Apple Unveils iPhone SDK

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Apple unveiled the iPhone software development kit earlier today at a special event at the company’s headquarters. Apple executives said the SDK provides developers with the same tools it uses to develop applications for the iPhone and iPod touch.

“We’re excited about creating a vibrant third party developer community with potentially thousands of native applications for iPhone and iPod touch,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. Applications for the iPhone will be built on a Mac using Xcode, the same development tool used to build Mac OS X applications.
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I would be excited about it if I could use it on TMobile, or if I was a developer.
 
The developer tools (especially the simulator) were really cool, plus seeing that it can do 3D graphics like in the Starfox style shooter or Super Monkey Ball demo was great. Plus the full version of Spore! Skype is going to jump on making an iPhone client so fast. The only thing that sucks is that it won't launch until June, but I guess that gives developers enough time to get enough polished software out there for launch. Can't wait.
 
So they are also finally going to have exchange support and all other software officially. Phew now only 3 years after the HTPC Wizard had all of those features and a lower price tag the iPhone is almost equal to the older smartphones on the market. Congratulations Apple welcome to 2006.
 
Paul_Johnson said:
So they are also finally going to have exchange support and all other software officially. Phew now only 3 years after the HTPC Wizard had all of those features and a lower price tag the iPhone is almost equal to the older smartphones on the market. Congratulations Apple welcome to 2006.
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It was already superior to every single Windows Mobile smartphone on the market, and with this out of the way the Blackberry will now lose its main advantage.

And in anticipation of any defense, no, Windows Mobile is unmitigated garbage.
 
Serpico said:
It was already superior to every single Windows Mobile smartphone on the market, and with this out of the way the Blackberry will now lose its main advantage.

And in anticipation of any defense, no, Windows Mobile is unmitigated garbage.
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Except it didn't have exchange support, office built in, wasn't open to outside development, and cost more. Yeah I generally call that superior. And Windows Mobile is probably the best OS MS has produced.
 
Paul_Johnson said:
Except it didn't have exchange support, office built in, wasn't open to outside development, and cost more. Yeah I generally call that superior. And Windows Mobile is probably the best OS MS has produced.
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As a phone and PDA it was IMO already superior to Palm, Windows Mobile, and Blackberry phones, PDAs, and mobile media devices that I had owned in the past (and I've had them all). The additions coming in the next few months will put it over the top.

And saying that WM is the best OS that MS has produced is very very depressing to me...
 
Serpico said:
As a phone and PDA it was IMO already superior to Palm, Windows Mobile, and Blackberry phones, PDAs, and mobile media devices that I had owned in the past (and I've had them all). The additions coming in the next few months will put it over the top.
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Right, it is if you ignore all the features it lacks that make the Windows Mobile platform better. I mean ignoring the features another comparable product has that makes it better than the one you have is the fair way to evaluate things, especially when you decide each morning "should I wear a black turtle neck and jeans or a black turtle neck and jeans"?
 
Hardee har, oldest Apple joke in the book.

You might as well try to convince me that Windows ME is superior to 2000/XP. The GUI, OS speed, everything about WM is FUBAR. It is no wonder that so many people use Blackberry. There is no question that it is a superior mobile platform.

But if you insist on saying that the superior mobile platofmr is the one that can do things on a checklist, poorly, then be my guest.
 
Back on topic, good article on Kotaku: http://kotaku.com/364824/apple-has-democratized-platform+specific-game-design

This is huge. Cut/pasted a comment from Shacknews:

q[*The SDK is being made available for free for anyone to develop on the iPhone.

* $99 a year gives you the ability to post and sell games on the itunes store for one year. Think about this. You can't do this with Xbox Live or PSN. You can't even do this with Steam.

* The iPhone market already has people tapped into buying small transactions of music and videos. This market is tied in already. Every single iPhone customer is a potential customer.

*Apple has set aside 100,000,000 to seed software development for the iPhone. This is massive support.

The only Apple product I've bought in the last ten years has been an ipod. I don't own stock and honestly have never been a fan of their work. This, is going to be big though.]q
 
Serpico said:
Hardee har, oldest Apple joke in the book.

You might as well try to convince me that Windows ME is superior to 2000/XP. The GUI, OS speed, everything about WM is FUBAR. It is no wonder that so many people use Blackberry. There is no question that it is a superior mobile platform.
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You haven't used Windows Mobile then or supported it......
 
I have used several versions with several different handsets and I really really didn't like it. The only smartphones I recommend are Blackberry or iPhone. I don't work in IT so I don't "support" anything as far as that goes.

