Apple has had a number of updates pushed through the pipeline today, and the latest comes in the form of their iOS 5 SDK beta. The updated SDK (software development kit) allows developers to tap into features included in iOS 5 and future beta releases.

Developers working with the iOS 5 SDK beta have access to app integration with iCloud Storage, Newsstand Kit, Core Image, GLKit, Twitter, and new Game Center APIs. iOS Developer Program members can log in to download iOS 5 beta files and the new iOS 5 SDK beta from Apple's iOS Dev Center.

If you notice anything specific just drop into our iOS Developer Forums and let us know!

As expected Lodsys was but the first highly publicized patent troll to try its hand at getting licensing fees from small, independent iOS developers, and as more come creeping out of the woodwork, some international devs are considering leaving the US App Store to avoid the costs and potential legal nightmares.

Simon Maddox on Twitter:

All my apps removed from US app stores (all platforms). 0.575% of total revenue put in a spare bank account. Screw you, Lodsys.

While leaving the US market now may not prevent claims of past infringement, it certainly shows the increasing frustration experienced by developers whose livelihoods are threatened by an increasingly incomprehensible and irreconcilable system. Basic concepts of patent law, like obviousness and prior art, seem not longer to be consider when patents are granted, only when they're litigated. Expensively.

Florian Mueller on FOSS Patents:

The patent troll problem gets worse by the day, and it's turning into a think-global-sue-local business. Today, an Indian company named Kootol distributed a press release announcing that it sent "a notice" to a long list of companies large and small, claiming that they sell products and operate services on which a patent application pending in different jurisdictions around the globe reads.

At what point will Apple (and Google, among others) have to step up and offer support, perhaps even indemnification for code included in their SDK, or bend their billions towards reasonable patent reform in the US, or face the decimation of the app ecosystems that are at the heart of their collective mobile profit centers?

[@simonmaddox via The Guardian, FOSS Patents]

As with all new beta firmware, it appears there are references to new hardware in iOS 5. I expected there to be references to a 5th generation iPhone model but there are also placeholders for new iPad models as well. TUAW is reporting that they found references to not only two difference 5th generation iPhone models, but 2 different iPad models as well.

I'm assuming the two iPhone references are to the GSM and CDMA models of whatever the 5th generation iPhone will be called. I definitely didn't expect to see two new iPad models this soon. And even more interesting, there are no new references of a fifth generation iPod Touch. Considering Apple typically releases new iPods in the Fall, we normally see code pointing in that direction around this time.

From TUAW -

Specifically, there are declarations buried in the iOS system files that reference "iPad3,1" and "iPad3,2." Likewise, "iPhone4,1" and "iPhone4,2." The iPhone 5 will be a 4th generation unit because the iPhone 3G was technically 1st generation. This throws off the numbering and confuses everyone, so don't fret if you were confused....

What do you guys think? I'm going with the fact that they just stuck place holders in there for future iPad iterations. They've done it in the past. I am, however, intrigued that there are no iPod references found this close to what should be an iPod refresh.

TUAW

Earlier this afternoon Apple released the very first beta for iOS 4.1 along with the software development kit (SDK) to all developers. Unfortunately, there has been no word on what changes have been made within the software from Apple. If you are a developer and notice anything worth a mention, be sure to let us know.

Sound off in the comments below!

Update: what about iOS 4.0.1 and iOS 4.x for iPad? And what's the deal with the new iOS 4.1 signal bars algorithm?

The iOS 4 GM seed (gold master) released during WWDC 2010 once again made changes to Section 3.3.2 of Apple's licensing agreement -- specifically the part that deals deals with the use of cross-compilers.  The changes this time around may not make things all better, but it could make things slightly better for some developers.  Matt Drance had this to say about the change to Section 3.2.2:

"While explicit approval from Apple is still required, these new terms seem to acknowledge that there’s a difference between an app that happens to have non-compiled code, and a meta-platform. It’s a step that should allow for many new possibilities."

While this may not provide a solution to everyone, especially Adobe, it may allow some previously rejected apps into the App Store after all, and reassure others who may have been worried about using scripting engines for games, for example. 

Any developers out there have an opinion on the latest revision of 3.2.2? Is it a move in the right direction or are people over-analyzing what may or may not be between the lines here?

[Apple Outsider via Daring Fireball]

Apple has released the 378MB Gold Master (GM) seed for iOS 4 (formerly iPhone OS 4) and it's now available to developers via developer.apple.com (after you agree to the new terms of use). Apple has also announced that developers can begin submitting iOS 4 compatible apps to the iTunes App Store beginning June 10.

So let's get going devs, we know you're going to amaze us!

NOTE: Be sure to grab iTunes 9.2 beta -- you can't activate iOS 4 GM with iTunes 9.1 (download from the same page).

[developer.apple.com]

The evidence that iChat video is coming with the 4th generation iPhone continues to pile up with iPhone OS 4 beta 2 released just last week.

More code reveals that the iPhone must be registered for video conferencing along with the possibility of the feature only being used via Wi-Fi and not 3G data. So those who had hoped for video chat using their networks 3G connection may be a bit disappointed.

ACCOUNTNOTREGISTEREDMESSAGE = "This device has not been registered for video conferencing.";

IMAVCHAT

COULDNOTCONNECTNOREMOTEWIFI = "The video call could not connect because a remote Wi-Fi connection could not be established."; IMAVCHATDISCONNECTEDNOLOCAL_WIFI = "The video call disconnected because the local Wi-Fi connection was lost.";

And as an added bonus it seems as if Apple is working on integrating video chat with "tentpole" number 6, Game Center. From the code below it appears that you will be able to initiate video chats with other Game Center users.

IMAVCHATERRORNOSUCHPLAYERID = "No Such Player ID"; IMAVCHATERRORNOSUCHACHIEVEMENT = "No Such Achievement"; IMAVCHATERRORUNRECOGNIZEDGAMEDESCRIPTIONHEADERS = "Unrecognised Game Descriptor Headers"; IMAVCHATERRORNOSUCHGAME = "No Such Game";

iPhone OS 4 looks to be more promising than we originally had thought. Any of our readers excited just yet?

[Mac Rumors]

Apple has just released iPhone OS 4 SDK beta 2 on developer.apple.com for developers. Update: Here's the official word:

iPhone SDK 4 beta 2 and iPhone OS 4 beta 2 are now available from the iPhone Dev Center. The new iPhone SDK introduces an auto-provisioning feature that allows you to add a new device in a single step from within the Xcode Organizer, making it even easier to enable a device for testing your applications. View the Xcode 3.2.3 Read Me for more details on this feature.

It's great to see the 2 week schedule is being kept up, which means there should be several more leading up to a final, gold master seed at WWDC in 2010 and public release sometime to follow -- probably alongside the 4th generation iPhone.

For more on iPhone OS 4, see TiPb's complete iPhone OS 4 preview and feature walkthrough. No doubt code-diggers are already at work looking for even more in the newest release, so we'll update when the finds come in.

If you notice anything, let us know in the comments!

While Apple's ban on cross-compilers in the iPhone 4.0 SDK has raised a lot of discussion on the net, and generated some fiery responses from Adobe, AppleInsider claims a source who says the move had nothing to do with Flash CS5 or another other, specific cross-compiler, and everything to do with multitasking performance:

The primary reason for the change, say sources familiar with Apple's plans, is to support sophisticated new multitasking APIs in iPhone 4.0. The system will now be evaluating apps as they run in order to implement smart multitasking. It can't do this if apps are running within a runtime or are cross compiled with a foreign structure that doesn't behave identically to a native C/C++/Obj-C app.

"[The operating system] can't swap out resources, it can't pause some threads while allowing others to run, it can't selectively notify, etc. Apple needs full access to a properly-compiled app to do the pull off the tricks they are with this new OS," wrote one reader under the name Ktappe.

Apple is using a different kind of multitasking than we've seen before in mobile -- saved state combined with API-level services that take the place of running apps. Are Cocoa touch apps generated in Xcode really different enough from Flash or C#/.Net apps cross-compiled by Flash CS5 or MonoTouch to cause Apple's multitasking system problems?

