Comments | crowhen: iphone blues

crowhen

iphone blues

Nov 14, 2009 20:14

I've been working on a mobile site for my company, and that means lots of reading books and lots of testing the site in various mobile browsers. Of course, I own a little pay-as-you-go phone that I don't connect to the internet with, so testing has been difficult. Especially for the iphone ( Read more... )

Comments 12

jasonfranks November 15 2009, 01:33:26 UTC

Your work should provide an iPhone for testing--or a Mac--if it is that important that the site works on that platform. Or you could set up a VM and install Snow Leopard on it and runt he emulator from in there--ask them for a Snow Leopard license! They should absolutely provide you with the tools you need to do your job.

My phone runs Windows Mobile. It doesn't have the same pretty or sexy UI, but it does most things an iPhone does and there are tons of apps available for it, if you are so inclined (I'm not, I just use it to browse the web and do phone stuff).

As for iPhone apps... I know some people who write them and I looked into it myself You have to pay Apple a fee and sign a bunch of agreements with them, and then the they expect you to write your apps in Objective C. Microsoft may well be an evil empire, but Apple are a bunch of fashion nazis.

-- JF

crowhen November 15 2009, 02:06:06 UTC

Fashion nazis, heh heh. Not far from the truth. But that's what gives them a leg up over Microsoft: everything must be on-brand, must work with blah. Very little falls through the cracks, and it makes for a very solid and integrated user experience. However, you end up being a slave to Apple in one way or another.

jasonfranks November 15 2009, 02:16:35 UTC

Agreed.

Some stuff they do very, very well, expecially when it comes to shiny surfaces and reliability (having UNIX under the hood is a huge help for this latter; the Windows kernel is a disaster).

Not so good when things go awry, though: part of the perceived reliability comes from the fact that Mac OS suppresses a lot of warnings and errors ont he grounds that you might not understand them (same goes for smaller devices, like my old IPod). Likewise, claims that Macs are virus proof have never been true. Lots of badguys are going after Macs now.

Having said all of that, I am quite keen to get a Snow Leopard machine running myself. Probably a Hackintosh in a VM to start with...

--JF

crowhen November 15 2009, 02:24:07 UTC

:D Mac viruses. If I were a cracker, I'd be all over those unprotected machines right now. Many people buy Macs and never install anti-virus software, largely thanks to Mac's misleading advertising.

crowhen November 15 2009, 02:26:02 UTC

To clarify: I personally would not do that. But it's got to look like easy-pickings to unsavory types.

jasonfranks November 15 2009, 02:26:07 UTC

The number of viruses and malwares for Macs is still a couple of orders of magnitude lower than for PCs, but it's growing fast for precisely that reason.

Also, because Mac users have money.

-- JF

Thread 6

I'm sorry if this seems like whining from a spoiled brat teenager, but... beezlefishy November 15 2009, 03:11:23 UTC

My parents decided, while I was living abroad, that they were going to go all-mac. My sister bought herself an iphone, my dad had already gone through two (he likes to upgrade) So mom and I got his old ones ( ... )

vonandmoggy November 15 2009, 05:06:20 UTC

Unrelated but...COME HAPPY DANCE WITH ME!

http://vonandmoggy.livejournal.com/445722.html

goodkingnerdnor November 15 2009, 22:02:40 UTC

Alternative option to iPhone would be a used iPod Touch.

It might be a slightly steeper initial outlay, but you wouldn't shell out an additional $30+ monthly.

Unless you're working with applications that require GPS (which I'm not certain the iPod doesn't have...) or GSM, the iPod should be perfectly fine for ap testing.