There is a reason why WM is widely considered inferior to what RIM offers.
 
Serpico said:
I have used several versions with several different handsets and I really really didn't like it. The only smartphones I recommend are Blackberry or iPhone. I don't work in IT so I don't "support" anything as far as that goes.

There is a reason why WM is widely considered inferior to what RIM offers.
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You've got to be kidding me.

From an IT standpoint and solution provider, NOTHING (and I mean NOTHING) can beat the sheer integration of WM with the corporate desktop. You have an exchange server? Well you have complete integration with a WM device. No special "desktop" software, no excruciatingly expensive, obfuscated extra server software to run.

WM's speed issues are DIRECTLY related to the handset it's on. It's very robust, very clean, and very efficient. I have an Old PPC-6700 running WM6 and it runs great. I also have a t-mobile Wing (new handset, but far less memory) and it runs WM6 *slow*.

The only reason why RIM is still tops on corporate use is two-fold: Hangers on, that are afraid of change, and it's been entrenched already. for YEARS it was the only mobile messaging solution worth the trouble. DirectPush / ActiveSync has only become prominent with Exchange 2003.


That said, I can't wait to see how well the iPhone integrates with my corporate setup.
 
Serpico said:
It was already superior to every single Windows Mobile smartphone on the market, and with this out of the way the Blackberry will now lose its main advantage.

And in anticipation of any defense, no, Windows Mobile is unmitigated garbage.
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That's your opinion. I like Windows Mobile and I have no intention of getting me an iPhone. My sister has one and I wasn't impressed with it. Doesn't make it a bad product though. It's just not for me.
 
KaosDG - I can't speak as someone who supports the devices, just someone who uses them. I much prefer Blackberry and iPhone to WM devices, that's it.

And yeah, I'm also curious to see how well it integrates with corporate setups. The stuff shown at the demo was promising but as far as how well it works practically, we'll see.
 
Man, I hope this motivates XNA development as well as Steam/XBL/PSN distribution to do the same thing. A free SDK with the ability to publish unlimited titles (setting your own price and keeping 70% of the proceeds) for $100 a year on one of the, if not the biggest digital distribution platforms in the world.

Hopefully MSFT/Sony/Valve will follow suit because this is awesome for small time developers.
 
Thoughts from Carmack, taken from Slashdot:

We (Id) have put in our application like everyone else, so I don't have any inside information at this point. I think Steve is still pissed at me over some negative comments I made about iPod development tools a while ago. Just based on the blurbs, it looks very good -- a simulator plus debugging on the native device is the best of both worlds, and a 70% royalty deal for apps over iTunes is quite good.

The iTunes distribution channel is really a more important aspect than a lot of people understand. The ability to distribute larger applications than the over-the-air limits and effectively market your title with more than a dozen character deck name, combined with the reasonable income split make this look like a very interesting market. This type of developer / customer interaction is probably the wave of the future for mobile devices, it will be interesting to see how quickly the other players can react. Based on our experiences with the carriers, I am betting not very quickly.

John Carmack
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http://mobile.slashdot.org/mobile/08/03/06/204233.shtml
 
InorganicMatter said:
I went through 3 Windows Mobile devices. All sucked.

iPhone > BlackBerry > Windows Mobile
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http://www.hardforum.com/showpost.php?p=1032173319&postcount=16

Research before you buy. Its kind of like buying a 2900XT after all the reviews tell you that that hardware is slower for running the software you want and then bitching about the software running slow. If you can't be bothered to put a little effort into finding a good phone as opposed to an overpriced under featured propreitary one (iPhone) then I guess you are in Apple's target demographic. That doesn't however make the competing software/platform worse.
 
Forget hardware, it is worse if the actual software and platform is worse. I don't care how easy it is to support on the back end, the front end UI is the worst of the big smartphone platforms.
 
Serpico said:
Forget hardware, it is worse if the actual software and platform is worse. I don't care how easy it is to support on the back end, the front end UI is the worst of the big smartphone platforms.
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Really? That is odd, my mother (in her 60's) picked up an MDA and immediately knew how to use it because of the UI and layout. Little hard button that has the mail icon opens her email, the little hard button for IE gets her on the internet, little camera button lets her take pictures, little voice button lets her voice dial, etc. Then when she popped out the stylus she could navigate the phone just like windows with a tocuh screen instead of a mouse. Something that 99% of users are immediately familar with. Not deviating from the Windows design is brillaint because 99% of users will do just as she did....immediatly pick up the device and know how to use it. There is no fumbling with new icons, learning new routines, and the most basic fucntions of the device are most often mapped to physical buttons with their icon from the OS 99% of people know by heart.

