Good luck with your app.

http://www.bermanny.com/2009/06/developers-experience-creating-app-for.html

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Cheers,
Ed

“most of the critisisms are because the blackberry platform offer a whole lot more than other api’s and is therefore, by necessity, more complex.”

I personally believe that’s a fallacy, but it’s definitely open to debate.

-Marcus

Good comments, here are my responses:

“and yet you used comic sans in the application!”

PodTrapper actually uses whatever font your OS is set to. (I use comic sans on my BB since it is the smallest font available and I don’t care how it looks).

“The blackberry ui may look plain but it’s also the most usable and frustration free in the world.”

I totally agree. Every review I got for my app using the base widgets says that’s not enough, though. It needs to be usable *and* pretty.

My point is not so much that doing fancy stuff isn’t possible, it totally is. However, I and many other developers that would like to write mobile apps suck at graphic design. Other platforms have realized this and accommodated for it with their base widgets.

“network connections – this is a strength not a weakness!”

I actually state that exact point in the article, it’s great there are so many options. Unfortunately you’re hampering less skilled developers by not offering a simpler option. (I actually rectify this, sort of, here: http://www.versatilemonkey.com/blog/?p=3 )

“regarding background processes and memory leaks – you must be doing something wrong”

As far as I know I don’t have any leaks. If you’ve ever read any BB forums though you’ll know other devs aren’t so lucky. I agree that it’s not RIM’s fault, but it *appears* to be RIMs fault from a user perspective, especially given that there’s no way to know which app has the leak.

“most of the critisisms are because the blackberry platform offer a whole lot more than other api’s and is therefore, by necessity”

I personally believe that’s a fallacy, but it’s definitely open to debate.

At any rate, good dialog, I’d love to see articles on doing a good UI, I think a ton of developers would get value out of it, especially if all of the assets are reusable in their apps.

-Marcus

http://supportforums.blackberry.com/rim/board/message?board.id=java_dev&view=by_date_ascending&message.id=44780#M44780

some points i felt were a little harsh on rim. the ‘basic primitives’ are what you’d expect in any api and offer a lot of power, they’re the building blocks of any slicker ui – yes the default look-and-feel is plain; but this accomodates themes, if you depart too much from the base you risk breaking this continuity of experience across applications, also, by not departing from the base fields you ensure your app will look good on all supported devices (ButtonField for example looks dated on older devices but slick on new ones).

The blackberry ui may look plain but it’s also the most usable and frustration free in the world.

it’s up to you as a developer to polish it (but carefully and subtly, you need to maintain that common user experience and ensure you don’t break the device theme), here’s two blogs that show some basics:
http://www.naviina.eu/wp/blackberry/blackberry-alpha-fade-with-svg/
http://www.naviina.eu/wp/blackberry/iphone-style-field-for-blackberry/

with some minor tweaks of the ui your app could look so much nicer.

regarding background processes and memory leaks – you must be doing something wrong, again it’s unfair to rim to state things like this, i’ve been developing large enterprise apps for blackberry for 5 years and have never run into any memory issues (other than when editing an amr file by splitting huge byte arrays) – there are knowledgebase articles about managing your objects and with the profiler in the jde you should be able to.

network connections – this is a strength not a weakness! when developing your app you have several different ways to get to the network – other devices have a single point of failure.

most of the critisisms are because the blackberry platform offer a whole lot more than other api’s and is therefore, by necessity, more complex. remember android is new and not fragmented and iphone has a single configuration to code for – no other platform has as many devices out in the market with so many configurations but yet still allows you to deliver (quite easily) a single application build to cater for them all (let’s not mention the bloody storm…)

besides these points on the development side it’s a great article and just what the blackberry developer community needs. if i ever get time i’ll write a companion piece solely concentrating on making a nice ui.

It’s cool to read about the developement of my favorite Blackberry App. Quality programming.

Heh, you guys love the stream of improvements, but I ran out of ideas long ago. It’s your so-called ‘dumb-ideas’ I’m implementing to make it better

-Marcus

Keep up the good work and I wish you great success with this application and any other one you come up with.

PS.
Sorry if my post is not as well written as the others, I am not very good at expressing my thoughts through writing.

The bugs I’ve posted were quickly fixed, and the suggestions I’ve posted were all cheerfully received, even when they were dumb ideas.

The version I purchased in February or so was already feature-rich, so I’ve just been blown away that he’s managed to generate a steady stream of improvements. Podtrapper and Pandora are only third-party applications on my Bold that I use every day (they makes my morning and evening commutes almost tolerable). Just OTA downloads of podcasts alone is a killer app, and all the other great features make Podtrapper a delight to use.

Glad to hear it has been a positive experience for the developer, and that despite the bargain price, that it has supplemented his income.

One can only hope that happy customers + happy vendor = more cool BlackBerry apps for everyone.

“This app is made of awesome!” is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how I feel about this app. But not just the app, Marcus is always friendly and will always do his best to help you if you have problems. I don’t know of any other app that will include diagnostic information when it emails the developer for feedback. That’s just a testament to Marcus’s personality.

I’d say that Marcus’s work approaches the quality you would expect from any other popular program with teams of developers. Marcus you are an inspiration to us all.

My only complaint is that he doesn’t have a “Support Marcus” button on his website where we can send donations. But hey, he’s a humble guy and probably wouldn’t feel it’s right.