| > A new generation is growing up programming apps (yes, on their desktop computers right now) for this new world and can easily share their creations with millions. For Android, yeah. Thing is, I'm teaching "creative computer stuff" (which includes programming) to kids at a volunteer centre. One of the kids came to me and wanted to know if I could help them build an app for their iPod Touch. Turns out the costs of writing iDevice apps is quite prohibitive to most teenagers. First, the SDK+simulator is only available for Macs running Mac OS X 10.5.4+, not just any "desktop computer" will do. That is a problem because the "Young Researcher's Centre" runs on donated PCs, most of them old WinXP office machines that are perfectly serviceable for most of our purposes. We never get Macs though (well one time a really ancient one, I doubt one could develop apps on it). If you do have a Mac, apparently you can get the SDK/emulator for free, I think (Apple's site said "free!" a lot but kept on directing me to some page where I had to pay. I gave up when I found out it couldn't be done on a PC, anyway). But then comes the next problem. Your app just runs on the simulator. You need to join the "iOS Developer Program" in order to actually run it on a real iDevice, unless you jailbreak it, (which I'm not going to teach the kids mainly because I don't want to be responsible if they accidentally brick it). The iOS Developer Program costs $99 per year. Trust me, no kid is going through all that trouble just to have "something that looks like an app running in a bloody simulator", there has to be some tangible end-result. From there (Wikipedia) "applications can be distributed in three ways: through the App Store, through enterprise deployment to a company's employees only, and on an "Ad-hoc" basis to up to 100 iPhones." IMO it is ridiculous to teach children a valuable skill (programming) merely in order to immediately sell their services/work on some App Store market. They're children, they need to learn and play--of course if they want to try and sell their apps it can be a valuable experience but it should not be the only reason or the only way. The first point is that you write code for the sheer thrill of having that kind of control over your own devices. I'm not sure how the "enterprise" method works, but I doubt we'd be eligible. So finally you're left with paying $99 yearly in order to liberate 100 iPhones so you can write your own code for them. Whoop-tee-doo. And I'm probably forgetting about a whole bunch of ways Apple can get in your way as you try to actually go this route. Suffice to say, after having figured this out, most kids realized their next phone was going to run Android. |