You are really grasping at straws here on issues with the platform/software. The bottom line is the iPhone does less, costs more, is less fucntional, harder to support, doesn't do anything revolutionary, and now that you brought it up...requires people to learn a new interface.
 
I never understood why Windows Mobile and Backberry are the only 2 smart phone platforms ever listed. Yet the s60 platform has 60% of the world smartphone market.

They really have to start marketing the s60 platform more.

n95>iPhone
 
Paul - You completely lost me at iPhone's interface being hard to learn. Really? Wow, now who's grasping. And how is a multi-touch gesture based interface not revolutionary?

But I suppose someone out there has to believe WM > Blackberry and iPhone.

On another note, I expect more from a moderator than to deviate from the main topic of a forum post that is about Apple unveiling their SDK, not make start ridiculous WM > * posts that add nothing. From a typical poster, sure, that's expected. My links from Kotaku, Shacknews, and Carmack's comments on Slashdot have been more relevant and on-point then anything you have contributed to this particular thread.
 
Serpico said:
Paul - You completely lost me at iPhone's interface being hard to learn. Really? Wow, now who's grasping. And how is a multi-touch gesture based interface not revolutionary?
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I didn't say it was hard to learn, I said WM isn't hard to use and that new interfaces require learning. Read what I wrote.
 
My last note on this. If you like WM, great. I don't know a single person who hasn't gladly abandoned theirs for a Blackberry or iPhone, but I'm glad you like yours. I personally think following the Windows paradigm for a mobile device is overly cluttered and adds too many steps for what should be simple functions, things that Research In Motion and Apple have IMO done right. I would throw Palm into the mix but they got left behind years ago. But even when they were in their heyday I felt that they had a stronger mobile UI than what Microsoft was offering at the time.

As for hardware being a determining factor if you will have a good experience with WM, that even being a factor is absolutely ridiculous. We don't have to do the same thing with other mobile consumer electronics such as the Nintendo DS, Sony PSP, digital cameras, mp3 players, etc etc. There is a lot to be said for the manufacturer to control both the hardware and the software, and in WM's case this is another minus. Why shouldn't your regular consumer be able to buy hardware that is properly suited for the software in a frigging smartphone without doing research? It makes no sense to me.

One interesting thing, the one single place where Microsoft has absolutely nailed it in the last few years is with the XBox 360, which is a case where they were in 100% control over both the hardware and the software. Could you imagine what a mess it would be if we had to pick our XBox 360 software platform with different hardware made by different manufacturers? Ugh, it would be a disaster.

Anyway, we agree to disagree.
 
but the real question is...will I be able to get free high speed intnet from it like I can with a regular hacked verizon phone? And second, when will they make one with buttons I dont like touchscreen.
 
Ok, just watched the video from the presentation. Outside of the normal applications, Super Monkey Ball looked really cool on the iPhone. Nintendo needs to put a tilt sensor and accelerometer in whatever portable they release to succeed the DS (it would surprise me if they didn't at this point, after the success they have had using that technology with the Wii).
 
I don't know a single person who hasn't gladly abandoned theirs for a Blackberry or iPhone, but I'm glad you like yours.
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Tis true... EVERYONE I know, even diehard Apple haters, that have used an iPhone have loved it... but then again, most of these people have ultraportables... So, opening that excel document on your phone is only marginally more attractive than having a root canal.
 
Justintoxicated said:
but the real question is...will I be able to get free high speed intnet from it like I can with a regular hacked verizon phone? And second, when will they make one with buttons I dont like touchscreen.
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I cant wait for the nokia implementation of haptic feedback, it is a touchscreen that will actually click like a button when pressed. Its not like the LG feedback where the phone just vibrated to give feedback, but the screen itself simulates a button press.

http://www.intomobile.com/2007/11/06/nokia-shows-off-some-seriously-cool-haptic-feedback-touchscreen-tech-haptikos-takes-haptic-feedback-to-a-whole-new-level.html

"We inserted two small piezo sensor pads under the screen and engineered in a 0.1mm movement in the screen itself. What’s taken the time has been fine tuning the movement and response to mimic exactly the sensation of pressing a real key.”
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Most instantly useful 3rd party application would be a programmable/configurable universal remote control... for iphone/ipod-touch. So the user could configure and program up a custom remote to control all his/her crap. Given the price of standalone serious universal remotes, that'd be a great way of maximizing the cost effectiveness of the iphone/ipod-touch.
 
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