with these apps? Are they working helping you decide buy paid applications? Is the UI will be completely difference on paid apps? I will do my best to give you those things before you consider buying them yourself.