We're not developers, you tell us.

9to5Mac continues to search the latest iPhone 3.2 SDK beta and have found that Apple has removed all of the video iChat references that were found in the first beta a few weeks back showing icons for accepting and declining video chat, as well as strings referencing the same functions.

Could this be a intentional move made by Apple to hide this feature until the big announcement or has it been scrapped by none other than Steve Jobs himself? The video iChat feature has teased us all in the past, hopefully we find out once and for all this summer if we will be so lucky.

iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch developers: get yourself over to Apple's developer center, as iPhone SDK 3.2 Beta 4 is ready for you to download, a mere two weeks after Beta three was unleashed for your coding pleasure. As MacRumors and Engadget note, it's too early to say what magical new capabilities are to be found here - but don't let that stop you.

iPhone developer extraordinaire Erica Sadun has been running a great series of "iPhone Dev Sugar" posts over on TUAW:

• Should you be building universal apps for App Store?
• Create shiny buttons easily
• Simulating device events with iSimulate
• Re-signing applications - Installing the 3.2 SDK alongside the 3.1.1 SDK
• Three lessons from the iPhone (big fingers, attention spans, fast launches)
• Letting go of iPhone visual design patterns
• Simple table badges
• Improved Network Reachability routines
• SwapKit

For anyone interested in the nuts and bolts -- and subtleties -- of iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch development, they're definitely worth a look. Check them out, and if you have any ninja-level tips of your own to share, don't be shy!

Right on schedule -- if they stick to 2 week schedules! -- Apple has released iPhone SDK for iPad Beta 3. It's available now via developer.apple.com and if the past is any indication, we should be seeing the code explored and any new and interesting finds tipped and posted... well, from now until Beta 4 hits!

Go get it!

UPDATE 1: Or now, Apple seems to have pulled Beta 3 for now. Let us know if you still see it, if it's gone for you, or if it comes back!

UPDATE 2: It's baaaaaaack! Go get it!

All iPad/iPhone developers out there will be happy to know that if you head over to the Apple Developer site you'll notice that the iPhone 3.2 SDK beta 2 is now available for your downloading pleasure. The servers are still getting flooded at the moment but you might as well try to get your download on.

Of course this SDK is under a NDA so if you want to know about all of the changes from the previous beta, you'll have to check it out for yourself. And feel free to share your finding with us in the comments below!

[Via TUAW]

Apple has sent a note out to iPhone and iPod touch developers encouraging them to start developing iPad apps today... with the iPhone 3.2 SDK beta (!)

iPhone SDK 3.2 beta is now available to all iPhone Developer Standard and Enterprise Program Members from the iPhone Dev Center.

The iPhone Dev Center also provides additional resources including the iPad Programming Guide, iPad Human Interface Guidelines, Preparing Universal Applications, and sample code.

Log in to the iPhone Dev Center and start developing innovative applications for iPad today.

And yeah, Apple said from the beginning that iPhone 3.2 beta was exclusive to the iPad, but come on Apple, it's iPhone 3.2, are you going to throw the actual device, the one that hasn't seen even a hint of an update for months, a little love here?

Or are we going to have to wait for an iPhone 4.0 beta in March?

MacRumors is reporting that the new iPhone 3.2 SDK, now available via developer.apple.com, but (currently?) only supporting the just-announced iPad, brings a couple interesting new features to the table tablet.

• External displays, which had potential but no official APIs in previous iPhone SDKs, looks like they've gone legit. Video out to come? No word on an HDMI cable still...
• Shared file directory, which mounts on both Mac and PC. It isn't the Mobile Finder we've wanted, but it sounds like it might make getting docs on and off a whole lot easier.
• Universal apps, which means developers can make a single build that will support both the smaller iPhone and iPod touch, and the bigger iPad.

In addition, MacRumors says iCall Free VoIP [Free - iTunes link] has told them:

With the latest revisions Apple has made to the iPhone developer agreement and Software Development Kit, iCall for the iPhone and iPod Touch now enabled unrestricted free local and long distance calling over 3G data networks.

Finally (for now), 9to5mac shows that while the demo iPad only had 4 apps in its dock, like the iPhone, the SDK simulator has room for 6. Makes sense given the extra width. (Pictures above)

We'd wondered what happened with VoIP over 3G. Will iPhone 3.2 be the answer?

Apple has released iPhone 3.1 Beta 3 (7C116a) to developers via developer.apple.com, along with notification that iPhone 3.1 Beta 2 expires tomorrow, July 28 at 12am (device local time).

While Apple has previously released most of the betas on Tuesday, a desire to prevent the "pink screen of death" associate with expired betas perhaps necessitated an earlier release this time.

The OS weighs is said to weigh in at around 307MB. Updates to follow below as we get them:

According to WhenWillApple, you can now copy and paste videos into email (like you could images under 3.0) to get full resolution (not compressed like the share option). We're guessing email box size will still be a restriction...

Also, Tethering Data now gets it's own counter in Settings > General > Usage.

[Thanks to Davizzle for the tip!]

I was just listening to Dieter and Mike's latest PalmCast, where they were crowing in duet about how sweet it was that the Palm Pre has an app that can book movie tickets and automagically add the movie event information to the Palm Pre calendar.

I know, I know. If they love the Palm Pre so much, why don't they just marry it? (Dieter is, in fact, looking for a state that may allow it...) But they raise an excellent point -- where's the iPhone version of that functionality? Why can't we push a button on our movie ticket app, or concert tour app, or tradeshow app, or whatever and have that slice of time booked off for us in our calendar?

While the iPhone SDK allows access to the Contacts database to do all manner of glorious, 3rd party app-powered magic, Apple has thus far not surfaced any APIs to do the same for calendaring. I don't believe the new 3.0 SDK has announced any improvements in that area either.

What makes calendar so different? MobileMe and ActiveSync push both. Apple's even giving Calendar some much-appreciated CalDAV and subscription love, with no CardDAV that we're aware of for contacts.

We're sure developers would appreciate it. We know users would adore it.

Anyone have any idea why we don't have this yet?

UPDATED: According to the screenshot we just received, looks like Apple has, for the first time, re-jiggered the order of Apps on the Home Screen (previously they just added iTunes and then App Store). Now Voice Memo takes Clocks spot, Notes switches with Calculator, Clock goes where Notes was, and Calculator bumps Settings to the bottom row along with iTunes and App Store, which move left a slot to make room. Not sure about this new arrangement, what do you think?

Also, there's apparently a new Settings panel for Store, although it sounds like it's blank right now.

ORIGINAL: Sneaking in just before the end of March, Apple has released iPhone OS 3.0 Beta 2, both SDK and firmware to developers. If you're spinning apps for this summer's big release, head on over to developer.apple.com and get your download on.

TiPB has already done a fairly extensive iPhone 3.0 walkthrough of the front-facing elements of Beta 1, but we'll have to wait for the usual deep-code divers out on the internet to let us know if there's anything new surfaced in Beta 2.

As part of their just concluded iPhone OS 3.0 Preview Event, Apple refreshed the iPhone SDK and announced over 1000 new API for developers which, according to Senior Vice President of iPhone Software, Scott Forstall, are designed to better help developers make great apps. (And a boatload of money for all involved, 'natch).

Highlights include:

• In-app purchases, which means if you're play a First Person Shoot, you can pay $0.99 (or whatever they choose) to get yourself a better gun.)
• Peer-to-Peer connectivity, which should allow multi-user, or multi-player interaction for games or information exchange using Bonjour and Bluetooth (no pairing needed).
• Push Notification Service, which was first announced at WWDC last year, will finally make an appearance and allow developers, through Apple's server, to trigger badges (like Mail's unread message counter), custom sounds, and modal alerts (like the new SMS message box).
• Maps lets developers embed Google Maps functionality in their own applications with full interactions, but also custom annotations.
• Accessory support means developers can now interact with "made for iPod" certified accessories either via Dock port or Bluetooth -- no word yet on Bluetooth keyboards, however.
• iPod Library access -- which we're sure Steve Jobs wrestled from Big Music's petrified hands -- let's developers access onboard audio content, so users can listen to their own stuff, in 3rd party apps.

