iPhone Developer Program Rejections: Take 2

I was able to get the SDK...should I feel honored? hehe

Thanks very much for mentioning my article! I would like to clear up that I did not mean the "10 people" to come over as an exact number... It was meant more to signify an extremely small group of people. My contact did mention 10 people but used it loosely in a somewhat sarcastic manner implying... well... here just read part of the conversation:

FakeName (1:54:22 PM): ok well they gave us the SDK and said 99 bucks and you can test it on phones, so we all said cool take our 99 bucks we are ready to go, and then apple said this is going to a limited number of people, and by that we mean 10 people who we wont disclose

That is the only time the "10 people" were mentioned. I'm sorry for the confusion. My best guess is the the "10 people" were the big developers that were introduced during the press conference.

I hope this can settle your bogus-detector down a little bit...

(oh and also I never recieved anything telling me that this had been posted... that would be cool in the future)

The main problem is that Apple is being as clear as mud.

I've been working on my iPhone application since the SDK came out. I'm one of the lucky developers who's application works just fine with the features the simulator supports, so I've been making good progress. My application should be ready for some initial real-world testing on my own phone by the end of this week and I'll be ready for beta testing a couple weeks after that (early April).

The problem is, at this point I have absolutely no idea what Apple's plans are for letting people into the developer program so they can do this sort of testing.

I (and other developers) would be much less anxious is they had just come out and said something like "We started with 10 developers and will add 1000 each week (selected at random) until June, at which point all remaining developers will be accepted." Or "We're overwhelmed with requests. Please give us another week to get things sorted out."

Other people have mentioned not wanting to commit time to development if they don't know when (if) they will get into the developer program. I'm pretty confident everyone will get in eventually, but I have other concerns: I'll need to buy an iPod Touch and perhaps another iPhone for testing, but its pretty silly do so until I'm accepted into the developer program.

Its just very frustrating to not be able to plan any of this in advance. I see no reason why Apple can't just come out and be honest with developers about what they should expect. Shrouding things in secrecy just annoys the people that Apple needs for the App Store to be successful. The only silver lining for me is that perhaps this will reduce the competition a little bit, which would be nice (provided I can get into the developer program in time to test before the store launches).

Why the hate, Erica? like most people pointed out, this is a BETA program and they are asking you to wait, thats all.

"we have an exclusive limited beta -- and you're not part of it."

this was never said! i don't get why people keep repeating that.. apple sent out a letter to everyone saying "thanks for your interest, we will let you know when it is ready." nothing to see here.

Alternate article title: "Not everyone gets into the iPhone developer program *BETA* the second they sign up, TUAW continues to post articles bitching about it"

Seriously, this isn't the end of the world. You saw what large companies like EA did in two weeks. It's mid-March, and you're looking at a June release. It would take a single developer what, a month, to crank out all those "have to be available at launch" programs that most folks have done without? You all moaned and complained there was no SDK, now that there is one you've found something else to complain about (the process of developing).

Ever think that you actually *aren't* special little snowflakes?

Hey, a new iJailbreak came out three days ago (it's at iJailbreak.com), and nothing mentioned here? What's up with that? I thought you were all about the iPhone, Erica! It supports 1.1.4 on the iPod touch too, which is nice.

I got an invitation. If someone is interested in whats to come, you can contact me:
http://hacktheiphoneitouch.blogspot.com/

I f someone want to interview me im ok with that aswell.

What I want to know (and can't quite seem to find a clear answer on) is if I could jailbreak an iPhone or touch and use that to test things I've written with the beta SDK. I'm already running into limitations as to what can be done with the incomplete software on the simulator, not to mention some of the features (like location) that you can't really test at all. And how long do I have to wait to do that? Weeks? Months?

If someone could come up with a step-by-step process to do this, I think a lot of developers would jump on that while waiting for Apple to get its act together on the SDK beta.

Thanks for the clarification