when talking to the press, because of a nondisclosure agreement
Apple has imposed, which aims to prevent developers from spilling
too much about the new iPhone OS before it’s available en masse to
consumers.
“I haven’t counted all the new APIs, but from what I can tell,
Apple wasn’t kidding when they announced over 1,000 SDK
enhancements,” says iPhone developer Brian Gorby. “Many of the
new APIs build upon existing APIs, no longer requiring developers to
roll their own solutions to certain problems.
“In one new feature I’m adding to Tiny Violin, the amount of code
I had to write went from about 50 lines to five.”
The team at Zynga, creators of Live Poker and Word Scramble,
agree. “There are so many new opportunities for our apps being
provided by OS 3.0. Notifications will allow us to make the games
much more social and reflect some of the mechanics that have
worked so well for us with social-network games. For games like
Live Poker, the ability to make smaller purchases of chips and gifts
will allow us to normalize pricing and give gamers more options,”
explains Brandon Barber, Zynga’s vice president of marketing.
But not all developers are ga-ga over every new feature. “I’m a
bit skeptical about introducing paid add-ons to games,” says Kelli
Noda, the brains behind Zombieville. “Generally, gamers tend to
look at such things with disdain, particularly when they’ve grown
accustomed to free updates.”
Other developers, like head coder Simon Edis of Ezone, intend to be
“very careful” about the implementation of in-app purchasing. “The
way we plan to use it is to create 99-cent apps that come with a lot of
built-in value...and then upsell players in-game with expansion packs.”
As it does with any OS, Apple will continue to tweak iPhone 3.0
right up to its official summer release—most likely adding a few
surprises along the way.
Hendrik Kueck, creator of photo manipulator ColorSplash, is
hoping Mail stops “aggressively” compressing photos before they’re
sent, but he’s still excited about one of the lesser-touted features of
OS 3.0: in-app email, which will “allow users to directly email their
creations to their friends.”
And just about everyone is looking forward to the long-overdue
push notification—including Noel Llopis, who plans to use it to
remind Flower Garden users when their plants need watering, and
Patrick Alessi, who’s experimenting with push to enhance his CNotes
app: “Maybe every morning, you get a push with all red-flagged
items,” Alessi says.
Game developers like Joe Wee of Chillingo rightfully see
peer-to-peer multiplayer support creating a more “connected
and persistent” experience for iPhone gamers. But even non-game app developers are finding ways to take advantage of the
enhancements. For example, Gary Fung, creator of Typing Genius, is
working on a “competitive mode” for his 99-cent iPhone keyboard
and emoji utility.
But for some developers, 1,000 new features are about 1,000
more than they need.
“I am sure that OS 3.0 will be great,” says X-Plane developer Austin
Meyer. “We still have more free upgrades and more products planned
...but we can release them on the iPhone as is.”—Michael Simon
ONLINE EXCLUSIVE! We’ve got more exciting app previews from
iPhone developers on MacLife.com. See
www.maclife.com/ iPhone_3dotO_preview.
Snappy Touch Flower
Garden developer Noel
Llopis says adding push
notifications to Flower
Garden, alerting users
that their plants need
watering, will keep their
digital gardens greener.
Future versions of Zynga Live Poker for the
iPhone could feature even more options for
buying chips, sending gifts of drinks, food, or
cigars to fellow players, and so on.
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