Excitement builds over iPhone/iPod Touch SDK

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Monday, 22 October 2007 00:00

Your IT - Mobility

After 10 months of more Apple coverage than ever, thanks mostly to the iPhone, and the things that can and can’t be done with one, the SDK announcement has restored faith in many users who thought Apple had begun turning to ‘the dark side’.
What an eventful year it’s been in the world of Apple. At the beginning of the year, Apple’s website proclaimed ‘Welcome to 2007’, and that “the last 30 years were just the beginning”, implying 2007 would be Apple’s biggest year ever.

Well, with the iPhone, new iMacs, OS X 10.5 Leopard, and all the new iPods including the iPod Touch, amongst other developments with Apple TV, a Wi-Fi iTunes store and more, 2007 has certainly been bountiful in its harvest for Apple and for users.

Of course, there has been controversy over the fact the iPhone is officially a locked down device, able to work only with authorized phone carriers, and the fact that for the first few months of the iPhone’s life, native third party applications were simply not supported, drawing the ire of developers, fans and users.

Naturally, as anyone interested in the iPhone knows, Apple’s limitations, while annoying, have ultimately not stopped the hackers from writing and running native apps on the iPhone, and hacking it to work on any phone company that uses a standard GSM mobile phone network.

The same goes for the iPod Touch, which can now run a number of the missing iPhone apps, such as Google Maps, Notes, Weather and more.

But now that Apple has officially committed to delivering an SDK that will allow native third party applications – with whatever official limitations that we don’t know about yet (hopefully few if any), one of the biggest criticisms of the iPhone and iPod Touch has now begun melting away, at least for now.

Yes, we still need to see exactly what the SDK will or won’t allow us to do, and how Apple may or may not restrict developers in the way they distribute iPhone and iPod Touch software.

Will developers be forced to allow Apple to validate their software and only sell it through an iTunes store? Will developers truly get access to all the multi-touch and other features the iPhone offers, at least within the confines of the security environment the iPhone will operate in? Please read onto page 2 for the conclusion...