Developers offer free iPhone application packaging
Today developers Nicholas "Drudge" Penree and Shaun "Ste" Erickson have announced unlimited free Installer.app packaging for iPhone application developers. If Installer.app sounds familiar, you might recall that a few weeks back we posted about the Installer.app utility. Installer.app is an iPhone-based package manager from NullRiver.com. It allows you to download and update iPhone application packages over EDGE and WiFi connections directly from your iPhone home screen.
The problem with Installer.app packaging is that it's fussy and requires a lot of dotted-i's and crossed-t's and for many programmers who are busy improving their software, it's an extra step that can easily get overlooked. Enter Penree and Erickson. They are offering to bundle up your application and host it on either Penree's Conceited Software or Erickson's smxy.org.
These services are a big win for both the iPhone user base and the iPhone application developer community. They allow programmers to focus on their applications and the users to enjoy the fruits of their labors. Donations are welcome at both sites.
Both Penree and Erickson are considering expanding this service to include the new PXL/Breezy package management tool in the near future.
Update: Want to put Installer.app on your iPhone the easy way? Read our post about TappApp, the Universal Binary Installer.app-installer. It's very simple to use.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Aron Trimble said 11:28AM on 8-28-2007
So does this mean we should start seeing a flood of new apps showing up when Installer.app is refreshed? I sure hope so!
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Ste said 11:34AM on 8-28-2007
If folks write them, we'll package them. :)
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Aron Trimble said 11:36AM on 8-28-2007
Ste, love the app - you guys have done a tremendous job with the iPhone community.
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WickDC said 11:52AM on 8-28-2007
Many many thanks to you both!!!!
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dcartguy said 12:17PM on 8-28-2007
I love the app as well. Its become part of my daily routine. Thank you for working so hard on developing for the iPhone. Keep it up!
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GQmacguy said 1:34PM on 8-28-2007
Ste, keep it coming man! I'll def be clicking on you guys' "donations" link! It is well worth it.
As dcartguy said, it has become part of my daily, if not every time I look at the icon! ;-)
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PSM said 1:40PM on 8-28-2007
I'm not an iPhone owner yet, but when I am it will be because of guys and gals like these making the iPhone what it should have been. This community is amazing!
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jordan said 6:34PM on 8-28-2007
Hey Ste: Who do I gotta pay to write a two-player backgammon app?!? Seriously, I'm surprised we haven't seen more games yet. Also, I'm loving the GRE study aid!
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Josh said 8:43PM on 8-28-2007
Good to see open doors for iphone developer platform.
Josh
http://www.egold-directory.com
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chad said 9:13PM on 8-28-2007
a few apps I want to see...
1. a downloadable app like onetrip (the shopping list manager)
2. VNC
3. MMS
4. a dictionary/thesaurus
5. a unit converter
6. some sort of clipboard type thing
7. yellow pages
8. flight info
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reba said 9:36PM on 8-28-2007
Okay I installed this and it did not seem to do anything? I did the ring tones and the iphone doom, but where do I find them....please email reba@fallawake.com
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Bryan Pearson said 5:21PM on 8-29-2007
I tried to install AppTapp, but it timed out when it was trying to download the Firmware. What gives?
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sublime said 4:24AM on 9-11-2007
I must say, I've been having a lot of fun with all of this. I have reached an impasse though (which will likely be addressed in the next few days/hours with the way things are being developed), and wanted to see what the community thinks.
I have been using installer.app. I found some complaints about it's closed nature, and then found the PXL approach. ibrickr even has a mobile safari plugin that allows it to work via the iphone browser with these sites:
http://iphone.exploit.org/pxl/
http://pxl.ibrickr.com/
(I really like that, the iphone shouldn't need to be tethered after jailbreak and SSH installation IMHO)
My impasse is installer.app and PXL (via ibrickr) do not seem to 'share' with each other what is installed. Also, I didn't see an easy way to check for updates to PXL's via the MobileSafari of my phone. (yes, I know ibrickr will handle PXL's, but I run *nix and nothing seems to handle the iPhone there so I want it all onboard-ish)
Is there a 'plan' in the works to accommodate that such as:
- Make them 'know' about each other?
- Open installer so (us) open source people do not treat it like a red headed step child?
- Make a _new_ way that everyone can agree upon?
Perhaps PXL's guys and installer.app guys should do lunch? I'd help pay for it :)
For those hunting around, I did find this page on adding sources to installer.app (sorry open sourcers for fueling that fire); look down the page for his sig where he includes a modified PackageSources.plist:
http://www.modmyiphone.com/forums/showthread.php?p=20475
This adds two more sources (pronounced THEMES!). (It would be nice if his themes were incorporated into iswitch, though, so you could do it on the fly and all.)
I guess what I'm getting at is this is almost starting to seem like the distro wars in *nix. I don't want 'one ring to rule them all' *cough, microsoft*, but it would be nice if we had something to centralize:
- 'sources' (whatever those are/become)
- 'themes' (ditto)
- and methods to put them in place.
Oh, and if Santa's reading this, I want:
- Full VPN not just PPTP/L2TP.
- Linux/Unix methods of connecting to the phone to jailbreak as well as a linux PXL client. I'd rather not have to borrow friend/families windows or Mac systems to manipulate the phone.
- 'Map' of what itunes does so I can use SSH and mysqllite (?) to put my own music/videos in place.
- Ability to save files/attachments (ROMs, eBooks, MP3s, vids, so I can get add these things without SSH on a private wireless or with port forwarding)
- copy-n-paste (please...for the love of I'm tired of remembering URLs that have not been mod_rewritten)
Basically, I want the iPhone to be a laptop replacement now that laptops are desktop replacements; it'd increase the user base, which would increase demand, and then of course increase available content/toys/etc.
Please don't take this as complaints. Every bit of this is incredible, and makes me VERY happy with my decision to buy one.
Oh, and for those who want to manually convert their own videos (*nix users) ffmpeg will do it with this (and you can then access via HTTP from you local webserver, or start a website and share vids for iPhone users):
ffmpeg -vcodec mpeg4 -b 2560 -qmin 3 -qmax 5 -i SourceVideo.avi SourceVideo.mp4
It worked for a few things, but might not work for all and does require the 'non-free' codecs to be installed. Also, that is using what seemed to be the highest specs from Apples site, so you might want to decrease the bitrate for non-local network purposes.
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RUDY said 1:23AM on 9-21-2007
ID LIKE TO SE MORE FREE SOFTWARE FOR IPHONE
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Sandrock said 4:38PM on 10-27-2007
Alright, so i am loving this app. in short, however I was wondering if anyone is writing a Latin Flash Card program to run in conjunction with the iFlashCards..?
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