There's a lot more to it, of course, especially at the deeper and more fundamental levels it looks like. Hopefully if Apple can get the App Store sorted out in similar fashion, iPhone Apps could be steamrolling into the second generation!

Today Apple dropped new Mac Mini, iMac, and Mac Pro desktops, and Airport Extreme, and Time Capsule routers. Previously, we'd heard rumors about Apple waiting and holding one of their Special Events on March 24th, a "Spotlight Turns to Desktops" to bookend last fall's "Spotlight Turns to Laptops" event. But none of today's releases were as new or event-worthy as the unibody MacBooks announced last year, were they?

So, if Apple really is having a March 24th event -- and it's not just some interfanboynet make believe -- what's left for them to announce?

Well, March 2008 was the iPhone SDK Roadmap Event, where Apple began the process that ultimately led us to iPhone OS 2.0 and the App Store.

Could March 2009 give us a similar peek into the beginning of a beta process for iPhone OS 3.0? Could it show off an App Store-level complication on the order of an iPhone HD or iTablet, requiring the months before WWDC and an eventual summer release be spent testing new resolutions or screen sizes, or other hardware changes bound for the iPhone 2,1 model?

As stated explicitly in the title, pure and abject speculation at this point, but Apple does seem to like product cycles and symmetry...

What do you think?

There seems to be some confusion out there about the iPhone and multitasking, no doubt fueled by the way Apple handled -- and is still handling -- all things iPhone. Just to be clear, the iPhone multitasks quite well, thank you very much.

While listening to music, you can receive a phone call, take the call, jump into Safari, Google for an image, save the image to your camera roll, jump into Photos, choose the image, hit the "+" and choose to email the image, fill in and send the email, etc. and when the call is over, your music will fade seamlessly back in.

Steve Jobs showed a simpler version of that when he first introduced the iPhone back at Macworld 2007. Even today, you can begin a new iTunes 3G music download, jump into a Twitter app, tweet a response, and jump back to iTunes and see your download still progressing.

So from where does this confusion come?

Apple only allows their own built-in apps like Email, Phone, etc. to multitask (Daring Fireball posted a nice list on which ones a while back). In the current SDK (Software Development Kit -- what people use to write iPhone App Store programs), the licensing prohibits everyone else from multi-tasking. So, no 3rd party IM, Twitter, internet radio, etc. applications can stay on once the user hits the home button.

Apple's Push Notification Service was supposed to work around this by sending status alerts (badges like unread message counter on Email, pop-ups, or alarms like Calendar events) from Apple's servers, but while this was promised for September '08, it was yanked from iPhone OS 2.1 Beta 4 and hasn't been heard from since. Rumor has it Apple is afraid -- for good reason -- of repeating it's near-disastrous MobileMe launch, and would rather delay it than get it wrong. Developers we've spoken to agree - no one wants to handle customer support calls based on a buggy PNS implementation.

Selfishly, we kind of hope Apple doesn't manage to nail PNS in a timely fashion and is instead forced to open up real multitasking, even if only on a limited basis (i.e. more rigorous approval process). (We'd even like to see a CoverFlow task-switcher while they're at it.)

A week or so ago we linked to Erica Sadun's demo of the iPhone SDK's undocumented video out feature. Well, she's been busy since then talking with Freeverse, the developers behind the hit Moto Chaser game for the iPhone. The result? The tech demo featured above.

Good news is that the possibilities are mind-boggling. Bad news is that we're not there yet:

On the 2G touch, Moto Chaser can reach approximately 20 frames per second. This makes the game, in the words of Freeverse Producer Bruce Morrison, "nearly playable." Morrison manages the Freeverse product teams and was heavily involved in developing Moto Chaser; he designed all the levels in the game. The norm for commercial games is 30fps, a point at which motion becomes as smooth and watchable as normal TV video. For reference, the current iPhone release of Moto Chaser runs at 26fps and includes many optimizations to achieve even that on the iPhone's relatively slow processor and limited RAM memory.

Check out the rest of the article for look into how they did it, how long it took, and where they might go from here...

UPDATE: iPhone dev extraordinaire Erica Sadun investigated over at Ars and found the following: Google is both linking to Private Frameworks and using unpublished APIs. While the latter is likened to jaywalking, the former is apparently a ban-worthy offense. Yikes. Check out her complete investigation for more. And now that it's public, the question shifts to what if anything Apple will do about it? Cave to Google over a killer feature and betray the confidence of other developers, or yank Google's app, alienating a huge (if guilty) partner and likely creating another furor among users?

Original post:

Is Google using private (i.e., not publicly available via the official iPhone SDK) APIs to create the silky-smooth "raise the phone and talk" activation for their new Advanced Voice Search feature in the update Google Mobile App? That's the latest question Daring Fireball's been looking into, and here's what they've found so far:

If you use something like the command-line strings utility to examine the UIKit framework, you can see that there’s an undocumented (and therefore private to Apple) method named proximityStateChanged. And if one were to strip the FairPlay DRM from the current Google Mobile application binary — which, of course, you wouldn’t do, because you’re not supposed to strip FairPlay DRM, but I’m just saying if one were to do this — a class dump of the application binary would show that Google Mobile does in fact implement proximityStateChanged.

DF posits three possible explinations: 1) No one at Apple noticed the private API usage, 2) Apple noticed but turned a blind-eye, or 3) Apple approved the use of a private API. Citing sources, DF claims #3 to not be the case, and perhaps that's why Google promoted the feature so heavily, and stirred up interest so high Apple would feel pressure to approve it (though we wonder if Steve Jobs' Apple ever feels that type of pressure?)

By contrast, DF states #1 is not without precedence, while #2 would be grossly unfair to other developers, and either way, users may suffer if Apple makes changes to their private APIs (which is one of the reasons to keep them private after all).

So what do you think? Which scenario is most likely? And what would you rather, that developers (Google or not) use officially unsupported features if it means better apps but also apps that might just break when the next firmware drops?

iPhone developer extraordinaire Erica Sadun over at Ars reveals that Apple has expanded on the iPhone SDK samples, and with some pretty nifty new stuff.

While I can't claim to understand it, included in the update is aurioTouch and oalTouch for scilloscope and positional audio, Accessory and TouchCells which (apparently!) give greater options in tables and cells, and URLCache and Reflection which focus on Web-based data and image reflections respectively.

Says Sadun:

The iPhone Reference Library is an amazing resource for developers. It offers access to sample code, guides, and release notes. The new items I listed here augment Apple's already rich iPhone sample code suite. Make a habit of stopping by the library page; Apple will often add new items there without announcement.

Check it out!

'Tis soon the season. No, not fall, but new firmware season as Apple has released the first beta for firmware 2.2. Following on the 8 betas for 2.0 (released July 11, which turned out a little on the undercooked side...), and 4 for 2.1 (released September 12, which changed from feature bump to stability patch), 2.2 will hopefully bring us a little Notification Server love, and who knows what else? (Not going to say cut and paste -- a blogger can only get their heart broken so often!). Says Macrumors:

The new version is labeled iPhone OS 2.2 beta 1 and is accompanied by a new beta of the iPhone SDK (build 9M2611). Beyond "compatibility testing", there are no other differences noted by Apple.

Doubtless, the one NDA to [redact] them all is in full effect, but hopefully some deep-delving coders will discover (and leak!) a few goodies for us anyway.

Apple has reportedly seeded an early beta of firmware 2.1 (5f90) and a new and improved SDK to developers. Among the changes, CoreLocation (which covers GPS and other location-aware services) gains direction and speed tracking abilities (leading to a fresh round of turn-by-turn speculation, 'natch), and API's for the Notification Server that, come September, will be used in-lieu of background multitasking to push alert badges and sounds to Apps (like Instant Messages, Tweets, etc.). Given how MobileMe is doing with Push, that one may prove interesting...

On the negative side, 2.1 is one way street. Developers using 2.1 can not create binaries compatible with the current 2.0-centric App Store, so they either have to maintain two independant development environments (Update: possibly 3 environments and up to 6 devices, 2.0 and 2.1 for iPhone 3G (with mandatory carrier plans), iPhone 2G, and iPod Touch -- expensive much?), or wait for App Store 2.1 to launch (in September along with Notification Server?)

