Apple iOS, Google Android or Microsoft Windows?

At some point most of us would like to be a Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs or Larry Page - Famous and rich and a part of our history. So do I.

Therefore I decided, it is time to do something which makes me rich and unforgettable. I decided to build an app.

The question is what the desired platform should be.

Let us start with a mobile app for Android OS. The SDK is free to download. There is a one-time $25 fee for registering to distribute apps on the Market:
http://market.android.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=113468&topic=15866
This seems to be right I can (with almost no costs) get an app into the android market. But I can't sell an app over $200 at Android market place.

Min and max prices of android apps:
AUD: 0.99 AUD - 200 AUD
CAD: 0.99 CAD - 210 CAD
CHF: 0.99 CHF - 200 CHF
DKK: 6 DKK - 1200 DKK
EUR: 0.50 EUR - 100 EUR
GBP: 0.50 GBP - 100 GBP
HKD: 7 HKD - 1500 HKD
JPY: 99 JPY - 20000 JPY
KRW: 999 KRW - 220000 KRW
NOK: 6 NOK - 1200 NOK
NZD: 0.99 NZD - 280 NZD
SEK: 7 SEK - 1500 SEK
SGD: 0.99 SGD - 270 SGD
USD: $0.99 - $200

If I want to use google cloud to develop my app, because I don't want to buy hardware for testing and developing, then the costs go up.




But of course I would save a lot of money for hardware and resources. But using the full service costs $500 and more a month.
Developing apps on Google App Engine takes one-fourth to one-tenth of the resources and one-fourth of the time compared to building something ourselves.”
Gary Koelling, Director of Emerging Platforms, Best Buy

Pricing seems alright but the big issue is the big chaos of different OS versions and devices available on the market. Google is not regulating very strong their OS distribution and is not telling the vendors what hardware to use. To develop an android app which should reach 90% of Android users must be tested on over 200 android devices. Ouch. There is no chance to build a professional enterprise app because the max sell price is too low and the testing to expensive.

May 2011:
Android activations swelling to over 100 million worldwide (112 countries) on 215 carriers and 36 manufacturers with 310 different Android devices


Developing an Android app might not cost a lot for licenses nor does Google take a lot for having an app in their store, but I am not willing to hire 20 testers to to test my app nor do I want to develop years to get my app running on all android devices.

Quote Netflix:
Because the platform has evolved so rapidly, there are some significant challenges associated with developing a streaming video application for this ecosystem. One of these challenges is the lack of standard streaming playback features that the Netflix application can use to gain broad penetration across all available Android phones. In the absence of standardization, we have to test each individual handset and launch only on those that can support playback. We are aggressively qualifying phones and look forward to expanding the list of phones on which the Netflix app will be supported.

Maybe I should try Apple.
As we know there are only a handful devices we need to support and would still reach 100 million users. The iOS is running only on the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. Each of them have only a few versions in hardware and not many iOS in the market. 84% of iOS users are already on iOS 4.
The iPod touch has same screen size as the iPhone. These all sounds reasonable for me for developing an app. I can easily afford to by from each one device and would not spend more than $1,000 (phone contract not included). Apple allows to sell apps over $200. I have seen a few for $999 (there are 20). However the store is so full that it is almost not possible to create an app which not somebody else already did.
Total Apps Approved for US App Store: 589,391
Total Active Apps (currently available for download): 471,319
Total Inactive Apps (no longer available for download): 118,072
Number of Active Publishers in the US App Store: 106,423


Getting access to developer tools is inexpensive as well between $99 and $299 a year.



But there are some issues.
Apple has very strict guidelines how to develop an app. An app can be denied because the developer does not follow the guidelines.
An other issue is, that Apple will take 30% of each sale of an app. This can be very cost intensive. I was thinking about an enterprise app, which I want to sell 40,000 times for $23.99. This is $287,780 for Apple just because I use their app store. Yes I get maybe free promotion and the user does know where to go to find my app, but this a lot of money. I could build an app outside of the app store and publish it only for my enterprise clients, which Apple allows, but I might still pay 30% when Apple find out that I sold the app outside of the store. Apple allows corporations to develop apps which are not the app store, but only for internal use and not for sale of the app.
And then Apple is heavily promoting the iPad and iPhone as a game computer and not as business computer.



I don't want to get rich and make Steve Jobs richer.


