Bring on the iPhone apps!

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Tuesday, 05 June 2007 15:25

Your IT - Mobility

With the iPhone running OS X, it’s really a computer instead of an mp3 phone, and now that Jobs’ resistance to third party apps seems to have mostly melted, the iPhone really will be the iPC.

Ok, ok, so the floodgates won’t fully be open to third party software come June 29 when the iPhone goes on sale. First, developers will need an SDK, or software developer kit, to know how to craft software designed for the iPhone’s compelling and unique interface, in a cell phone at any rate.

The iPhone SDK is rumored to be coming next week at Apple’s WWDC, running this year from June 11 to June 15. But, as always with Apple, there’s no guarantee the magical SDK will appear, as Apple may yet be figuring out how best to allow other programmers access to the iPhone, while also keeping a firm lock on what software actually gets released to ensure a quality, crash free experience every time.

This is clearly important to Jobs, and we can be sure he’ll only let developers have as much access as he feels comfortable with. After all, with the iPod, game development is tightly controlled, with games only available through iTunes, with the success of the system readily apparent. There’s no reason why iPhone software won’t be delivered in the same manner.

Although this has annoyed some third party developers, it’s ensured quality for Apple, and is the way things work in the games console world too – you can be a third party if you want, but you need to be licensed to develop for the platform first. That doesn’t sadly prevent less than spectacular games being released at times but we suspect Apple’s standards are markedly higher in this regard for both iPod gaming, iPhone gaming and iPhone third party software in general.

As we said, it’s clearly important to Jobs, as he made clear on a number of occasions in public, be it at the D: All Things Digital conference, in the New York Times or at his own shareholder’s meeting.

On May 10, Jobs told shareholders that he was “wrestling” with the idea of third party apps, after months of signaling that freely downloadable third party apps from anywhere on the Web simply wasn’t part of the game plan.

Jobs told the NYT that “We define everything that is on the phone. You don’t want your phone to be like a PC. The last thing you want is to have loaded three apps on your phone and then you go to make a call and it doesn’t work anymore.”

What did Jobs say next? Please read onto page 2 for the conclusion...