Of course, before 2.1 we'll likely see the already being tested 2.0.1, which will hopefully fix many of the bugs plaguing upgraders and new adopters both. Like, really soon, right Apple?

Read Via

Monday we asked you "What's the iPhone 3G Chip and When Will it Ship?". Tuesday it was "What is the iPhone 3G Going to Look Like?". Wednesday brought "What Surprises Will There Be in the iPhone 2.0 Software & Services?" Today we want to know what 3rd party iPhone SDK Apps might be ready to download come launch day?

EA, Salesforce, AOL, Sega, and a noble few were right there at the beginning, and since then dozens if not hundreds of others have been rumored if not confirmed, including titans like Microsoft, Sun, and Adobe. But who will be ready come game (and business!) day? Bioshock? Documents2Go? SlingBox? Flash?! What do YOU think?

To give you some help, here's a HUGE roundup of all the iPhone SDK 3rd party apps rumors. Epic-style. Because let's face it, roughly 0.01 seconds after Steve Jobs pulled the first iPhone from his pocket back at Macworld 2007, and someone, somewhere, put aside their childlike sense of wonder long enough think: "Nice! What's the next gen going to be like?"

Complementary, contradictory, obvious, confusing, all but confirmed or from left field via outer space, the rumors have flooded the internet ever since. It's become almost impossible to keep track of them all.

Four days from today Steve Jobs takes Moscone Center stage for the sold-out WWDC keynote, and according to everyone and their newsfeed, announces the iPhone 3G. In eager anticipation, every day this week, TiPb wil be asking you to tell us what you think the next generation iPhone will be, from 3G to GPS, release dates to price points, colors to casings, 2.0 software to .Mac .Me services, and this weekend we'll wrap it all up with a look into the WWDC/iPhone 3G Crystal Ball, and a roundup of the very best of YOUR predictions.

So come on, let's get in on!

WWDC -4 and Counting: 3rd Party SDK Apps

The Mac is an open computing platform. The iPod is a closed environment. The iPhone? At launch it was as closed as they come. Sure, a few courageous souls were willing to "jailbreak" (hack) their devices and load on unofficial and unsupported 3rd party apps, but that was it. At WWDC 2007, however, Steve Jobs introduced 3rd party apps -- Web Apps, showcasing Web 2.0-style AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript and XML), and enraging developers. The iPhone was built on OS X, the same core that ran the Mac. It was a computer, and a new class of mobile device. Where were the real, native apps?

Let’s start there, at the beginning and work our way forward:

October 17, 2007: After months of all-to-typical Apple silence, Steve Jobs penned one of his famous open letters, announcing that an SDK would be in developers hands by February. But how open would it be, what kind of apps would it allow, and most importantly, would it make the iPhone a truly first-class smartphone at long last?

March 6, 2008: Apple held their iPhone SDK Roadmap Event.

Scott Forstall, VP of the iPhone Platform, introduced the SDK, including the Cocoa Touch development environment, which would enhance not only the business focus, but put Apple boldly into the mobile gaming space. Demos included Apple's own Touch Fighter, as well as Salesforce, Epocrates, AOL Instant Messenger, Spore, and Super Monkey Ball.

With a Mac-honed development environment behind it, Xcode, debugging tools, and a learning curve that saw demos produced in a startling 2 weeks, it suggested that even if Apple failed to deliver everything it needed to in 2.0, there was a chance 3rd parties could step in to fill the gap.

The only new icon to make its way onto the home screen, Steve Jobs showed off the App Store, hoping to do for application marketing and sales what the iTunes Store had done for media: put it in front of millions of impulse buyers.

And to prove how serious they were, they pledged to provide free apps for free, and arranged to have $100,000,000 in VC funding thrown at developers to help drive interest in the platform.

March 8, 2008: John Carmack, long outspoken on Apple, gaming, and the iPhone, posted on Slashdot about pulling the id Software Quake/Doom trigger on the iPhone SDK, and his interest in the App Store.

There'd be unofficial Quake ports for jailbroken iPhones, but getting the real deal...?

Craig Hockenberry of Iconfactory and Twitterific fame, had developed for the jailbroken iPhone, and was quickly transitioning to the SDK. His early feelings? How would demos, betas, and paid upgrades work? And please charge developers more to keep them ultra-serious, and consumers less to set off a high-volume perfect app storm.

March 10, 2008: Sun Microsystems was one of the megacorps to try and horn its flagship -- in this case Java -- onto the iPhone via the SDK. Java VP, Eric Klein announced:

We’re going to make sure that the JVM offers the Java applications as much access to the native functionality of the iPhone as possible

A rival development environment famed for "craplets" littering feature phones, almost no one was excited by the idea.

DataViz, makers of the formidable mobile office suite, Documents To Go, weren't committing to anything yet:

We are currently investigating the opportunity to develop Documents To Go, RoadSync, Passwords Plus and any of our other software titles for the iPhone and would appreciate your feedback.

At the same time, Ars Technica brought word that the SDK contained a beta of LLVM (Lower Level Virtual Machine) technology as part of the Xcode 3.1 beta. While on the extreme geek side of news, this held implications well into the future of the platform.

March 12, 2008: Makers of Vox, TypePad, and Movable Type, Six Apart revealed that they would be working on an SDK-compliant native TypePad app.

iambic software, veteran Palm and Windows Mobile developers of Agendus, SplashID, and other best-sellers, also weighed in:

[T]o clear up any doubt — yes, we started working on making titles available on the iPhone.

Rogue Amoeba, developers of Audio Hijack and Airfoil, however, expressed concerns about the SDK's security requirement for "code signing" and the ambiguity around which apps, exactly, would be "disallowed". Third party developers, they argued had before and would again fix things no first party could ever cover all on their own.

Of course, this didn't stop Apple from announcing a web-server shattering 100,000,000 iPhone SDK Event views via streaming video, and an even more impressive 100,000 SDK downloads. They also listed more developers on board: Intuit (makers of Quicken), Namco (makers of Pac Man and other games), NetSuite (makers of SuitePhone), Rocket Mobile, Six Apart, PopCap (makers of Bejewled and other games), and THQ (maker of countless games).

Lastly, iFund venture capitalists joked that while they had bet on the amount of business plans they'd receive during the first 30-days following the SDK release, the number they'd bet on was blown past within 36 hours (!).

March 15, 2008: After a brief period of digestion, would-be iPhone developers realized the SDK license did not allow for multi-tasking, rendering apps like Instant Messenger functionally impossible. The outcry was long and loud.

March 19, 2008: Following the fiasco of false Flash rumors, Adobe's denials, concerns of security and privacy, and Steve Jobs' no-Flash-fits, Adobe's CEO, Shantanu Narayen said we may still see Flash after all:

We believe Flash is synonymous with the Internet experience, and we are committed to bringing Flash to the iPhone. We have evaluated (the software developer tools) and we think we can develop an iPhone Flash player ourselves.

March 20, 2008: As has become increasingly common in the tech industry, (see: Gates, re: Windows 7) a company had to clarify their CEO's "visionary" statements. Adobe wasted no time re-spinning Flash for the iPhone from a "yes" to a "huh? who? us?":

[T]o bring the full capabilities of Flash to the iPhone web-browsing experience we do need to work with Apple beyond and above what is available through the SDK and the current license around it. We think Flash availability on the iPhone benefits Apple and Adobe’s millions of joint customers, so we want to work with Apple to bring these capabilities to the device.

News also surfaced that Apple's iPhone SDK would not allow any access to the iPod application. No music. No media. This joined multi-tasking and the dock as things left unsurfaced in SDK API's. (Though Apple maintained a separate Dock licensing program).

March 22, 2008: The debate over multi-tasking continued with Hockenberry, iChat developer Jens Alfke, and DaringFireball's John Gruber all giving opinions on radio power requirements, notification overloads and collisions, and RAM limitations.