As alternative I could develop software for Windows. There are of course many different hardwares to consider, but if I build a web based app with .Net then I could concentrate on 4 browsers (IE, Chrome, Google and Safari) to get most of the users a working app.



The investment would be $11.899 for Visual Studio ultimate with MSDN which gives a lot of developing tools 78 Microsoft products like office etc and $3,500 worth of Microsoft Azure cloud.





This is a lot of money for a startup, but cheaper than Apple in the long run, if I sell more than $35k a year in software.

Interesting is that the same package cost in Germany almost the double $20,900)





This is as much as two Fiat Panda cars.




The last alternative would be the amazon app store.
The Amazon marketplace has considerably less competition than Android store or the Apple app store, I actually might have better results there.
Just make sure that if you agree to be the Free App of the Day, you completely understand what you’re getting yourself into.

Anyway, Amazon has gone ahead and sweetened the deal just a bit: beginning September 2011, anyone who submits an app to the Amazon App Store store will get a free chunk of change to check out the Amazon Web Services suite (amazon cloud).

But apparently Apple isn’t the only company running an App Store with a penchant for secrecy.

In a blog post in August, mobile developer Shifty Jelly has publicly called out Amazon for covertly offering the company featured placement on its unofficial Android Appstore as the ‘free app of the day’. This is a well-known promotion that Amazon has openly talked about, but there’s a twist: instead of paying developers 20% of the app’s List Price, which is what it had previously promised, Amazon is asking them to take a 0% rev share.
People were very clearly told that even if Amazon decided to make an app free, developers would still be making 20% of their list price. In other words, they’d still make money. But not anymore as seen above. This means my $23.99 app which might have downloaded on the free day 20,000 times would cost me not 80% of my potential revenue but all.

I learned that developing an app is more than just being a developer. It is important to choose the right platform.

During my research I learned something really interesting. For PCs, everybody is talking about software. But for mobile devices and OS any kind, we only talk about app. I wonder what is the different between software and application.

After all I decided not to build an app to be as famous as Steve Jobs and that I am going to brew my beer and to sell it to restaurants by delivering it with one of my two new Fiat Panda.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad. Please follow me @schlotz69

Location:Spinning Wheel Ln,Brooksville,United States

Lion Server alternative to Windows or Google docs?

It was time to install a Lion Server after Apple released their latest OS. What were the results?

1. Lion server configuration
The standard configuration of Lion server is pretty simple. However some knowledge of networks is necessary to set it up. Somebody with no network knowledge could get lost. But to be honest I yet did find any server software easy to install, without basic network knowledge.
It is pretty easy to configure the server in a local network because there is no need for things like DNS or SLL certificate. However it gets much more complicated if the server should serve as a web server. Two things are important to have done before configuring the server.
A) have all DNS settings ready.
B) have already all necessary SSL certificates ready. SSL encryption certificates can cost between $30 and $2000 or more. It is a good idea to bing for the correct certificate, not everybody needs to have all in one certificates. If you have a lot of sub domains then you can use one certificate with wildcard.
If you install a Lion web server without SSL then it will get tricky to install the clients. A really positive part is that Lion allows you to apply for the CSR via Lion GUI.

2. Help/Support and usability
The configuration is very easy but not always intuitive and the manual is very poor. Apple seem not take enough time to write comprehensive manuals but at least they look good. Sometimes it is just not clear why a form asks for for domain and host name. It would be nice to get some explanation what the difference is between host and domain name. Apple help texts are far less extensive than Microsoft help. There, Apple can clearly learn from Microsoft. As an example when I installed recently Dynamics CRM, Microsoft did send with the disc tons of documents for installation, migration, configuration etc. And everything which I could not find in Word, I could find at Microsoft online. Apple forums and online help is not very good, but I guess it is, because the price tag is much smaller.
But other parts of the installation were simple good explained and just one click away. Lio Server install is half horrible to understand and half so easy a caveman could do it. This is weird.

3. Profile Manager
Lion allows to remote configure clients networks and connections to servers using the Profile Manager. for the software distribution and settings for clients is Apple Remote Desktop responsible, which is unfortunate not a part of Lion server and costs extra.
Profile Manager is not a thick client app, it is unfortunately a web app which works only good with Safari. And it takes forever because you don't call the client from server, you have to open safari on the client to connect to the server to make the connection. A company with 200 clients will take a while, maybe remote desktop would be able to do this. You can use the Profile manager from the server to push changes as soon the first install on client side was done.
What does the Profile Manager configure?
Global Address-book connection
email settings
ICal settings
VPN
And some other client settings.

