Developers Excited by iPhone SDK But Questions Linger
Mac developers are excited about the promise of writing programs for Apples iPhone, but reacted with enthusiasm tempered with caution as some unanswered questions about details were omitted from Thursday's announcements.
Fri, March 07, 2008
Macworld — SAN FRANCISCO (03/06/2008)—Developers have been pining for the ability to write programs for the iPhone since the handset was first announced in January 2007. But despite numerous pronouncements on the subject by Apple executives, the details of how independent developers would create iPhone were unclear until Thursday. In the wake of Apple's release of its first official iPhone software development kit (SDK), Mac developers reacted with enthusiasm tempered with caution.
Getting technical
From a technical standpoint, developers seemed more than satisfied with the scope and depth of the tools that Apple said it would be providing.
"There's no question it's good news overall," said Paul Kafasis, CEO of Rogue Amoeba, publisher of Mac audio software. "This is a whole new platform—it's the platform developers wanted nine months ago, when Apple said 'Web Apps are a sweet solution.' It took a while, but it's finally here, and that's good for almost everyone. Except maybe Palm. And RIM. And Win CE."
Ken Aspeslagh, iPhone specialist at Ecamm Network, which makes the iPhone companion program MegaPhone, agreed. "It exceeded all of my expectations," he said. "This is the first time a mobile phone company has provided this kind of capability."
"It's way more than I had hoped for," said Fraser Speirs, owner of software firm Connected Flow. "I had anticipated that there might be a desktop simulator, as Palm had many moons ago, but I wasn't expecting that we would get full Interface Builder support. That's going to cut the time to market significantly."
John Casasanta, President of utility developer Inventive Software, also reacted positively to the news that developers would be getting access to Apple's own tools. "It's fantastic that what Apple's making available is the exact SDK that they're using internally," Casasanta said.
Prior to the release, there had been a lot of questions about whether or not Apple would in some way restrict what developers could and could not do, but from the technical details laid out at today's presentation, it appears that will not be a major issue. However, there are likely some shortcomings in the SDK that will only be discovered as developers dig in and begin the work of writing software.
For example, Kafasis said, it's unclear what access developers will have to the iPhone's file system. And Ecamm's Aspeslagh pointed out that the rules on what access programs will have to the iPhone's EDGE and Wi-Fi data networks are also unclear.
During a question-and-answer session with the press after Thursday's event, Jobs said Voice over IP (VoIP) functionality, which lets you make phone calls over the Internet, would be allowed over Wi-Fi connections, but not on AT&T's EDGE network.