March 25, 2008: ActiveSync licensor and tech monopoly Microsoft jumped on the SDK bandwagon, Mac BU (developers of Office 2008 for Mac)-style when Tom Gibbons, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Specialized Devices and Applications Group told Fortune Magazine:

It’s really important for us to understand what we can bring to the iPhone. To the extent that Mac Office customers have functionality that they need in that environment, we’re actually in the process of trying to understand that now.

And the Adobe Flash soap-opera continued with interweb blaster Robert Scoble claiming that it was Adobe's demands that Apple use their PDF renderer that was causing Apple to retaliate by withholding Flash support, with the media (and consumers) being manipulated by both sides against each other.

March 26, 2008: Fortune Magazine let it be known that Microsoft was also interested in bringing their TellMe voice recognition software to the iPhone SDK. General Manager Mike McCue said:

We’re absolutely going to get a version out there as soon as we can, get TellMe out there on the iPhone.

March 27, 2008: iPhone SDK Beta 2 is released by Apple, changing the release numbers from 1.2.0 to an official 2.0.

April 9, 2008: After besetting developers with mock-worthy "pink screens of death" when Beta 2 timed out, Apple rev'd the iPhone SDK to Beta 3.

April 16, 2008: Super Monkey Ball developer Ethan Einhorn gave to GameCyte a look at the app Sega famously showed off at the SDK Event. Confidence in the iPhone as a gaming platform? Soaring.

April 21, 2008: Netnewswire developer Brent Simmons brought attention to the stability problems that Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight caused by way of his error/crash logs:

I’ve said it before — one of my favorite things about the iPhone is no Flash. I will now add and no SilverlightPlugin.

April 24, 2008: iPhone 2.0 SDK Beta 4 hit, with Xcode IDE, iPhone simulator with Open GL ES support, Interface Builder, Instruments, frameworks and samples, compilers, and Shark analysis tool.

April 25, 2008: Digital Arts reported that Sun Microsystems was still trying to bring their Java Virtual Machine (JVM) to the iPhone SDK. And to hedge their bets, they were also working with alcheMo developer Innaworks, whose software could potentially let Java programs compile as native iPhone apps (!).

April 26, 2008: Simon Brocklehurst complained that the iPhone SDK seemed rushed, that Apple chose their own Objective C/Cocoa environment for iPhone development, and that programmers wouldn't want to go near it. 3 strikes and he was out...

April 30, 2008: Apple Insider revealed a very interesting RIM job posting, seemingly targeting the iPhone SDK:

As part of a newly-created team, you’ll influence the development and design of BlackBerry software. This is a very confidential brand new team and a senior position within RIM so I can’t provide too many details. I guess you can figure out what it might be about though.

Blackberry Connect for the iPhone? They've done it for other platforms.

May 1, 2008: Apple Insider took a look at the hardware and SDK software support behind the iPhone, and determined it could give hardcore mobile gaming a run for its money.

May 2, 2008: Giving Adobe a run for its drama money, Sun Microsystems CEO Jonathan Schwartz sat down with Engadget Mobile to talk about his iPhone, his desire to get Java on it, and the problems faced:

Well I think the only difficulty will be what Apple presents through its EULA. But I think that I think EULA is a bit of an oxymoron to me. They’re end users, they have the freedom to choose what they’d like to do, so I think we are going to leave it up to users to decide how they want to use the technology

May 7, 2008: iPhone 2.0 Beta 5 landed with not much new, it seemed, but dev tools and tweaks.

May 9, 2008: Polarbit showed off an early version of their Raging Thunder car racing game running on the iPhone. General interweb reaction? Wow!

May 17, 2008: iPhone Dev Camp 2 was announced for August 1-3. The second event, this time focusing on SDK-enabled native apps, is once again set to be hosted by... Adobe!

May 28, 2008: Less than three months in, and Apple released iPhone 2.0 Beta 6, which now required both OS X 10.5.3, and a check for Application IDs. This could well be the final beta going in to WWDC. Any last minute surprises?

May 29, 2008: The $100,000,000 VC iFund announced its first "winners": Pelago's Wrll, a core-location come social networking app for finding places and getting recommendations from friends, and iControl's Home Security, a home automation and security app.

They are also reportedly considering 10 additional startups out of 1700 applicants.

May 30, 2008: Pocket Gamer bumped into CEO Sean Malatesta who revealed that IG Fun wanted to port XBox 360 favorite BioShock to the iPhone.

June 2, 2008: Palm emulation software maker StyleTap announced they would be providing a way for the thousands of existing Palm OS apps to run via the iPhone SDK.

Your Turn!

So there you go, now it's your turn. Tell us what 3rd party iPhone SDK apps YOU think will be ready to go at launch. Microsoft Office? Unreal Tournament? AOL IM? Java emulation?!

And after you're done telling us, don't forget to head over to our iPhone Blog's super Wait-a-Thon spectacular where you could win an iPhone 3G of your very own, whatever it looks like, on the very day it's released!

Go back and read Part 1: What's the iPhone's 3G Chip and When Will it Ship?
Go back and read Part 2: What’s the iPhone 3G Going to Look Like?
Go back and read Part 3: What Surprises Will Be in iPhone 2.0 Software & Services?
Continue reading Part 5: What Will the iPhone 3G’s Hardware Features Be?

Apple has just dropped the sixth (6th!) update to their iPhone SDK and 2.0 beta firmware. Pre-req is Apple's almost simultaneously dropped OS X Leopard update, 10.5.3, so developers are forewarned to get that first before beginning the SDK install.

No word yet on what new treasures may be hiding in this version, but if past betas are any indication, there'll no doubt be something hidden in them there strings

According to TUAW, however, Apple is now carding. Yup, they're checking Application IDs at the door, so make sure you're registered before you try to install apps on a test iPhone.

Head on over to Apple's iPhone DevCenter to get yours now!

A New Version of the iPhone SDK is Now Available Sixth beta version just posted.

Via

Want to develop apps for the iPhone? Sad that WWDC is sold out? You're just in luck, the iPhone Dev Camp 2 is scheduled for August 1-3, 2008 in the Adobe Systems offices in San Francisco, California. A follow up to the original iPhone Dev Camp with one obvious new twist, the SDK.

A not-for-profit effort focused on the development of apps on the iPhone, it also hopes to migrate Mac OS X apps to the iPhone. Though they are well aware of the NDA that Apple has in place on the iPhone, they are hopeful that Apple will lift the NDA after the public launch of the App Store.

Over that August weekend, Cocoa Touch developers, web developers, UI designers, and testers will be working together in app development. If you are interested in attending the project, feel free to click the Read Link!

Read

Ask and ye shall receive, dig deep into the code and ye shall find fresh-baked Apple-y goodness.

No sooner did Apple drop iPhone 2.0 SDK Beta 5, than the developers began scouring it for any hint of what's to come, and as usually TUAW serves up what they found:

A certain, unnamed individual sent us some pictures of the latest build of the iPhone firmware showing .Mac push e-mail. The picture shows the main Settings page with a new button: "Fetch new data." When you click the button, you are taken to a list of your mail accounts, where you can choose between either "fetch" or "push." According to Mr. Anonymous, while .Mac is offering push e-mail, you are currently not able to do contact or calendar syncing.

Check out TUAW's gallery for the pics.

Boy, Apple is pushing the features fast and furiously. We already knew about "push" via the Microsoft licensed ActiveSync, which offers full Exchange support, but complementing that with .Mac for non-Exchange users? Very nice!

(Of course, much as I love Back-to-My-Mac, iSync, iDisk, and other .Mac features, it really needs a more competitive feature-set upgrade -- Imagine Google-like offerings and capacities with Apple's ease of use and integration! -- especially for the rather steep $100 a year.)

June really can't come fast enough!

TUAW and iPhone dev extraordinaire Erica Sadun reports that Apple has dropped the svelte-ish 1GB iPhone 2.0 SDK Beta 5 and accompanying firmware:

The fifth beta version of the iPhone SDK is now available. Log in to the iPhone Dev Center and take advantage of all the development resources available to you—a new version of the iPhone SDK, updated documentation, the latest release notes, and more.

No word yet on what secrets deep delving this latest code may reveal, but if past discoveries are any indication, literally anything is possible (except for cut and paste, of course).

Any guesses?

