Serendipity35

"CS 485 -The study of new and/or advanced topics in an area of computer science not regularly covered in any other CIS course." --Thus Spake the Course Catalog.

Last Tuesday, January 20th, was the first meeting of a brand new class at NJIT:  Apple iPhone Application Development.  As part of a development team, the class will learn how to operate inside Apple's software development kit environment, modify existing code (like my Mad Magazine take on the traditional "Hello, World" program), and  create and register applications with Apple's AppStore for public download.

Stanford University has already announced a program to use student developed iPhone applications to make available some of its core web services and the plan at NJIT has a similar target result.  By making mobile university services such as schedules, directories, maps and announcements available through NJIT as downloadable iPhone applications, the university hopes to spark an interest in the highly entrepreneurial world of independently developed and marketed applications.  All is not code in the IPhone Developer class.  The curriculum includes case studies of iPhone developers and their own path to independent  developer hegemony at $0.99 a download.

Some potential application developers have complained about Apple's tight control of the iPhone application end-product.  While Apple does allow any code-minded potential developer to download (after registration and Apple approval) and use their software development kit and it's resources, Apple requires that software developer's who wish to actually deploy their applications on an IPhone (or an IPod Touch) register for a fee, and create digital certificates that guarantee the developer's identity.  After an application has been developed, Apple requires that the code be provisioned before it can be loaded onto an actual hardware device for testing (Apple's software development kit's feature an iPhone Simulator --an iPhone emulator for testing), and, finally, all finished applications have to be submitted to Apple for review before they can take up residence in the AppStore.

That does seem like a lot of hoops through which to jump just to get your iPhone Flashlight loaded on anybody's hardware, but it is in keeping with Apple's history of control over its products.  The "retail" version of the Apple Software Developer membership is $99 a year and it includes all of the hoops and a lot of assistance at jumping through them.  Judging by the prodigious amount of applications already available at the AppStore, those jumps and hoops seem pretty small and wide.

Even before the first class had met for the first time this semester, the decision had been made to include it in the Fall 2009 course catalog.  With a little luck (and a lot of hard work) we hope to at least create some apps that are relevant to the student experience at NJIT and, far beyond that, to foster an independent mindset among our young software developers.

About that result, like my modifed "Hello, World" app says: I'm not worried at all.