Blackberry FAIL

I just posted my first mobile app to the Android Marketplace: BALLance. You know what the most time consuming part of it was? Making all the different sized images. It was certainly easy and I got to reuse all my graphics so it was pretty much just a matter of resizing things. Other than that the submission went smooth as silk.

Oh, I forgot. One tiny little snag was that the p12 key I used – created with Flash Builder – didn’t work because it expired in just 5 years or something and Android wanted a key that would last for like 20 years or so. I had to go to the command line to create my key but that was simple enough.

Here’s my notes from my Daily Developer Journal for that day:

Trying to submit to BALLance to the Android Market. First snag is to create a signing certificate that is good until October 2034. Flash Builder doesn’t create certs with expiration dates so long. I found this post that might help: Create Certificate Valid till 2033 – AIR Android apk upload.

That seems to have worked. Found my keytool here: C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Adobe Flash Builder Burrito\jre\bin

On to Blackberry

Since I already have this little game I might as well submit it to the Blackberry Playbook marketplace and try and score me a free Playbook, right? How hard could it be since the app is already done.

<rant>

Turns out that even if you don’t hit a single snag in the process it is going to be a pain in the ass to submit to the Blackberry market. There’s the applying for access to this, and the becoming a member of that . . . I thought I was a member when I got access . . . okay, whatever. Oh, now I need a certificate.

I have to register for a certificate and wait a day or so to get it. But of course it isn’t a p12 certificate like I need for Flash Builder so I have to take this csj thingy and convert it into a p12. Okay, that’s a little confusing but eventually I figured out that I needed to create a new p12 – cause I didn’t want to risk messing up an existing one – and then use Flash Builder to register with Blackberry and use the csj file to do something or another. I think it sort of melds them together. Why Blackberry couldn’t just give me a damn p12 certificate in the first place is beyond me. Oh, that’s right. That would be to damn easy.

So I try and do this melding thing between my p12 and csj and get an error. Well I’m not surprised because there’s a bunch of info that Blackberry asked me that I had no clue how to answer so I just made it up. I’m just a solo dev. I don’t have an occupational department or whatever. You could have mentioned on the website: hey, this shit is important because it has to match your p12 file that you create later. Orrrr, just give me a fucking p12 file in the first place so I don’t have to screw with it later!

So lets go back to Blackberry and log into my dev account and try to see if there’s a record of what I entered for my csj cert. Now I can’t log in: wrong username-password. Okay, whatever lets request a new password. Got it and I try to sign in and it asks me to update my temp password. I do that but didn’t include an uppercase letter so I get an error. Then I submit another password that does use an uppercase letter but it won’t take it now. I guess I just get one try at this. So I request another temp password and start all over. Nope, it wants me to call call the helpdesk but of course it doesn’t give me a number to call. Really? Call the help desk?

Oh, and the Blackberry developer website is amazingly slow. I get that little spinning icon animation on the website for at least 30 seconds per page request. What’s up Blackberry? You have the developer website running off of a Storm or something?

All of this is to submit a game that I don’t even know if it will work on the Playbook because apparently there are issues with apps/games using portrait mode and my game only works in portrait mode. I’m not about to make code changes to my game for Blackberry. If it works great, otherwise Blackberry is going to have to fix their shit to make it work. Not me.

So if anyone at Blackberry is listening: you have to make your submission process work like Android. There’s no excuse not to. I’m not going to submit an app or game to you guys until you do. And I sort of hope you keep this pain in the ass process in place because it will just hasten your inevitable slide into insignificance. Because I’m positive I’m not going to be the only developer who gives up on you.

</rant>