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Posts tagged with "developers"

Going to WWDC? Find The Perfect Party With This App

In about 20 days from now, the city of San Francisco will see thousands of knowledge-hungry Mac and iOS developers arriving from all parts of the globe to attend the WWDC, Apple’s annual developer event that this year officially kicks off on June 6. With Apple showcasing the next version of iOS and Mac OS X Lion on stage, plus other cloud-related services we’ve heard about in the past weeks, there’s the chance this year’s WWDC is going to be one of those to be remembered for years to come. Not to mention the Apple Design Awards, for the first time counting both Mac and iOS applications that provided an example of excellence and developer craftsmanship throughout the past months of App Store availability.

I’ve never been to WWDC, but I have a pretty solid feeling it’s not just about Steve Jobs, Forstall’s perennial surprised face, Cocoa and sessions. From what I hear, there are some wild parties and dinners going down in San Francisco during the WWDC. After all, those tired developers deserve some fun after a day of CoreAnimation training and ADAs tension, right? Meet Party List, a free iPhone app that everyone who’s going to WWDC this year should download. The app? It basically gives you a list of “all the hippest, kewlest, craziest, and down right awesomest parties” happening during WWDC. Then, you save a party to your favorites and you go there – simple. To promote and event you’re organizing, just get in touch with the developers and ask them to include it in the app. That’s it.

Party List is free – attending the WWDC, of course, is not. I won’t be in San Francisco to record my experiences with developers, parties and drinks with Scott Forstall, but if I could come, I’d certainly put Party List on my homescreen. The app even supports push notifications – now, here’s something I wish Apple will fix come June 6.

Lodsys Vs. iOS Developers Patent Claim FAQ→

Lodsys Vs. iOS Developers Patent Claim FAQ

FOSS Patents has posted a lengthy and interesting FAQ-style blog post detailing many of the implications behind Lodsys’ patent infringement claims against iOS developers:

8. How can an app dev be liable for just implementing Apple’s in-app purchase API?

Some developers have pointed out that basically they just implement Apple’s in-app purchase API. So they wonder whether this can expose them to liability for patent infringement or is actually something Apple needs to take care of.

The whole thing is a must read if you’re interested in knowing more about Lodsys, iOS developers, the implementation of in-app purchases, and Apple. Just to recap: Lodsys first sent a number of legal notices to some independent iOS developers claiming they were infringing a patent for in-app purchase buttons and upgrade links. After all the debates that quickly spread online, Lodsys explained why they are doing what they’re doing and how much they’re asking for licensing fees. This morning, more developers – including The Iconfactory – received Lodsys’ notices and The Guardian reported Apple’s legal department was looking into Lodsys’ claims.

Update: Nilay Patel at This Is My Next offers one of his usual breakdowns, this time outlining the history of Lodsys and original patent inventor Dan Abelow, detailing a possible outcome for Apple in this whole story:

So now you know almost everything you need to know about Lodsys, Dan Abelow, and ’078 — he’s a serial inventor with a number of patents, and he sets up shell companies to collect royalties on them. It’s legit on paper, but it’s definitely shady and disheartening to see Lodsys go after small developers for such tiny amounts of money. But it makes a certain kind of evil sense: Lodsys can’t engage Apple directly because of Cupertino’s existing ’078 license, so it’s going after app developers as a way to pressure Apple into re-working the agreement to cover apps. I would imagine that such an expansion will cost Apple a pretty penny, wouldn’t you?

In that context, the single most critical factor in this situation is the exact scope of Apple’s license to ’078. It’s entirely possible Apple’s license already covers app developers and Lodsys is just trying to double-dip, but we simply can’t know that without seeing the license and fully evaluating Lodsys’s patent claims against Apple’s code. I can only assume Apple’s lawyers are busily investigating that right now — and I’d imagine the various iOS developers that received letters from Lodsys are impatiently waiting to hear from them.

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Apple “Investigating” Lodsys Claims, Official Response Later This Week

Following Lodsys’ response to the debate surrounding the patent infringement claims they sent to a number of iOS developers last week, The Guardian reports Apple is “actively investigating” these claims, with an official response expected to come from the company later this week.

Apple’s legal department is understood to be “actively investigating” claims by Lodsys, a patent holding company based in Texas, to have a claim against iPhone and iPad developers who use in-app purchase systems. So far Lodsys has served papers on about a dozen iOS developers who it says are infringing its patent 10/732,102, which it bought in 2004 from the inventor, who filed it in the 1990s, covering user interaction over a network.

