iPhone To Allow 3rd-Party Development

Anarchysoft writes "In an exciting shift from previous statements, Apple CEO Steve Jobs revealed at the D Conference that 3rd-party development will be supported on the iPhone. Questions remain as to whether the opening of the platform, slated for later this year, will be through Dashboard-like widgets or a separate SDK."

A much better link

[Raindance]

This has been covered better and in more detail [arstechnica.com] by Ars' John Siracusa. In short, Apple actually wants to allow third-party apps on the iPhone, and developers are salivating at the thought, since (beside it being sexy) it'd be much easier to develop for the "real OS X" that runs on the iPhone than some kludgy mobile phone OS. The problems are two-fold:

1. Cellular networks are fragile. Much more fragile than the larger internet. They tend toward monoculture and proprietary systems, and haven't had the shakedown that standard internet network hardware and protocols have had. So Jobs' quote about him 'not wanting third-party apps bringing Cingular's network down' actually makes some sense (some mobile phone applications have more-or-less done this in the past). And

2. Apple simply doesn't have the design tools, and more importantly, the user interface guidelines, ready for developers.

So, third-party apps on the iPhone will happen. Just in a very measured way.

Here's Siracusa:

Not only does Apple have to figure out what makes a good iPhone application, it has to actually create the APIs to produce such a thing. Okay, so no scroll bars, but surely there will be some standard way of scrolling, some standard gesture recognition engine, and so on. Apple has to create all this, if only for its own internal sanity, before it can really get cranking on iPhone application development.

And like the Mac GUI before it, there will be fits and starts, dead-ends, and bad ideas to shake out in the first few years. Also, an IDE would be nice. Xcode, sure, but some sort of simulator or remote debugger system would help. And, whoops, let's keep revising all those APIs and that IDE to match the best practices as they evolve. Oh, and by the way, we need to ship something that works by June 29th.

Viewed in this context, the calls for third-party iPhone development, and Apple's reaction to them, start to make a bit more sense. It's the prototypical fanboy mistake to imagine that the mothership has infinite resources and skills, and any lack of satisfaction is malicious. The fact is, Apple could not provide a comprehensive third-party iPhone development environment on par with what Mac developers have come to expect by June 29th, even if it wanted to do such a thing--and there are many sound reasons not to. This stuff all needs time to cook.

In the meantime, Mac developers will have to be happy with some simple, widget-like WebKit-base development at WWDC this year. That'll also be a nice gesture of good faith from Apple.

Re:GPS

[Anonymous Coward]

My HP 6945 has GPS, Windows Mobile 5 and pretty much every bell and whistle you could want... 1 gig memory card, is actually smaller then the iPhone is proported to be.. the iPhone might be sexy, but it is severly lacking out of the gate.

Not what Jobs said...

[SuperKendall]

At lauch, Jobs sais that there would be third party applications, but the reelase of them would be tightly controlled by Apple at first (he spoke of the iPod games as an example). Perhaps the wider availaiblity of an SDK is something new, but not the presence of third party applications or some kind of SDK at all...

If you think about it, the notion that there was "no SDK at all" before is ludicris. After all, Apple has to develop applications for the phone, right? Therefore there always has been an SDk, it's just a question of access to that and the ability to load new applications on the phone.

Re:GPS

[PhotoGuy]

GPS can be added in quite a nice way to Bluetooth devices. Devices such as the Holux GPSlim 240 (my preferred choice) are under $100, the size of a memory stick, and have one of the bets GPS chipsets on the market (works inside a glove compartment), and relays the GPS data to a Bluetooth device. Works perfectly with my UTStarCom 6700 Phone (Windows Mobile 5) and TomTom Navigator. One added benefit is that you can stick the bluetooth GPS device in a handy spot (on a dash, up on deck on a boat, etc.) to increase reception, while having your phone anywhere within reasonable bluetooth range.

Got one of those already

[Namarrgon]

And so does my wife.

Hers is from Nokia, mine is from HTC (I'm posting from it). They both have wifi and run Skype (and SIP, which IMO is better). They both have 3G too. Mine also has a full touchscreen and keyboard.

What you're asking for has been available for years. All Apple has done is put a (very) slick UI on it. It's nice, but I'm still waiting for the paradigm shift to kick in.

Re:One Word:

[Achromatic1978]

You are, uhhh, aware that Skype is already available to several mobile devices, right?

It is all about control

[burris]

All along Apple has planned to support 3rd party apps on the iPhone the same way they support them with iTunes/iPod: you can't get the SDK without signing a restrictive contract. A contract that gives Apple the final say on whether or not you can ship your application. Enforced through copyright; your app, when linked to their SDK, has stuff that Apple has exclusive rights over so you can't just get a copy of the SDK from a friend and avoid signing the contract. Some people are happy with that but it's a far cry from the software freedom that Slashdotters profess to support.

Ever wonder why there is only one music store that integrates with iTunes? Why all attempts to integrate anything fun and useful for consumers into iTunes are quashed? Because Apple is an extremely conservative organization that uses all of its power to suppress anything it doesn't like. Expect the same thing with iPhone.

Forget trying to ship anything for the iPhone that is innovative, contrary to the status quo, or competitive with Apple.

Re:A much better link

[Sandor at the Zoo]

Cite. Go on. I would so so love to see a citation of any evidence of this. Any, whatsoever.

I can't give you a cite since it wasn't public, but I was there when the company had to roll out a quick release for an email client that was hitting the network at the same time every morning, from some tens of thousands of handsets. With cell time synchronization, that meant exactly the same time every morning, which was bringing down the C******* server that handed out data connection contexts.

Like you, I wouldn't have believed that you could bring down a cell network, but there you go. I suppose it wasn't really the whole network, but whatever.

Maybe they have more than one server handing out contexts now. Maybe not.

Re:J2ME?

[Anonymous Coward]

I doubt it. When originally asked about Java on the iPhone Jobs responded, "Java's not worth building in. Nobody uses Java anymore. It's this big heavyweight ball and chain."

Re:A much better link

[0xdeadbeef]

Embedded Visual C++ 4.0 [microsoft.com] is free. It works with the Windows Mobile 5 SDK [microsoft.com]. Knock yourself out.

But don't stop there.

Series 60 [nokia.com]
Palm OS [access-company.com] (Treo SDK [palm.com])
BlackBerry [blackberry.com]

Re:One Word:

[fishboy]

Unfortunately, the iPhone will NEVER become that great skypable device in the sky that we have all been waiting for for so long now. Apple is a business and a publicly traded one at that. If their phones became that cell-killer device, their contract with cingular would go bye-bye in a big huge hurry. Not to mention that no cell provider would want to come near the phone if that ever happens.

But it won't be because of some little contract with Cingular. You think that something Skype-like is going to kill the cellphone industry overnight, or even ever? Reliability is worth more to people than free calls on Skype, and what you're talking about is more than five years off. And it's not as though Apple is chained to Cingular, in fact, quite the opposite. Cell-phone companies will be falling all over each other to try and carry the iPhone after the exclusivity agreement runs its course. The current arrangement will be extremely profitable to Cingular, and others will be clamouring for a piece of the action, placing Apple in the position of delivering customers to suppliers, just like how the iPod delivers customers to the record companies via iTunes.

And, uh, MS is hated here more than Apple because they fight for more DRM, because their products suck and stifle innovation, because they create redundant industry standards and break them continually, and because they make hella money off everyone with illegal business practices.