“Apple’s iPhone SDK offers far more than many developers expected, according to developers that InfoWorld spoke with after the long-awaited SDK unveiled today,” Ephraim Schwartz reports for InfoWorld. “‘It looks like this is what everybody wanted,’ said Tony Meadow, principal at Bear River Associates, a mobile application development vendor. ‘Apple is doing it the right way.'”
Schwartz reports, “Forrester Research analyst Simon Yates, concurred, saying that the Apple SDK should please three core constituencies: Developers, enterprise IT and consumers. ‘This is direct competition for RIM BlackBerry, and it gives Apple access to millions of Exchange and Outlook users,’ said Yates.”
“What pleased Meadow and other developers was a set of functionality that will let them write native iPhone applications through access to the iPhone APIs,” Schwartz reports. “In addition, Meadow thought Apple hit the right note by offering SQL Lite as the built-in database layer. SQL Lite, an open-source database, is widely used by the mobile developer community and runs well on small devices.”
“As welcome as the SDK and enhanced business-oriented features are, people still have more they want Apple to offer,” Schwartz reports. “A common request is availability from more than one carrier. Currently, the iPhone only works on the AT&T network. ‘Companies don’t want a single carrier for voice and data,’ said Forrester’s Yates.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Ken L.” for the heads up.]
what me worry?
Verzion must be shitting their pants and weeping over their dumb decision to reject the iPhone.
RIM will be #2 by this time next year.
Watch the Quicktime video of the presentation. You just can’t describe the demo’s with words.
This is going to destroy so many devices.
Sales are going to just skyrocket.
Un-FFFFnn-believable
Apple is going to take over the world, soon we will be living in iWorld. At least it will run smoothly.
@ freefromdesign
I believe it’s eWorld. Freakin’ MAC dorks.
Your potential. Our passion.™
I’d love to join in, but for whatever reason the download page they send me to is broken….
🙁
Here’s hoping I can get the SDK…. eventually!
just one word described SDK–WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The game demos were pretty amazing. I had no idea 3D games of that quality were going to be possible on my iPod touch… and those were just some half-assed ones whipped together by a couple people in a couple weeks. I don’t care if the update costs $50, it will be more than worth it, and more than worth the wait.
Talk about exciting, there is always just ‘one more thing’, and I freaking love it.
This wasn’t at all what people were expecting today and it’s amazing they were able to keep it quiet. That makes for one powerful, effective, market-altering, game-changing launch.
Gotta love it, and I don’t know if Rim will be number 2 next year, but this is going to change the industry again, and the IT people now have the right tools to integrate it into their environment.
Wow!
I applaud the visionaries and harding-working designers and programmers at Apple. If not for them, led be great leaders, we would not be here experiencing this shift in human-computer interactions. Star Trek, here we come.
They talked about atomic applications with certain system-level integration, but just think what will be possible over time — voice control, video in/out, teleportation…. okay, so many not that yet.
No kidding coolfactor. I can’t imagine what it must be like for all the Apple employees that are part of this change, it must be hard work, but extremely rewarding.
Me, I’m buying the teleport app as soon as it hits the App Store, there’s a few things I would like to do…
… my ass.
You got access to iPod Touch, you idiot (Yates).
This is LESS about developing for iPhone than it is about developing for an entire new class of portable device.
iPhone will be an important subset, the all the stuff in Apple’s pipeline that has nothing to do with the carrier aspect is way, way, way greater.
The comments by the CEO of id Software (Doom, etc.) overnight show how far Apple have been willing to shift since the “web apps are all you need” comments of the launch period and how that ability and willingness to change contrasts with the tectonic pace of change at the mobile networks.
What this launch shows is that, contrary to perceived wisdom, SPJ 3.0 is more than willing to alter direction (unlike SPJ 1.0 [Apple 1976-85] and SPJ 2.0 [NeXT]); this should actually be more worrying for Apple’s competitors, especially as SPJ now has the ability to make it appear that a change forced by external pressures was always part of his grand masterplan (rather like my friend’s Cavalier Spaniel when he falls off the sofa).
One thing is for sure; you’re going to start seeing a few more Macs in IT consulting firms and Global Fortune 1000 companies as the Corporate Universe starts to recognise how a mobile platform should work whilst simultaneously discovering that not every computing experience needs to be either perversely counter-intuitive or an exercise in despair.
And here’s another thing: when 100 million iPhone/iPod (and probably iSlate) customers are spending $25.00 a year on software through App Store, Apple will book income of $750 million. I know SPJ said this isn’t going to be a major profit centre, but the idea that Apple won’t make at least a couple of hundred million in real profit as a result of this is actually surreal nonsense.
