The iPhone it’s quite a nice device to play games on: if it weren’t for the horror with which software developers willing to support the iPhone platform are welcomed: it’s cool, it’s great, it’s the “iPhone Developer Program“!

Hoorah. Hoorah.

Basically, it’s a brutally stupid, slogan-centric three-points-nothing-more way to express the act of developing software: “1. Develop, 2. Test, 3. Distribute“.

That’s the real program:

1. You pay, you get the iPhone, note this is not part of the program;
2. You pay, they let’s you develop (to do this you must have a Mac/Intel, not part of the program);
3. You pay, they let’s you test on the device at point 1;
4. You pay, they let’s you distribute it;
5. You distribute, you could possibly earn something, they earn (30%) from this too, damn, again!

Let me analyze it a bit:

1. Apple wanna grow, make big money and get some important user-base;
2. Users come if the platform has something interesting to offer;
3. A good platform-enrichment thing could be some software;
4. Software possibly needs to be developed (sometimes it also has to be 2. deployed and tested on the real device, and ultimately i heard someone also tried to 3. sell it);
5. Software developers, thus, are needed (they’ll invest money, time, patience and experience, just to develop);
6. Apple needs developers;
7. I. Already. Heard. That.
8. Developers decide to support the platform and write/port software for it (best case);
9. Developers willing to support the platform, implicitly favoring Apple and it’s platform, are asked to pay for doing this;

Fortunately, there are great ways to overcome the need to make a living out of bread and onions: make an i-Developer a favor and make sure to get him to know about this, this, also this, this one too, and.. this.

Oh. And this.