GottaGo – Why it’s not out there yet..

Well, first of all, thanks for the great response on the first sneak preview of `GottaGo’ – even though some people thought I’ve been on weed during the video presentation – I wasn’t :) It’s quite difficult to talk in presentation-loudness at 2am where I live..

So, what kept me from submitting to the AppStore?
Well, first of all I had to get my hands on a JesusPhone.. One I could work with. – Done -

You might say – there is a Simulator, the phone should be a small stage for the final testing. Yes, that’s what I thought.

Apparently, Apple allowed system libraries to be compiled into your software, while using the Simulator. Well – and since NSXMLDocument is not included in the final build of the SDK – I’m quite frankly – doomed now when I try to compile on the iPhone.

My options now are:

  • libxml2 wrapper:
    • fix the iconara to work with iphone (linker errors)
    • write my own (jeeez)
  • use plain libxml2:
    • spaghetti code
    • wheee
  • use my own webservice to aggregate and send a small xml and parse via NSXMLParser (SAX):
    • sbb might block me for too many requests
    • bottleneck
    • yet another system that may fail

I think I’m going with the own webservice. It doesn’t feel right though. I think in a device that powerful, there should be a simple implementation of the DOM. I see the iPhone as a mobile device which should profit as much as possible from different webservices and cache only necessary things. Obviously Apple is more concerned about OpenGL(-Games) than about web-service access.

If there is a libxml wizard out there, feel free to contact me :)
I’ll try to focus on libxml for some additional hours and if there is no hope, I’ll set up my own webservice. I hope I’ll be able to submit GottaGo to the AppStore this weekend.

And to clear some things up:

  • GottaGo will be free of charge
  • GottaGo will only work in Switzerland for now

UPDATE Well.. After some hours of hacking, I was able to put GottaGo on my iPhone in a light-version. That means: location tracking and station finding, but no SBB querying for now. For SBB, I will probably have to proxy the requests since their response html is not even valid html.. But now there is some pressure on my shoulders. I was able to submit to AppStore. The requested release day is: July 19, so stay tuned :)

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Filed under: Tech, iPhone on July 17, 2008 at 2:22 am by marc.
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