John Gruber and the Macalope have made an artful science out of reasonably, logically, and methodically skewering the most pathetic punditry and junky journalism surrounding Apple and the iPhone.

Case in point is Gruber's recent and rather succinct dismantling of Simon Brocklehurst's complaint that Apple chose Objective C as the language behind the SDK. And while he certainly doesn't need my help, there are a few points I'd like to add.

First, anyone (but especially Simon) who thinks Apple just now (or even recently) decided to create an SDK for the iPhone knows little about SDKs and less about the polish and maturity easily observed in even the beta SDK Apple released at their special Roadmap event. The briefest look at actual developer blogs and tweets -- including developers with substantial experience in jailbroken iPhone apps -- would see the flood of remarks on the maturity of the beta SDK. Bottom line, if Apple hadn't been planning the SDK for a long time (perhaps since the launch itself) they have a hidden supply of killer engineers capable of truly mind-boggling delivery.

Second, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that, while I don't know anything about Brocklehurst's background, quoting Jonathan Schwartz indicates some level of Java-centricity. By serendipitous contrast, I just this week had a conversation with a developer at work who was being brought onto a new project. Since he'd recently done a lot of C++ and PHP, he was looking for a new language with which to stretch his skills. He wanted to try Ruby or Python, wanted to see what Rails could do. Gruber's right, good programmers can (and want to) program and can (and want to) stretch themselves to do it (even when it's not so far a stretch). Good programers who want to make good iPhone apps won't think twice about adding Objective C to their skill set.

Third, the iPhone/iPod halo is clearly helping Apple gain traction in their Mac market, and there's no reason to think the iPhone SDK won't help Apple gain traction for Objective C and Cocoa via Cocoa Touch. Apple has shown time and time again -- to the point of frustration on some occasions -- that it is a future thinking company. Getting a bunch of convenience-oriented programmers now by putting out a Java or C++ iPhone SDK pales to insignificance when compared to the mindshare Apple could gain by delivering a powerful, delightful Object C/Cocoa Touch development environment (and experience) to the uber-keen developers of the next generation, whose newfound skills -- and more importantly, tastes -- will flow right back into the Mac and future Apple products.

While Apple certainly fumbles the ball on occasion, this time they look to be smashing their way clear to a touchdown.

Sorry Simon.

Daring Fireball, via Digital Arts, brings word that Sun hasn't stopped trying to bring a Java Virtual Machine (JVM) to the iPhone even though:

Apple has not been publicly receptive to having Java on its popular new device. There have been questions about whether Apple's iPhone SDK agreement would permit this. The JVM potentially could sidestep Apple's App Store program for dispensing iPhone applications.

And while Sun's efforts continue, they're also hedging their bets with Innaworks, who produces alcheMo, which may let Java programs compile as native iPhone apps, ready for App Store:

[I]nitially targeted at games publishers. Now in a beta release, alcheMo for iPhone can be used to port Java ME mobile games to iPhone and iPod touch without the need for further manual adjustments. The product features an optimizing translator to convert Java ME application source code to equivalent source code for iPhone, according to the Innaworks press statement on the product.

While Apple's Cocao Touch development sounds like a more chocolaty, and much sweeter beverage than Java, Sun sure does seem determined. Of course, determination has a tendency to crash and explode in Matrix-like bullet time when it strikes up against the Zen-like immovability of one Steven P. Jobs.

I don't think we'll be seeing the steaming coffee mug on the iPhone any time soon. You?

No reports of Pink Screens of Death this time, but Apple has released the fourth version of their SDK (5A258f), which weighs in at a beefy 1.15GB (200+MB for firmware) and according to TAUW (via Apple Developer Connection) sports:

Xcode IDE, iPhone simulator with Open GL ES support, Interface Builder, Instruments, frameworks and samples, compilers, and Shark analysis tool.

In addition, code-signing is now enforced, Audio Toolbox was big-upped, NSXML parser was introduced, fonts were given some pro love, and -- teasingly -- the UIApplication delegate class is now rumored to have Springboard Icon badging and some way to get and release "active status". TAUW speculates this may allow some form of background functionality for Apps! (Wishful thinking?)

Go get 'em developers. Especially you deep-code-digging developers who find all sorts of goodies hidden in the strings.

After waking up on Tuesday to face the dreaded Blue-- er... Pink-Screen-of-Death (?!) that signaled the expiry of the 2nd beta release for the iPhone SDK, would-be-developers managed not to go to bed angry as Apple kissed and made-up in the form of SDK Beta 3.

Erica Sadun over on TUAW reports that the latest/greatest weighs in at 1.4GB, or just three-quarters the size of the original beta, with the matching firmware at under 200MB according to a commenter.

What new goodies does this release hold? We'll have to wait a bit to find out. But with the continual slow, grinding, excruciating march towards an anticipated June release (WWDC? June 30 at 11:59 pm? Little help?) waiting is something iPhone lovers are used to.

Literally every source on the interwebs is reporting that Apple has just released Beta 2 of their universe-denting SDK (Software Developers Kit). This new version now sports a working Interface Builder and an update to Xcode 3.1.

Warm up your downloads then get yourself a tasty beverage, because at 1.4GB and with $100 million on the line, even Apple's servers may take a little while getting it to you!

Hot on the heals of the Microsoft MacBU (makers of Office 2008 for Mac) talking iPhone SDK, comes word (via Fortune) that Microsoft's recently acquired TellMe division, which specializes in voice recognition, is also eyeing Apple's little market grabber:

“If the SDK supports [voice recording and location-based information],” [general manager Mike] McCue told Fortune in February, “we’re absolutely going to get a version out there as soon as we can, get TellMe out there on the iPhone.”

Of course, limits placed on the iPhone SDK may well make this impossible without the mythical "special dispensation" from Apple. We do know Bill Gates loves him some "natural interfaces", though, and who knows how long it will be until VistaMob 7 or Surface ship, so is this like back in the early days when Microsoft got all GUI on Mac Excel? Or is Microsoft really all just about the software profits, man? What do you think?

Chalk another developer up for the iPhone App Watch: Microsoft. Microsoft has a small team called the MacBU that develops the very successful Office Suite for the Mac -- an office suite that until the recent version was widely thought to be more advanced than even its Windows counterpart and in some ways a "test bed" for features that would eventually make it into the Windows version of Office.

It may surprise some to hear that Microsoft is looking at the iPhone for development, but it ought not. I mean, they just all got buddy buddy with full ActiveSync Exchange support, so a little thing like utilizing the SDK for a Mini-Office app ain't no thang.

“It’s really important for us to understand what we can bring to the iPhone,” Tom Gibbons, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Specialized Devices and Applications Group, told Fortune on Monday. “To the extent that Mac Office customers have functionality that they need in that environment, we’re actually in the process of trying to understand that now.” - FORTUNE [via MacRumors]

Macnn/iPodnn (via The Inquirer) reports that unlike CoreLocation, which gives access to the Google Maps-like location-based services, Apple's new iPhone SDK will be providing absolutely no access to iPod functionality or the onboard iTunes:

Any functionality related to music playback is inaccessible by the iPhone SDK, a new report claims. While the SDK allows access to many other functions of iPhone and the iPod touch, such as dialing, the camera and Internet access, The Inquirer writes that any components connected to iTunes are off-limits, preventing developers from accessing one of the most popular features of the phone

While this could be an anti-competitive move meant to keep VLC off the iPhone -- or to protect consumers from the horror that would be RealPlayer Touch... -- it may also cripple any Guitar Hero, Rockband, or iPod-style Phase gaming. (Unless Harmonix and other big game developers like EA are granted that oft-mentioned "special dispensation"...?)

Did it used to about the music, and Apple's now telling us to just "sl@g off!"? Or are you happy they're keeping developers' tone-deaf mitts off your shiny (i)tunes? What do you think?

iLounge tells us that Apple has sent out a second note to would be $99-level iPhone SDK developers:

“We have many more requests than we can serve during this initial beta period, so we must limit the Program at this time. We plan to expand it during the beta period, and we will contact you regarding your enrollment status at the appropriate time. We appreciate your patience.”