Apple is not expected to respond to the claims, which have been passed to it by affected developers, until later this week.

Last week, Lodsys sent legal notices to some iOS developers who were using in-app purchases and upgrade buttons in their iPhone and iPad applications, claiming the implementation of this kind of upgrade process was patented and subject to licensing fees. The debate the followed the blog posts and tweets from developers who didn’t understand how it was possible to infringe a patent while using Apple’s own SDK quickly made Lodsys write a series of blog posts detailing how the company was already licensing the patent to Apple and Google, but not to indie developers. Lodsys is asking for a 0.575% fee of US revenue over the period the technology was implemented, giving developers 21 days to decide whether or not they want to license the patent. Lodsys also explained that Apple can’t extend the rights of the patent to third-party developers, in spite of its intention to build a eco-system revolving around a single SDK to write software for iPhones and iPads. This left many developers wondering whether in-app purchases were still a feasible option, considering Apple’s 30% cut off every transaction and the newly discovered legal implications.

In the meantime, Lodsys is sending more legal notices to other developers, with The Iconfactory apparently receiving one this morning as tweeted by co-founder Talos Tsui and James Thomson, the first developer who got hit with Lodsys’ patent claims. Notably, The Iconfactory has the popular Twitter client Twitterrific for iPhone and iPad available in the App Store, featuring an upgrade button to remove advertising with in-app purchase.

Lodsys Responds to iOS Developers Over Patent Infringement Notices

Last Friday there was news that a number of independent developers for the iPhone and iPad had received legal warnings that they were violating patents that Lodsys owned. Suffice to say it sparked an outcry from developers, users and commentators; few had anything nice to say of Lodsys. Well today they have responded to a number of criticisms on their website in a series of Q&A posts. The key patent in question was that of Dan Abelow who sold his portfolio of patents to Lodsys back in 2004.

Its first response was in regards to the fairly frequented notion that Lodsys is a “parasite, troll, should die etc.”, they respond to this in saying that they are just like any other company who sells a product or service – they try to “get value for the assets it owns”. They write in the post “threats and irrationality don’t help.  In particular, the death threats are seriously uncool.”

As for the question of the patents being “too broad”, Lodsys notes how easy it is too look back in hindsight, saying “of course this is how everyone is going to do it”. In response to patent licensing being unethical and similar questions, they say that it seeks an economic return to sell their patent assets, completely legal and furthermore citing the notion that patent licensing encourages future invention.

As for why they directly contacted developers and not Apple, they say it is because Apple (as well as Microsoft and Google) has already licensed the patents in question. They claim that they cannot provide the third party developers with the rights to the patent, and Apple hasn’t approached Lodsys for the purpose of attaining an eco-system-wide license for the patents. They say their goal is not to prevent developers from using the technology, rather that it is to popularize it and charge a relatively small license for it.

They claim in multiple areas that they specialise in efficiently selling rights to patents, they say that by having a consistent price model it also means independent developers aren’t unfairly disadvantaged.

As for how much developers will need to pay, Lodsys clarifies that the in-app purchasing mechanism for example would cost a developer 0.575% of their US revenue over the period the technology was implemented until the patent expires. It gives an example of an app that earns US$1 million in one year would pay US$5,750.

[Via TheNextWeb]

You can read all of Lodsys’ responses on their blog.

Xcode 4.1 Developer Preview 5 Released

Alongside an update to Mac OS X Lion Developer Preview, Apple also released a new build of Xcode 4.1 to developers. Xcode 4.1 Developer Preview 5 is available now for download in the Mac Dev Center, and requires the installation of Lion Developer Preview 3, released through Software Update.

This is a pre-release version of Xcode 4.1 for both Mac and iOS development. This release requires Mac OS X Lion Developer Preview 3 and includes iOS SDK 4.3.

The first build of Xcode 4.1 was released in February after the first Lion Developer Preview, with new builds following the release of Lion Developer Preview updates.

Apple Releases Lion Developer Preview 3

Apple just released a new OS X Lion Developer Preview. The update weighs at around 1.07 GB and it’s available now in the Software Update control panel. It is recommended for all users running Lion DP 2, and Apple’s Mac Dev Center seems to confirm the new build is indeed Lion Developer Preview 3, although the direct link on the Dev Center still goes back to Lion Developer Preview 2. It appears Apple is now seeding Lion DP update only via Software Update.