My friends, this is an important moment in computing history. Just as the Macintosh was revolutionary in 1984, the iPhone is EVOLUTIONARY in 2007.
Yet another nail in the coffin of windows mobile.
Great job Apple – I’m gonna love buying and using all those new apps!
Developers, developers, developers, developers, developers…
Sadly, most of the Winblows mobile users won’t understand the greatness of it. Yeah, they’re that idiot.
zUne tAng seems to be starting to crack. Even he couldn’t offer negatives about this.
Gosh, wish I had a zune.
HaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHaHa
They’ll make the 10 million mark this year. No wonder they were so confident.
When the iPhone was originally announced in January 2007, Merlin Mann gushed that it was a Mac in your pocket. He then soured on the iPhone as he learned more about it. But I think he had it right the first time. Just as there are many people who do not need a desktop computer, there will soon be many people who will not need a laptop computer either. We are truly watching history in the making.
“SPJ now has the ability to make it appear that a change forced by external pressures was always part of his grand masterplan”
Still amazes me how people actually think they weren’t planning on doing this all along. Seriously, it hasn’t even been a year since the iPhone came out. This sort of shift has to be done in waves. They couldn’t have offered all this from the get-go and had a successful launch.
@Macromancer
You are correct sir.
A great story my dad told me. Back in the early days of records, RCA came out with a nice radio. Sold lots of them, then they came out with an add-on record player that plugged into the back of the radio. Nobody knew what those extra plugs were for when the radio first came out. RCA undercut all the other record player prices because it used the amp and speakers of the radio.
It’s called engineering and very carefully scripted planning.
Macromancer…
I’m not doubting that the SDK was part of a long-term plan, however I’m also not completely certain that Apple wanted to do this quite as quickly
I think Apple could quite comfortably have lived with the iPhone being a media phone for another two years or so; I think what shocked them was the early demand for a full application development environment and the lengths to which people would go to get “proper” applications onto the unit i.e. potentially bricking their phone.
My perception is that Apple realised that, rightly or wrongly, the “bricking” phenomenon would ultimately turn into an opportunity for competitors to propagate negative PR using the “Apple restricts your freedom of choice…” gambit and decided to accelerate the roll-out of the full SDK which must have existed from Day One.
Again, it’s like my friend’s dog: he was always going to get off the sofa at some point, it’s just that gravity – which I constantly remind him is not his friend – expedited the process. Diesel’s (and I know that’s an incongruous name for a Cavalier) skill is the way he gracefully rolls and then trots away as if the whole exercise was intentional, just as SPJ’s skill is using the RDF (which may as well be called Jedi mind-tricks) to make people forget his previous statements on any number of subjects whilst simultaneously convincing them that his new position was always his position.
The genius from Apple is being able to deliver such a substantive 2.0 update, especially the Microsoft ActiveSync elements, as well as soup-to-nuts developer programme including the $100M that KPCB have retrieved from down the back of the sofa. Combined with the whole “this was always our plan” pose, it makes the competition’s negativity re: iPhone in the past look like a lack of vision which actually makes Apple look even better.
In any case, it barely matters which of us is correct: the only real thing that matters is that this whole thing will mean more demand for iPhones, especially in the corporate arena, with more commissions on higher value plans. I know I can’t afford any Apple shares, but anyone who can and doesn’t buy in now is a certifiable idiot.
I was really impressed at how Steve stepped back from the lime-light, just a bit, and allowed others to do the ‘heavy lifting’
Here’s what I think: Steve Jobs and company already have a plan for the safe transition of Apple after Steve decides to step down (many years from now). We mere mortals simply don’t know what that plan is right now.
Maybe Steve is getting ready to go back to his Home Planet. He’s leaving a pocket version of himself for us to remember him by.
Way back in Jan 2007, Jobs remarked to Markoff of the NYT that Apple was working on allowing native apps. So it’s clear an SDK was in the works like Macromancer said, though MCCFR is probably right that consumer and developer response probably moved Apple to put more A-team resources on it to speed it up.
Microsoft was quoted as saying Apple (Schiller) negotiated with them for two weeks about ActiveSync licensing even before iPhone was released in June, so again the enterprise aspect was something in the works. The corporate (Genentech) and university iPhone seedings are also evidence of much forethought and preparation.
With Apple, there’s clearly a vision and a strategy in place, and we just get to see little pieces every time Jobs speaks and products get released. In terms of leadership and management, it’s fascinating to watch.