This follows up on last week's far more confusing note, and the rampant speculation it caused.

Now TUAW brings word that some developers have, indeed, been granted access to SDK paradise:

The accepted developers were apparently among the first to apply. The accepted developers previously received the rejection letter. The acceptances appear to be random. The program is firewalled. Five iPhone limit. Test devices are iBricks [or maybe not: see update at TUAW]

So does that really clarify anything? Will anxious developers get in before June? Or is Apple dropping the ball?

As part of his piece on the continuing confusion surrounding the $99 iPhone SDK program acceptance/pending/rejection letters, Daring Fireball's John Gruber also dropped this very interesting nugget about the equally continuing and confusing situation surrounding the apparent Apple ban on multitasking and background apps:

[A] source confirmed to me that the iPhone AIM client AOL demoed during the iPhone Roadmap event does not cheat by continuing to run in the background — it quits when you switch to another app, but doesn’t log you out of AIM automatically. Such a client can’t notify you of IM messages from the background (a la the way the iPhone notifies of you SMS messages), but when you switch back to the AIM app, messages you missed should appear. Be wary of claims that “An app that does X is impossible without background processing.”

If accurate then that, as they say, is that in terms of any hope for multitasking apps before June. If Apple didn't grant AOL "special dispensation", they certainly won't give any to Johnny "Next Big Social Perpetual Ping App".

But is a non-background running AIM of any use to you? A welcome break from the constant connection demands of IM? A way to keep AIM second class to an eventual Mobile-iChat Touch app? Smart thinking on Apple's part or just a train wreck in the making?

GearLive reported Flash for the iPhone was immanent. Adobe retorted that it was all up to Steve Jobs. His Steveness resorted to telling investors that Flash desktop was too big, Flash Lite was too small, and they were missing a product that was juuuusssst right.

Well, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen hopes Apple's newly released SDK will help Adobe deliver that middle ground, with or without Jobs' blessing. Speaking to investors, Narayen said (via Apple Insider):

"We believe Flash is synonymous with the Internet experience, and we are committed to bringing Flash to the iPhone. We have evaluated (the software developer tools) and we think we can develop an iPhone Flash player ourselves."

Hopefully without those peskyprivacy and security problems, b'okay?

Given the restrictions imposed on 3rd party apps, unless Apple gives Adobe "special dispensation" it seems unlikely that even Adobe could get Flash working in an unplugged-in, sandbox environment, but we'll see.

Eerily similar to Sun's Java announcement immediately following the iPhone SDK launch, all that remains now (in terms of rival interactive development platforms) is Microsoft's Silverlight. Balmer, get your dance shoes!

Following up on the cryptic "I Hate You - Don't Leave Me" letters Apple sent out last week to many (all?) would-be iPhone developers who had coughed up the $99 for a certificate all signed and legal, Daring Fireball reports on whether or not anybody has made it in already:

I believe there are a small handful of developers who are sort of “in” already, but they were hand-selected by Apple. Perhaps, as with the ones who came on stage during the event to demo their “two weeks worth of work” apps, they were involved before the SDK was even officially announced.

But everything I’ve heard suggests that last week’s email from Apple was sent to everyone who applied for the program. I.e., there are developers who’ve been let in through the back door, but no one has gotten in through the front door yet.

John Gruber goes on to quote two sources who've told him that Apple has received over 10,000 applications alone for the $99 package and couldn't meet demand for certificates this fast if it wanted to (and no one seems sure whether they do or not, nor how badly).

Massive over-reaction by the Twitterati? Yet another example of Apple's dwindling communications skills? And will we have to wait until the June (30th at 11:59pm?) release to know for sure?!

The iPhone SDK will not allow 3rd party apps to multitask or run background services. We've previously covered both initial developer Twitter-rage at this, and pundit counter-points. We've also covered Craig Hockenberry before -- the man who (perhaps poetically) develops Twitterrific for the Mac and jailbroken iPhones, and is now bringing it to the SDK.

Hockenberry, via his furbo.org blog, shares his experience on iPhone development and his views on the multitasking (non-?) issue.

To be blunt, I’ve never seen so many experts without a fricken’ clue. If you haven’t written code using the jailbreak tool chain, your opinions on the iPhone SDK, based entirely on what you see in a simulator, just aren’t relevant. You might as well be explaining the nuances of brain surgery.

Wha-wha-wha-what? Please, allow Mr. Hockenberry to continue:

Twitterrific on the iPhone could definitely make use of a background process to gather new tweets. In fact, a prototype version of the software did just that. And it was a huge design failure: after doing XML queries every 5 minutes, the phone’s battery was almost dead after 4 hours. In fact, the first thing I said after giving Gruber this test version was “don’t use auto-refresh.”

Hockenberry goes on to discuss the power demand problem of the radios, both EDGE and Wi-Fi, and the danger of even well-intentioned developers getting individually reasonable but collectively overwhelming access to background services. He does, however, expect that in a future release Apple may include some method of notifying network apps that the radios are being used (for example, by MobileMail Touch), and allowing brief TCP/IP connections during that period. Bottom-line, at the OS's discretion, not the individual apps'.

Sound reasonable? Sound crazy? Should Apple give unfettered access to everyone immediately an trust users to sort through it themselves? Or should Apple be as strict as possible from the get-go? What do you think?

Developers want them their multitasking. They want them popping up, one after the other, like Agent Smith replicants in the Matrix sequels. What? Viruses incarnate from poorly conceived follow-up movies is a bad analogy?

Not according to some leading Apple pundits.

Witness Daniel Eran Dilger's iPhone 2.0 SDK: The No Multitasking Myth from Roughly Drafted Magazine:

By limiting the amount of background processes running, the iPhone’s OS X can offer more of that available RAM to the foreground application, along with a less distracted processor. The iPhone is not a general purpose computer; it is primarily a phone, browser, and iPod. Due to the restrictions imposed by the SDK, it will also be a credible gaming platform and pack the power to run significant productivity applications, all without giving up the ability to be a responsive phone, browser, and iPod. Other devices can’t make that claim.

Sure, Dilger is sometimes considered on the extreme-end of Mac'tivism. Let's see what Daring Fireball's John Gruber has to say when he takes on One App at a Time:

Why has Apple imposed this limitation? Easy: the iPhone is severely resource constrained. Battery, RAM, and CPU cycles are all severely limited. If third-party apps could run in the background, all three could suffer. RAM would suffer for sure; all running apps consume memory. The iPhone has just 128 MB of RAM, and no swap space. CPU performance and battery life would suffer when background apps do something — and if they’re not doing anything, what’s the point of keeping them running? I noticed a significant increase in battery life after I switched the Mail app’s auto-checking interval from 15 minutes to 60 minutes. That’s just one app.

Okay, but they're not developers. They don't understand the needs, the passion. But then developers aren't pure consumers either and developers don't always understand consumer needs. Sometimes developers are so busy with the abstract coolness of what they can do, they don't always stop and consider the colder reality of whether they should.

For every OS-changing Switcher app, there are dozens of buggy, crash-inducing WinMob and Palm fetishware. (As I can personally attest to, when even major apps from major developers rendered my Treo unusable).

No developer goes out there with ill-intent (malware aside), but their concern is app-level, not device or OS level. That's where Apple comes in. The overall user experience isn't the developers concern, nor should it be. It's Apple's concern, and right now Apple is imposing that concern via no-multitasking guidelines.

Note: John Gruber, quoting Hank Williams, also gives us The Flip Side of the Multitasking Argument. (Hit up the Roughly Drafted link above for some excellent back-and-forth between Williams and Dilger in the comment section as well.)

UPDATE: Gruber follows up in Foot, Meet Bullet, a point-counterpoint with Ian Betteridge.

What do you think? Is the ban on multitasking good or bad for the general user-base (i.e., our moms!)? For power users? Will Apple make exceptions for certain big developers (like AOL for AIM)? Will they relax the policy after the initial development rush is over, the space shakes out, and only cooler, more seasoned and reasoned heads remain in the game? Will some crafty devs will figure ways around the rules? (creativity thrives under constraint!). Or will things just stay the way they are?