Mac OS  X Lion Developer Preview 3 is now available via Software Update for systems running developer preview 2 update 2.

 

In the past weeks, Apple released via Software Update two updates for Lion Developer Preview 2; these latest updates to Lion DP 2 are needed in order to install Developer Preview 3 through Software Update. Read more

First Build of Mac OS X 10.6.8 Seeded to Developers

As noted by MacRumors, Apple has seeded the first build of Mac OS X 10.6.8 to developers. The new build, which carries number 10K521, confirms there’s room for at least one more Snow Leopard update before the release of 10.7 Lion, scheduled for this summer.

According to people familiar with the new build, focus areas for 10.6.8 are AirPort, Graphics Drivers, Mac App Store, Networking, QuickTime and VPN. Apple released the last public version of Snow Leopard, Mac OS X 10.6.7, on March 21, including fixes for Mac App Store, SMB servers and Back to my Mac.

iOS Devs Hit by Patent Infringement Notices For In-App Purchases

Here’s an interesting news that’s making the rounds of Twitter this morning, and it appears to be spreading quickly among iOS developers. As first reported by James Thomson, indie iOS and Mac developer of DragThing and PCalc, he woke up this morning to find a “very worrying threat of patent infringement lawsuit” in a FedEx parcel. While Thomson won’t say the name of the company that is threatening to sue him before he gets a reply from Apple Legal on the matter, what’s really curious is the reason behind the alleged patent infringement: it’s not the app Thomson developed, apparently it’s the in-app purchase system he chose to implement in PCalc Lite. Apple’s own in-app purchase payment method, certainly not created by Thomson. This developer, and others with him, are receiving notices from a “patent troll” who’s going after indie developers for using IAP, rather than Apple. The legal threat is worrisome as this company claims developers are given 21 days to license the patent they’re infringing. But this patent, these developers say, it’s not about intellectual property for apps – again, it’s about the payment system. Which Apple created, not the developers.

Looking at the tweets from Thomson, this story doesn’t really make sense. Someone is threatening to sue indie developers because they’re using Apple’s in-app purchase? If so, wouldn’t it be appropriate to sue Apple, which invented the system? And why going after the indie devs in the first place – just to cause anxiety and doubt for the fear of a lawsuit? Read more

15% Of App Launches Happen Offline

According to a recent study by mobile analytics firm Localytics, 15 percent of applications for mobile devices (we assume these include iOS and Android handsets) are launched while a phone is offline, out of 3G / 4G / WiFi range. By analyzing data sent to their servers by apps that integrate Localytics’s framework in their code and comparing the app’s launch time with the delay in receiving the data (Localytics works in real time), the firm came to the conclusion 15% of apps are opened while a device can’t connect to the Internet.

Localytics records if the app is used while offline or online and can report if the connection is via 3G, Edge or WiFi. Localytics is also able to determine whether an app was actually used while online or offline by looking for large differences in the time between an app being opened and analytics data being uploaded. Having done so across the thousands of phone and tablet apps using Localytics, with over 10 million app starts per day, we found that about 15% of all app launches were made without Internet access–customer engagement that would be missed using web-centric analytics tools.

This, of course, is a major problem for app developers and something that will, once again, sparkle the discussion between evangelists of mobile web apps and those who believe native apps are the future of smartphones and tablets. A native app’s obvious advantage, in fact, should be the possibility to always display some kind of content even when in offline mode, as the app doesn’t run in the browser and thus shouldn’t require an internet connection to visualize information on screen. Indeed, several apps make great use of local caching systems – such as Instapaper and Spotify – that allow users to “download” content to consume later when the device will likely be offline – for example, during a subway trip or on an airplane. Many times, however, I’ve stumbled upon applications that in spite of their “native” nature are unable to meet these basic requirements of always-available offline access; too many iPhone and iPad apps are effectively nothing but local interfaces to web apps and tools that can’t display content without an internet connection. On the other hand, there are also applications that don’t let users cache content (presumably the best way to access anything, anywhere at anytime), but still visualize content while offline and transmit changes back to their servers when the device comes back online.

15 percent is a big number, and I’d be curious to know the detailed percentage of iOS apps by device Vs. Android apps by device –if Localytics will ever release it. On a broader level, it’s undeniable developers should do more than throw up a blank page on screen when the Internet fails. Apps like Instapaper, The New York Times, Spotify and Read It Later are great examples; others should do more, too. [via GigaOM]