Steve Jobs Announces iPhone SDK
Steve Jobs appears to have made a U-turn with respect to third-party applications on iPhone. He now thinks it’s a good idea. On the Apple web-site, Jobs writes:
Let me just say it: We want native third party applications on the iPhone, and we plan to have an SDK in developers’ hands in February. We are excited about creating a vibrant third party developer community around the iPhone and enabling hundreds of new applications for our users.
The SDK will be released in February 2008. Of course, it was inevitable that Apple would have to make a move like this, whether or not Jobs realised it when the iPhone was launched. Why? Because people like installing applications on their mobile phones. It seems that the SDK won’t be a Java SDK, which is a pity; but a good SDK in any language will be more than good enough.
I wonder how all the Apple fanboys are going to react to this news… I seem to recall them agreeing with Steve Jobs’s original position that third-party apps are a bad idea. I wonder what they’ll say now? Let me guess - “Maybe now people will quit attacking Apple, because it’s so unfair of people to do that.”
This is looks like a major step in the right direction for the iPhone platform (which includes the iPod touch); although of course, the devil is in the detail on these things, so we’ll have to wait til the SDK is released before passing a final judgement.
Asam Bashir wrote:
Some of us though did say that when Jobs had a proper plan for an SDK and if the market was right then he would release - Apple developers have obviously been working on Leopard release (Offical 26th Oct Launch) and so maybe now they’re looking into the iPhone/iTouch as an open developer platform before they set priorites for Mac OS X 10.6.
There have been more rumors about other touch devices, possibly the Newton evolved - it would make sence for say a MacBook with no keyboard at all but a touch screen instead. When you want a keyboard can always add a bluetooth one, or maybe even have some nice design where the keyboard can be removed by some clever mechanism.
Posted 18 Oct 2007 at 5:16 pm ¶
John C. Welch wrote:
Actually, I was agreeing with Steve’s position that *unlimited* and by inference *uncontrolled* third-party apps on a *phone* is a bad idea, and I still think it is. I highly doubt the iPod SDK will allow for the same level of development as you get with Mac OS X on a *general purpose* computer.
Posted 27 Dec 2007 at 4:07 am ¶
simon wrote:
Jobs has already suggested that there will, at the very least, be some kind of digital signing needed for third-party iPhone apps. So, it doesn’t look like it will be uncontrolled.
I’m going to be really interested to see if Apple has done a good job with this. There’s lots of ways they could screw this up…
Posted 27 Dec 2007 at 11:44 am ¶