I think the notification system will work out. Apparently you can use it to play a sound, "badge" an icon, or display a custom message. That sounds limited, but I think it completely encompasses the vocabulary of the user interface. Think of how Apple's programs work, and the only think I think of immediately missing is an action button or two on the "display a custom message", perhaps that will be there, maybe not, I can still attract the user to interact with my program and that makes me happy.
As one of the 21,000 "dicked over" developers, I am still hopeful that they will open the floodgate enough days before July 11th to let me deploy on Day 1 and stake my ground against any potential competitor before they are the incumbent. The nature of my application makes the emulator mostly useless, but I have written a suite of algorithms and when I learn the performance characteristics of the iPhone hardware I will be able to choose and tune rapidly to deliver the best user experience. It has been a lot of extra work that I could better spent if I could have chosen and tuned along the way, but I also understand their desire to limit load from the beta program. I suppose what I would have done differently is make a track for people whose applications need to run natively and made room for them... but that would probably be abused.
I don't see that mobile carriers got kicked in the teeth here. AT&T appears to be loaning you $200 for a stream of 24 monthly $10 payments. That works out to about a 15% return on their money. Then read the articles about AT&T no longer paying a monthly share to Apple and justifying it "because they are using that to subsidize the phones". I call bullshit. The $10/mo more than covers the $200 subsidy.
Why didn't you run the program on a jailbroken iphone? The performance characteristics/quirks/etc would be far more similar to the "official iphone" vs. the simulator
That's a good idea, probably better than the way I have gone. If I personally knew anyone with a jailbroken iPhone and I saw that the process of loading and running was wrinkle free I might do it. I've recently spent far too much time wrestling strange build and run environments to want to get involved in another. At least my work on the algorithm suite has improved my understanding of the problem and possibly my solution. Time spent wrestling with a platform is mostly lost.
What makes anyone think 3G costs more to operate than edge? As I understand it 3G is more bandwidth efficient than edge which makes it able to serve more bits and handle more calls with fewer towers. Presumably consumption will rise a bit with faster page loads, but I don't think they'll be installing 50% more towers to justify the 50% price hike on data. Can I leave my iPhone 3G in edge mode (we saw the slider) and not pay the extra $10? I doubt it.
Calling the extra $10 a 3G upgrade is one more bit of mirror in the smoke.
I'm happy to pay $10 more per month to get 3G even without the carrier discount on the hardware, regardless of whether or not it costs the carrier more to provide 3G service. But I can only imagine upgrading their infrastructure to provide 3G took a significant investment and I can't blame the carrier for trying to recover their costs by charging more.
As one of the 21,000 "dicked over" developers, I am still hopeful that they will open the floodgate enough days before July 11th to let me deploy on Day 1 and stake my ground against any potential competitor before they are the incumbent. The nature of my application makes the emulator mostly useless, but I have written a suite of algorithms and when I learn the performance characteristics of the iPhone hardware I will be able to choose and tune rapidly to deliver the best user experience. It has been a lot of extra work that I could better spent if I could have chosen and tuned along the way, but I also understand their desire to limit load from the beta program. I suppose what I would have done differently is make a track for people whose applications need to run natively and made room for them... but that would probably be abused.
I don't see that mobile carriers got kicked in the teeth here. AT&T appears to be loaning you $200 for a stream of 24 monthly $10 payments. That works out to about a 15% return on their money. Then read the articles about AT&T no longer paying a monthly share to Apple and justifying it "because they are using that to subsidize the phones". I call bullshit. The $10/mo more than covers the $200 subsidy.