Thursday, April 9, 2009

iPhone app developing First Glance

I haven't even gotten my iPhone yet which I ordered Tuesday and should get today, and I am already obscenely disgusted, to the point I might just return the device in the first 30 days and avoid the contract and "Early Termination Fee."

The used Mac I had bought to possibly get into developing for iPhone is no longer supported. Maybe I didn't look into it enough and it wasn't supported in the first version. I have to think about getting an Intel-based Mac. I have more than 4 Intel processors in machines that are fully functional, besides some in partial configs.

Using Windows PC with the same processor supported but not bought from Apple and not containing Apple OS, what about "anti-trust" and "free enterprise" so they not understand?

Why did an iPhone app post turn political? Because they made it political. They artificially limit the device's capabilities in order to create demand so that they can sell new devices every year for 2 or 3 hundred dollars. Either you pay more for the newer model actually using capabilities the old device had but now licensed in the OS or you commit to another long term contract and AT&T (monopoly on iPhone service) pays part of it (as their write-off to advertising) which is likely negotiated much less than what you would pay (or nothing at all considering the business AT&T gets in this exclusive monopoly).

I cannot recommend "jailbreaking" the device. I don't even have one yet. But shouldn't the consumer who paid so much money for the device be free to use all of the functionality of their device? That's really rhetorical but it apparently must be posed as a question. With the new Mac clones, they violate the terms of the OS license that it it not to be installed, used, or allowed to be used on machines not bearing the Apple brand. How absurd is that? Especially since they've begun exclusively using Intel processors, the PC monopoly of processors just now getting some competition after all these years.

Sadly the largest of corporations become more and more like the government. They pretend that they have the right to force consumers to give away Constitutional rights, as if they could be waived. For example giving up the right to sue started with credit cards and now filtered through every "service" contract. Some now add small claims court, as the minimal amount in the Constitution is low, but what of limits by small claims courts, the Constitution says nothing about limits.

What can we do? We can only vote with our wallets. Stop paying companies who require leaching agreements, including using credit cards even if you pay them off every month. It the convenience worth the loss of liberties?

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PS I forgot to bring up the documentation which contains hundreds of files many with hundres of pages that appear to be a competition on who can wrote the most content and say nothing. They try to be high level new user technical info, then they delve into low level UNIX structures. ???