why has Linden Labs not developed an app or viewer for iphones?

[NanR]

why has Linden Labs not developed an app or viewer for iphones? Is there anything out there to use for at least communicating with sl using my iphone?

[Lindal Kidd]

Robert A. Heinlein once said that the answer to any question that begins, "Why don't they..." is, "Money."

In this case, Linden Lab probably looked at the number of people who potentially use iPhones to access Second Life and said, "meh...not worth the effort for so few people."

There was a third party text-only viewer, Pocket Metaverse, but it's no longer available.

If you can set up your PC and your phone to run a "remote desktop" application, you might be able to cobble a workable solution together.

[Rolig Loon]

Why?  You'd have to ask Linden Lab.  We're all SL residents here.  My best guess, though, is that Linden Lab made the decision a long time ago that they were only going to produce one viewer. It takes a lot of manpower to keep even that one up to date and to stay ahead of the bugs in it.  They simply can't afford to keep development teams going for several other viewers.  That's why they reluctantly decided years ago to let their code be open source, so that third party developers could create different versions if they wanted to.  So far, the demand for an iPhone viewer has apparently been underwhelming. The one or two that people have made have died, and it doesn't look like another third party developer is interested.

[Nalates Urriah]

You'll find the third party apps in http://wiki.secondlife.com/wiki/Third_Party_Viewer_Directory

The Pocket Metaverse is listed for iPhone. But, my understanding is the author no longer supports it.

As to why the Lab hasn't does something... The SL development team has limited resources, time, money, people... and they are hiring. What they develop is a matter of priorities. In general they decide priority on the basis of what they believe will be of interest and benefit to the most users.

Apple's market share of the computer market continues to decline, even with the total number of units sold increasing. iPhone market share is about 40% and this last year remained static. Also, while Apply used to provide the leading graphics systems they are only providing a distant 2nd place in 3D games. Many will say, unfortunately... Microsoft Windows and Nvidia provide the best support for games. Nivida undeniably provides the best game support for Windows and Apple when it comes to OpenGL graphics. Apple doesn't provide good OpenGL support. So, building for Apple puts the Lab in a labor intensive (costly) position.

All these reasons and the few Apple users in SL means accommodating them is a lesser priority for the Lab. Especially since Apple has failed to fix issues with their system that create problems for SL users. The Lab does what it can.

Consider: Oz Linden the director of SL engineering uses a Mac... Apple isn't ingnored from our side...

[Monti Messmer]

Hello,

Pocket Metaverse is not only not supported is was removed from App-Store long ago.

If you have an older version it usually works, more or less.

As stated in other posts, you cannot just make an iPhone app. All Apps for Apple products go through a review by apple. If you make an app that is only for a "closed" group, Apple will refuse it.

The Viewer for MacBooks ... is just a squeezed into version from the original viewer. An iPhone app would have to be a complete new source-code and for the user-base buying it, no not everything on the net is for free, it´s simply not worth.

Monti