“3.3.1 — Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs.’”

This is most of all a stab in back of Adobe, who was planning to launch on the 12th April their new Flash CS5 that included a Flash-to-native compiler that now becomes… not so useful.

True evil stuff no?

http://daringfireball.net/2010/04/iphone_agreement_bans_flash_compiler

http://daringfireball.net/2010/04/why_apple_changed_section_331

Update: I was told that the particular bit I mentioned has been in for a while but has been extended to the following:

3.3.1–Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).”

They are restricting people to use a particular technology that is as valid as any other. And in that sense it is evil I think.

On the other hand, Apple had already made it clear they would not support Flash on the iPhone/iPad so I guess it is only natural that they oppose any attempt by Adobe to circumvent that.

Joel opened this edition of the Dev Days with a talk on Elegance and Beauty on software development. I felt this talk had an important message underneath: more functionality doesn’t mean increased complexity for the user if the right abstractions are used. As an example, consider the Amazon 1-click shopping. While some people advocate that “less is more” is about implementing less features it can also be regarded as implementing the right abstractions, in a way that the user doesn’t perceive the complexity under the hood.

Jörn Zaefferer then delivered what seemed to be a sales pitch on jQuery, rather than showing what gets him excited about it. Nevertheless, he showed what jQuery is all about and some of the new functionality in the library.

Eero Bragge talked about Qt and the feeling I got was the only reason this talk went in was because of the sponsorship. Enough said.

Joel then presented Fogbugz and what a nice product he has there. He gave a very nice overview of the product and got me excited to try it. There is a free subscription for students and startups so you might want to check if you apply.

Simon Willison then talked about Python and created a heatmap in a matter of minutes. Overall very nice his presentation and brought the feeling I have to explore Python again.

Nick Johnson presented the Google App Engine and created a small answer/question site in the cloud, also in minutes. Unfortunately what he presented was more or less what you get when following the tutorials on the subject, so for me there wasn’t really too much added value with this talk.

Christian Heilmann talked about the Yahoo! Developer tools, namely YQL. For me it was the best presentation of the day and he completely nailed it. I won’t get into details about YQL because I don’t want to dumb it down but everyone should take a few minutes and check what it is all about.

http://developer.yahoo.com/yql/

Chris Heilmann on the Yahoo! Developer tools (mp3)

http://tinyurl.com/yfoh3cc

www.youtube.com/watch?v=NI9QY8tJLGA

Some of the things that caught my eye.. they started back in 2000. Also I was reading about the technology and how it works. Fingerprinting the music is based on the spectrogram. The database is an hash table, where the key is the frequency. When it receives a fingerprint it doesn’t need to search all the songs. Still there is an immense amount of work involved in making the whole thing work. It’s fantastic what they have accomplished.

The People

Chris Barton, Philip Inghelbrecht, Dhiraj Mukherjee and Avery Wang.

Chris and Philip were still in Business School (at UC Berkeley in California) when they started Shazam. Dr. Avery Wang comes from Stanford University. Not sure about Dhiraj.

Shazam Founders on Twitter

The beauty of the Internet these days.. you can follow these guys on Twitter.

Chris Barton – @bartonsurfer

Philip Inghelbrecht – @Inghelbrecht

Dhiraj Mukherjee – @dhirajm

References:

• http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/07/13/iphone-app-review-shazam-helps-you-name-that-tune/
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shazam_(service)
• http://laplacian.wordpress.com/2009/01/10/how-shazam-works/
• http://www.ee.columbia.edu/~dpwe/papers/Wang03-shazam.pdf
• http://www.japaninc.com/mmw46

1.Twitterrific (I use Twitter a lot)
2. Skype
3. Google Earth
4. Fastlane Lite (nice car game)
5. Translator

Who about you? :-)

+ Purchasing new content from within an app
“You can now purchase a game that comes wiht 10 levels, and when you’re done playing those levels, you can purchase the next 10 levels for the game.”
All of it is tied into the iTunes Store. You’re asked for your iTunes password but you remain within the app.
Developer picks the price for in-app purchased items. Same 70 percent goes to developer, charing no credit card fees, and developers are still paid monthly. But: this is only for paid apps; free apps cannot charge for content.

+ Peer to Peer connectivity
Example: kids in the car and they want to play games back and forth.
iPhone 3.0 now has a standard system for finding other devices in the same area – no WiFi network needed.
Automatic discovery performed over Bluetooth.

+ Talk directly to an accessory
Example 1: iPhone can control the speaker’s EQ.
Example 2: About FM transmitters for cars, FM signal can now be controlled from the iPhone’s display.
Example 3: Talk with medical devices and accessories. iPhone apps can send data from medical devices straight to doctors.

+ Maps: Apple will allow downloadable content in apps
“We’re taking the heart of the Maps application and making it a public API so developers can embed that map in their apps.”
You can pinch and zoom, get satellite view, hybrid, standard map, add custom notes, use WiFi and cell triangulation.”
Even reverse geocoding.
Enables developers to use Core Location as the basis for turn by turn apps.
Can use WiFi and cell triangulation, but there’s one catch: “Bring your own maps.” Due to licensing, Apple cannot allow developers to use the Maps app tiles.

+ Push Notifications
Apple tested apps that ran in the bkg on BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, etc. “In all cases, standby time dropped by 80 percent or more.”
Using Push Notifications on iPhone, standby time only dropped by 23 percent when testing an IM app.
3rd party server pushes notifications through to Apple and to the user’s iPhone.
can push sounds, text alerts.
“The nice part about this is: it scales.”

Some other features:

+ Has a new email sheet so apps don’t have to quit
+ Proximity sensors, iPod library access.
+ Streaming audio and video over HTTP
+ Data detectors, built in VoIP APIs

On the cool side:

• the apps – you buy them of Apple App store using iTunes or directly via the phone very easily.
• software updates – with many mobiles if you get an error in the factory software the only way to get it fixed is to do a firmware upgrade, and you need to be a bit adventurous to do that and hope it works. With the iPhone it is very easy to upgrade the software and people are improving and reporting bugs every day.
• it’s a GPS, it’s a PDA, it’s a mobile phone, it’s an iPod.
• internet browsing, google earth, youtube, games, etc.
• you can ssh or remote connect from it.
• good integration with the Mac and Google, it syncs calendars, GMail accounts, etc.

On the not so cool side:

• the battery – it’s a GPS, it’s a PDA, it’s a mobile phone, it’s even an iPod but it is not magic :) That means the battery doesn’t last too long if you use it for internet browsing, google earth, youtube, etc. If you use it like a mobile phone it should last the same as a normal mobile but I haven’t test this (guess why). Nowadays I charge mine every two or three days depending on the usage. This is the only reason I see why it may not be the ideal thing for a traveller. Maybe you can work around this with a second battery?
• camera quality is so-so.

This is all I can remember but as you know there are a lot of reviews out there. Someone was telling me it doesn’t do photo sms’s but it is not something I use anyway. I can upload photos to Flickr or Picasa on the go with an app I have :-)

And apart from that, you’re always connected to the Internet, which is a new experience. Sure you can get the same thing with a Blackberry but … this is such a cool device really. You should just go to a shop and try it for a while. You’ll see.