Really cool is, that the power is now in the hand again of the IT guy. He can, if he is really in a bad mood, delete the clients with one easy click.
The wipe button is everywhere on almost each page of the profile manager and can be easily hit by accident.
The client configuration is not always intuitive. Sometimes the system asks for an alternative password but still i have to find out what the reason is to have an alternative password. Did not find anything documented.

4. VPN or not
Lion offers Encrypted connection without VPN for the clients. I can't recommend to do so, it is surely easier without VPN but I might not trust the security. In our company all enterprise apps are only accessible via VPN. But for some parts like a global address book no VPN is much better experience for the user. Most of our sales people even don't know how to switch VPN on.

5. Functions
File Sharing, iCal Server, Wiki and address book work like a champ. It is very easy to attach files to appointments which allows to get opened through iCal over other computers. This is almost like a mini document management with CRM. iChat and Podcasting are as well good company functions. However I had no time to test and don't know if iChat allows to add people outside from the company.

The mail server is horrible to use. Don't try to create email addresses or to create aliases. This works so easy in Windows but very user unfriendly in Lion. However the build in Anti Spam and Anti Virus softwares are pre configured. A big plus.

6. Why using a Lion Server?
Lion is a great server for companies which are too small to move their servers into the cloud but on the other hand don't want to spend $50.000 or more on MS Software licenses. The Lion server offers much more than google docs and and google mail combined and is more likely similar to MS Windows Server with exchange and SharePoint and communicator but as I mentioned before much cheaper. But the really big advantage of the Lion server in comparison to Microsoft is the integration of iphone and iPad. Lion server does make sense, In a time where companies are moving more and more to iPhone as company phones. The integration of address book, iCal and mail is just great. Exchange is maybe more scalable than Lion however Apple does not yet try to attack large cooperations like the government or Siemens. However if Google is able to sell to the government google mail and google docs then Apple will be able too.
I can see for large companies parts moved to lion like file server which is much more stable than windows file server and much easier to support.
Of course the integration of Office, SharePoint and Dynamics products is much more sophisticated than Pages with Lion Wiki, but we all know that even SharePoint with Office integration is not working perfect and a company needs to have very expensive license (Volume license) to do so, otherwise you can only read office documents in the web browser but you can't edit them in the browser through SharePoint.

7. problems and solutions

A) Lion installation
The installation went wrong, because I have been not in the mood to wait for my DNS and SSL certificate. I got it without running, but have been never sure, if it is s clean install or not.
I decided to restart the server and to try the CmD-R recovery mode. In one of the help texts I did read that best practice is to delete HD and then reinstall. I have been almost certain my recovery mode reinstall will not work. But to be honest it rocked. The recovery GUI is very nicely done and very intuitive. The recovery mode will guide you (after deleting the HD) to the main menu which hosts the button for the lion install. The computer downloads again the OS from Internet and when it is done the OS is installed including all server components. After this I could configure the system as the computer would have come just right out of the factory. I created a new user and was ready to rock.

7) Remote access
I decided to install on my MacBook Pro the remote control for my server, after Lion install number two and a few cups of coffee (black no sugar).
however the tool was tricky and I accidentally installed a complete Lion server on my notebook. Of course you can keep the server software offline and use your notebook as just a client, however it is nothing we want to have on a client computer.
But how to get Lion Server off without messing up my notebook? Of course time machine.
First i copied the TM backup to a local HD which took a while because it was 300GB of data to a USB hard drive. Time for another coffee.
After this I started with CmD-R again the lion recovery mode and activated the recovery of the computer from the backup I made.
It got late, so went to bed. The next morning I found my MacBook Pro automagically (funny cool word) in the same state as before I accidentally installed the lion server on it. This was cool.
Not only (as I wrote) is the New Lion OS easy to install (of course easier than Lion server) but to restore a OS over the Ethernet through TM is absolutely great and almost not easy to beat.

Note:
Most of this article is provided from a friend of mine in Germany who recently converted to Apple. Since then he bought more Apple devices than I ever owned. Right now he is working on some secret iPhone app (he does not want to tell me what) which, I am sure, will be great.




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Location:N Westshore Blvd,Tampa,United States