iOS iPhone 3.0 SDK: What Do You Want In It?

[HiRez]

I haven't really dived too deeply into iPhone programming yet, but I'm just curious what you iPhone devs most want to see included or updated (from a developer perspective, not things you want as a user). Some thoughts:

-- Core Data
-- Cocoa Bindings
-- A way to run background processes
-- Multi-column table view support (seems like so many people are using workarounds for this that it really needs to be in the API)
-- Standard copy & paste mechanism
-- Better mechanism for handling preferences (at least the ability for the user to quickly jump back and forth between an app and prefs in Settings)
-- More extensive Core Animation API
-- More extensive Core Audio API

Of course I'm not expecting all or even most of these things. Some of them still have security or battery life implications and some Apple won't do just to remain mysterious and keep developers in their place probably.

 

[buckyballs]

- A true way to sell apps without the App Store (or a much more open and streamlined approval process)

- Direct access to the camera

- Access to more phone services (ie SMS, music library, photo library)

- Removal of the annual fee (I don't have a problem with the 30%, but I do with the $99 yearly fee (I don't want to sell apps, I just want to make them for my personal use, so I think I should be able to do that on a phone that I've already bought!)

- Background processes (even if they limited it to say, 2/3 at a time)

 

[admanimal]

- A true way to sell apps without the App Store

Yes, and maybe every iPhone will come with a free Unicorn.

 

[HyperSnake]

Garbage Collection for us developers? (don't now if the iphone is powerful enough for that, though)

 

[Winni]

I'd want a non-curly braces/square brackets language. Objective-C is ugly as hell.

 

[buckyballs]

Yes, and maybe every iPhone will come with a free Unicorn.

Hey, a guy can dream, right?

 

[North Bronson]

I'd want a non-curly braces/square brackets language. Objective-C is ugly as hell.

To you, sir, I say: "Good day".

 

[nottooshabby]

I want 3.0 to not break my 3 apps on the store now,

 

[caveman_uk]

I want 3.0 to not break my 3 apps on the store now,

+1

 

[johnnyjibbs]

- Garbage collection (if possible). I'm new to Objective-C (and most development in general) and I find it a right pain to remember to ensure everything is released properly. It may be lazy but it seems a bit archaic at the moment. The few problems I am having with trying to get my first app out are generally all memory related!

- More APIs and control over hardware - specifically camera, bluetooth, SMS.

- An easy way to add drop shadows

- Background notifications (I'm guessing this is somehow more difficult than they originally thought!)

- Improved UITableView performance

- Better Interface Builder (although I admit I've pretty much abandoned it anyway).

I think the next iPhone is going to have a different screen resolution so it will be interesting to see how much of a pain it's going to be for us to rework our apps to account for that.

 

[HiRez]

I think the next iPhone is going to have a different screen resolution so it will be interesting to see how much of a pain it's going to be for us to rework our apps to account for that.

That's a good point, but the best thing to do is to start coding in resolution independence NOW, so your app is ready to go on Day 1 when a phone with a new screen is announced. It's a little extra code to keep calculating bounds, but nothing really difficult and will save you grief later (and save your users frustration). You might need to make a few assumptions if you're using a lot of bitmapped graphics, first that the screen resolution will probably not get any smaller (I think that's unrealistic to expect developers to rework their apps for an even smaller screen), and second that whatever new resolution there is will probably not be radically larger. I would think something like 720x480 at a maximum. So there's a reasonable range you need to potentially adjust for. Now Apple could release some sort of new device like a netbook or tablet or whatever that has a higher resolution screen, but you probably wouldn't be using the iPhone SDK to code for it anyway...you're more into desktop territory there.

 

[fenrus110]

Fix the UINavigationBar in UINavigationController. It just completely messes things up when you rotate and stuff. I've had to work tonnes of hacks in.

UITextView has quite a few bugs in it too. Also should have a way to have touchable links.

 

[HiRez]

Looks like they added Core Data! Sweet!

 

[kainjow]

Hope they come out with faster hardware to support all these new features. The iPhone already is pretty slow at certain tasks.

 

[HiRez]

Hope they come out with faster hardware to support all these new features. The iPhone already is pretty slow at certain tasks.

Yeah, but there's little doubt that it's coming. I'm guessing they'll roll out iPhone 3 at MacWorld in January using the new ARM quad-core mobile CPUs. I'm assuming the multiple cores will allow them to use a lower clock speed to save power while providing a much smoother interface. The great thing is that, being based mostly on OS X, the iPhone OS should be well suited to take good advantage of multiple cores right out of the box, since Apple has been concentrating on that for several years and doing a lot of work for Snow Leopard that should improve it even more. I still would like the ability to run background processes. That's the only bummer though, looks like a fantastic OS update.

 

[dejo]

I'm guessing they'll roll out iPhone 3 at MacWorld in January...

You mean, in 2010? Cuz most people expect the new phone to come out this June, in 2009.

 

[kainjow]

The ability to work with hardware is awesome.

I wonder who will be the first to add native USB mouse and keyboard support

And I wonder if the hardware support means only access through a specific application, or actual kernel-level drivers?

 

[admanimal]

And I wonder if the hardware support means only access through a specific application, or actual kernel-level drivers?

It's clearly going to be only application-level support for hardware. There's no way they are going to let people write low level drivers.

 

[kainjow]

I wonder if MapKit is really just a wrapper around WebKit and JavaScript, or if it's a real native implementation of Google Maps. The latter would make sense for performance/efficiency.

Hopefully the 3.0 beta isn't under NDA.