Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Software, Apple, Developer, iPhone
ApolloIM creator interviewed on iPhone development
Chris F was kind enough to send along his long (and dare I say, a little silly-- look at that "cupcake deliciousness growth over time" graph at the bottom) interview with Alex Schafer, creator of what Erica called "the first native IM client for the iPhone," ApolloIM. After a short chat about the game that's got my vote for Game of the Year, Portal, they get into how Alex does his developing and how ApolloIM came together.He calls IM the "one glaring omission from the iPhone," and says that while they're taking their time making sure things are just right (not to mention that he's got the sword over his head of third-party development), they're planning to come up with a product that fills that role of IM on the iPhone. Whatever Apple's plan for third parties turns out to be (Schafer says he's hoping for at least a socket and "20k of r/w space" for Apollo to work), he says his team is doing as much in advance as they can.
Definitely an interesting interview to check out. I hope Schafer gets his 20k and more-- instant messenging is definitely the thing I miss most on the iPhone as well.


![TUAW [Cafepress]](http://www.blogsmithmedia.com/www.tuaw.com/media/tuaw-cafepress-promo.png)


Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
DistortedLoop said 8:39AM on 11-09-2007
I don't want to put any ideas in AT&T's head, but if they wanted to stop IM traffic over the EDGE network, perhaps to force more SMS use, couldn't they just block data packets over the network that IM uses? Land based ISPs are doing it with bit torrent packets, what's to prevent AT&T from killing all IM traffic that doesn't go over http?
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Jacob Lukas said 8:54AM on 11-09-2007
@DistortedLoop:
MSN over HTTP? I don't know if ApolloIM can do it, but Adium can, so it's certainly possible.
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Jim said 11:02AM on 11-09-2007
I LOVEEEEE Apollo IM, but really this guy comes across as a huge douche bag. I witnessed the development of apollo in their irc channel and really when it comes down to it, without their ENTIRE team - Apollo wouldn't be anything. Does he mention any of them once?
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Chris said 11:11AM on 11-09-2007
@Jim Yep, he mentions his team
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benjamin said 12:47PM on 11-09-2007
why does your app crash over EDGE??? Make it work!
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Samuel said 1:08PM on 11-09-2007
No mate, I'd say the one glaring omission would be the lack of GPS. I'm sure that'll have its part to play with IMing
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starkruzr said 2:54PM on 11-09-2007
MobileChat is much, much less crashy than Apollo in my experience.
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Jon Wise said 5:22PM on 11-09-2007
ya too bad Apollo IM sucks...
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Tom said 9:34AM on 11-10-2007
Why does the ApolloIM site say this project is cancelled?
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