Taptopia Blog

Apple started it all.  The outrageous popularity of their app store has spawned app stores for almost every mobile platform available today.  Heck, there is even an app store for Media Center PCs.  With popularity comes control.  So much so that the company that started the whole craze had started to draw some serious fire over the latter part of 2009.  Apple was being questioned in the public blogs and even in the mainstream press for some questionable practices when it came to approval of various apps.

We have only been in the game a relatively short time and have begun to see dramatic changes.  Our first app submitted in late August 2009, Tap Groups (iTunes link), was approved in exactly the published average at the time, 14 days.  Our second app focused on the event services vertical , IAEE (iTunes link), was submitted in mid November 2009 and took 11 days for approval.  We recently landed two new accounts for our event services offering to cover the International Poultry Expo, IPE2010 (iTunes link) and the International Feed Expo, IFE2010 (iTunes link), taking place in Atlanta from January 24 - 29, 2010.  Both apps were submitted in early January 2010 and were approved in less than 48 hours...no kidding.  Others have also noted faster app approvals and less scrutiny on particular app constructs which were almost always a recipe for a rejection.  

It is refreshing to see that Apple is responding to the developer community and changing their process.

Organizing code within XCode is fairly straightforward when working on simple iPhone Apps. However, as you scale up the Apps (or what you're doing with core framework code) you will need to start diving into iPhone Static Libraries under XCode. Unfortunately this is an area that's not well documented but the process is very straight forward if you follow the XCode documentation on the XCode Build System - specifically how to use Targets within a project (or cross-project references) to link static libraries together.

The process of creating and setting up an iPhone static library took about 15 minutes following the XCode documentation. However, after creating my static library target and putting some files into it, I ran into a very cryptic error:

/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/usr/bin/libtool failed with exit code 1

Ya, wonderful. Very helpful. I was able to troubleshoot the problem by resorting to the xcodebuild command line to build my library target:

xcodebuild -target <LibraryTargetName>

The resulting error messages made it obvious what the problem was:

/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/usr/bin/libtool: can't locate file for: -licucore
/Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/usr/bin/libtool: file: -licucore is not an object file (not allowed in a library)
Command /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/usr/bin/libtool failed with exit code 1
Command /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneSimulator.platform/Developer/usr/bin/libtool failed with exit code 1
** BUILD FAILED **

Yup, the default target setup linker options for an -licucore - which won't work (at least for iPhone 3.0 SDK). Fixing the issue is a cakewalk now that the cause is known. Select the static library target in the main project window, right click and select "Get Info" (or hit Cmd-I), select the "Build" tab, and in the search box at top, type "Other Linker". You'll see the Other Linker Flags setting with the -licucore flag set. Simply delete the flag and the project will link and build without problems.

Note: a second gotcha is Apps that you link your iPhone static library to should include the "-ObjC" Other Linker Flag option if your static library contains Objective C code (see Technical Q&A QA1490). If you use Categories you may also need the -all_load flag (try compiling without it, and if it fails, add and recompile... it creates fatter Apps but is a workaround if you can't link otherwise).

There is an interesting phenomenon taking place in the whole Personal Navigation Device (PND) and Smartphone arena.  Dedicated PND devices are dropping in price to a commodity level.  Traditional PND manufacturers like TomTom are jumping into the iPhone app business and charging ridiculous prices (iTunes link) for their apps.  

A game-changing event occurred when Google announced that they are porting PND functionality to the new Droid platform.  Free of charge.  This had a definite impact.  TomTom dropped their price, along with others, in the App Store.  Everyone can see where this one is going.  My guess is that we will see an iPhone version at some point.  If I were betting my business on Smartphone turn-by-turn, I would start to worry.  Changes are coming and the once dominant PND and value-added app space is quickly drying up.

Our Tap Groups app (iTunes link) is finally available in the App Store. We were official as of September 11, 2009. Interestingly enough, so were 1,399 others. The approval process was very streamlined and, actually, went very fast. We were approved in 14 days. If you are a developer, you are familiar with the developer portal and the iTunes Connect process. The portal provides a periodically updated view into the average approval length. Apple is beginning to show some love to the developer community due to growing frustration on the approval process. Our experience has been a very positive one and we see huge benefit is all that is being done to enhance the experience. Hop on over and give Tap Groups a try.

OK...so I am big into validation. This is a great thing for Apple and something that they have been trying to achieve for years. Funny how the iPhone seems to be the lead product that has slowly chipped away at the Windows culture lock that has established itself within most corporate organizations. I am a Mac user and was the first of two Macs brought into a mainstream Windows environment. The IT organization issued a "no support for Mac" mandate. We accommodated and have "supported" ourselves with no lack of capability or any issues that impeded our work. We also brought he first iPhones into the organization. It was amazing to watch the numbers grow and witness the IT staff support the Exchange interface for the platform. Engadget referenced are recent Silicon Alley Insider article that discusses a Goldman Sachs report on smartphone penetration and how iPhones are "surprisingly popular" for business use. I am of the opinion that the last few years have really put Apple technology in the business mainstream and that the popularity of the iPhone and its capabilities as a very useful mobile device. The platform will only grow in popularity and I predict that the iPhone will very quickly become the dominant device for smartphone business access.