Why MobileEdition Got Delayed, What We’re Doing About It

As I posted last week, MobileEdition was supposed to have shipped (or, rather, the first MobileEdition-powered apps were supposed to have shipped last week). In an effort to keep everyone updated, here is a technical post.

So, if you don’t like understanding code, or dense coding-related stuff, feel free to skip this post.

Apple has chosen (and someday I’ll go into the reasoning) to demand that we have the most fine-grained internet connection checking code possible. This is exactly why we don’t like the Walled Garden process that iPhone uses, because it lets one actor pick and chose who gets approved… and who gets denied.

Oddly (or, as I’ll explain, on purpose), Apple offers easy code to do something similar, that only requires a checkbox.

The SBUsesNetwork item can be added to an app’s info.plist file. Unfortunately, this only tells SpringBoard to check to see if Airplane Mode is turned on. It does not alert the user if Wi-Fi is connected to nothing, or if there is no signal on their cell phone.

People often mistake this, because Apple approves web-interacting apps left and right that only use SBUsesNetwork. Now we loop back to the third paragraph… Apple gets to pick and chose. I suspect that the implementation of SBUsesNetwork is to serve as a gatekeeper… locking out apps (which Apple classes under the Pandora’s Box realm) until they check off this barrier to entry. And there could easily be several more of these type of requirements, we won’t know until Apple either throws them out there… or MobileEdition gets approved.

So, I’m going to fight back on this one… we’re going to craft some modular code that can be added into any App Store app easily. It will quickly, on launch, check all available internet connections, and display an alert error if a connection can’t be made.

Yes, there are lots of code out there for doing that… but none of it is in a modular manner (meaning, lots of developers are having to reinvent the wheel, shoestringing old Apple sample code into their app’s interfaces).

Unfortunately, this means one more delay to MobileEdition (we don’t take the easy way out here, and there are a few). But, we really do hope this is the last of these kind of delays. The app is done, we’re not the one holding up its release…

And yes, we’re going to get the other two things out of the way first that I mentioned last week. Namely, PhoneCashback.net and a new initiative. And we’re all working non-stop until those are out the door…