The best relationships are the love-hate relationships. They keep things interesting and spicy. No, I am not talking about my personal relationships - I am talking about my relationship with my iPhone 3G.
One day I love the iPhone for its stylish and innovative appearance and user friendliness. Next day I hate the iPhone 3G for it's restrictiveness and for treating me like a child.
When I am in the "hate my iPhone" stage I usually go to http://pleasefixtheiphone.com/ and click on features I miss most. That has some therapeutic effect.
What is missing for location-based developers?
As an iPhone developer you experience a whole new dimension of iPhone love-hate. The device is actually really great but what about the tools to develop iPhone applications? The iPhone SDK and the Simulator?
When we started developing our first iPhone application we thought it would be easier - I mean it's Apple - right. Surely, the Apple SDK developers must figured out a way of simulating the GPS function in the Simulator. Wrong! In fact Apple did not think that one through.
The Simulator simply does a bad job in location-based app development support. The only thing the Simulator does is that CoreLocation returns always the same Location (the infinite loop in Cupertino). That functionality is enough for simple applications that want to determine your "current location". However, that is of limited use for a tracking application where locations "change".
How to test the "real" GPS behaviour?
So, you really cannot test the "real" GPS function in the Simulator. The way we tested it was to install the app on my iPhone. Then I would leave the building with the iPhone in my hand and run around the block to capture some locations. Does not sound too bad? It was bad! To produce a thoroughly tested application we had to spend the majority of the development time testing with the real iPhone device.
How could GPS testing be simpler?
There should be a way to play back a set of Geo-locations in the Simulator. This is actually not too hard but was probably not one of Apples top priorities at the time. Hopefully Apple will release such a playback tool with the next version of the Simulator or iPhone SDK.
Android is ahead
In the Android SDK there is a way to play back a KML files. That is nice. This function saves the location-based application developer days of testing. If only this would be available for the iPhone.
Hey, at least I am staying fit with all that running around outdoors with my iPhone. ;-)
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2 comments:
I downloaded FirePin, but when I press "start" it just grinds away for about 5 minutes that then tells me it cannot find my current location. What's the deal with this?
This might be due to bad GPS reception. Check out http://blog.firepin.com/2008/10/how-to-use-firepin-on-iphone-3g.html for more information on FirePin.
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