Ah, Apple gone and done it now! SXSW debuted this year's hottest social trend: Mass Twitter-steria, and now the 140 character mob has its torches and pitchforks ready to storm Cupertino. Or not.

Let's back up a step. Following the Apple SDK announcement, pretty much everyone and their neck-bearded uncle rushed to developer.apple.com and started their download engines. 100,000 of them in the first few days alone. That's a lot of love. And even more expectation.

Today, many would-be developers, including tippity-top tier indie sensations, received the following cryptic response from Apple (via Daring Fireball)

Dear Registered iPhone Developer,

Thank you for expressing interest in the iPhone Developer Program. We have received your enrollment request. As this time, the iPhone Developer Program is available to a limited number of developers and we plan to expand during the beta period. We will contact you again regarding your enrollment status at the appropriate time.

Thank you for applying.

Best regards,

iPhone Developer Program

Apple slamming the door, or asking a larger-than-anticipated crowd to take a number and please be patient? Sadly, no rosetta stone was provided to help us suss that out.

My money is on the latter. 100,000 certificates is a lot to process (and almost certainly weed out). That Apple didn't communicate this effectively is, unfortunately and increasingly, par for the course 1 Infinite Loop way.

It should also be made clear that this in no way prevents anyone from developing on the iPhone, using the free ADC membership and the simulator environment. What this does, however, is prevent anyone who hoped to sign up for the $99 membership from receiving their authentication certificates. This means no transferring apps to an actual iPhone, and more importantly, no testing on an actual iPhone for now.

Rogue Amoeba (developers of such acclaimed apps as Audio Hijack and Airfoil) have been putting up a great series of blog posts on topics such as code signing and app restrictions, as well as a very interesting list of "bugs" submitted to Apple on the SDK.

First up, Mike Ash provides a breakdown of code-signed apps (applications which must be cryptographically signed by a developer and authorized by an authority -- in this case Apple -- in order to run), pro and con: better security and accountability vs. single point of control:

The most worrying one on the list [of disallowed apps], of course, is “Unforeseen”. This is basically a catch-all intended to give Apple an out in case anything comes up which they don’t feel like letting onto the device. Maybe some new class of evil app is developed which doesn’t quite fit into the above categories and Apple needs to block them. Or maybe Apple just doesn’t feel like having any competitors in a particular market, and wants to shut them all out.

Next, Quentin Carnicelli lays out why Apple needs to go "Back to the Future" and remember how it was a 3rd party dev, and not Apple itself, who helped fix core problems on the Mac:

When Steve Jobs first saw Switcher, his reply was: “It’s great. Apple is going to bundle it with the Mac. Congratulations.” Andy had writen a innovative application that improved the platform for every single user from there onward. Fast forward to today, if he had an iPhone instead of a Mac, it would have been legally impossible for him to do so. This is no mere hyperbole - the SDK agreement expressly forbids using non-public APIs, attempting to touch other applications, and running in the background, among other things.

Lastly, Paul Kafasis shares the iPhone SDK bugs Rogue Amoeba has filed with Apple to date, including feature requests for non-iTunes app delivery, multitasking, root access, Media-Picker for music and video, file-system access, host computer access, VoIP over EDGE, Dock access, and asks others to do likewise:

If you have an ADC account, you can submit your own bugs at http://bugreport.apple.com. Plenty of things are still in flux, and with input from users and developers, Apple may just see what a powerful platform the iPhone can be.

Rogue Amoeba isn't sure they like Steve Jobs all dressed up in his dear leader robes . What do you think? Will Apple create an iPhone user-topia? Or does app-solute power corrupt?

(via DaringFireball and TUAW)

What does all this SDK talk mean with respect to the popular DataViz products like Documents To Go? Read on, my friends!

Although it's easy to be swallowed up in the sea of information spilling forth from the SDK Roadmap earlier today, and even though I'm still hoping for Stevie J to throw us a bone (like copy/paste ready for download from iTunes? ahem), I'm trying to stay calm. Deep breath. Maybe another piece of good news will help.

One of my favorite apps from my Treo days is DataViz's DocsToGo. I tried to reach DataViz for comment with regard to the SDK release and their plans for bringing their products to the iPhone, but alas, the time-zone gods are against me and all I could come up with was a blurb from their website. Read their statement and glean what you can:

We are currently investigating the opportunity to develop Documents To Go, RoadSync, Passwords Plus and any of our other software titles for the iPhone and would appreciate your feedback.

Here's our feedback: Yes, Please.

After the break, DataViz CEO Dick Fontana talks up the SDK for Fox News. [via] -- "DataViz has a long relationship with Apple which gives Dick reason to be optimistic about the opportunities for DataViz with the iPhone." -- indeed.

Bonus Podcast!

We couldn't wait until our regularly scheduled podcast to talk about the iPhone Software Roadmap. Mike and I were also lucky to be joined by Phone different writers Chad Garrett and Rene Ritchie! Listen in as we chat up all the new announcements about the new Enterprise features and the SDK.

This post is also a Wait-a-Thon post! Your comment posted here enters you for a a chance to win a $100 iTunes Gift Card! Also note that starting today, you can use your User Referral Link (found here when you log in) to get two entries in this week's drawing.

• Our podcast feed
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Apple's Thursday press release (via Ars Technica), while big on Enterprise and chock-full of SDK goodness, also snuck in some new, long sought-after features for one of the built-in apps: MobileMail (Mail Touch?).

In addition to these new iPhone network and security features, the beta iPhone 2.0 software provides several new Mail features such as the ability to view PowerPoint attachments, in addition to Word and Excel, as well as the ability to mass delete and move email messages.

But what about the other built-in apps like Calendar and Contacts?

Our own eagle-eyed Chad Garrett has already spotted a mysterious new icon on Calendar, and predicted we may indeed see Task integration (GTD'ers, put it on your to do's!).

Now BlargKABOOM (via TUAW) has hauled out the iMicroscope and discovered yet another tantalizing new icon, this time in Contacts:

It is a little spotlight icon right above the A on the alphabet.

Does this mean we may just be getting search as well? If so, how will it be implemented, and will it be limited to contacts or (dare we hope?) system wide, SDK-level CoreSearch?

iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store, YouTube, the Weather, Stock and other widgets, and MobileSafari Touch have all had search for a while now. C'mon Apple, share the love!

I love the fact that Apple gives us their events on iTunes! Believe it or not, I still watch the MacWorld 2007 video. I enjoying watching the part where Steve says:

An iPod, Phone and an Internet communicator. iPod, Phone, and an Internet communicator. Are you getting it? These aren't three separate devices...

hmmm, perhaps I have watched that one too many times.

I do wonder why it is a Podcast though and not a "movie". I say this because the Podcasts do not refresh... we just get a new one every time.

You can find the link here to the Apple store for download, enjoy.

Craig Hockenberry, the widely acclaimed Mac developer of Twitterific, has had extensive experience developing for jailbroken iPhones and iPod Touches. So, when he weighs in on the iPhone SDK, it's definitely worth a read.

From the 70/30 split to the $99 publishing fee, the lack of information about distributing 3rd party apps to beta testers, the possibility of try-before-you-buy demos, and the mechanism for paid upgrades, Hockenberry pulls no punches:

One thing that disappoints me about the iPhone SDK sign-up is that the entry fee of $99 is too low. I look at the entry fee as a way to filter out developers that aren’t fully committed to the platform. [...] A higher entry fee would lessen the chance of this becoming a bottleneck for getting my product into the system. Please charge me $499 and let move to the front of the line.

Wait... Charge developers MORE? And what, pass the costs on to the consumer?

Not according to former Apple programmer (and writer of Apple's GeekGameBoard sample code), Jens Alfke. He thinks $0.99 - $1.99 might just set off the perfect high-volume price storm:

So assume you spent some evenings and weekends writing a cool little utility or game. You submit it to the App Store and set the price at $1.43. You get $1 of pure, unadulterated profit from every user of the app. [...] Steve promises us there will be ten million iPhones in the world. If a tenth of a percent of them impulse-purchase your $1.43 app, that’s $100,000.

Alfke also covers the interesting possibility of Xbox-style game expansion packs as revenue streams, and takes a not-to-subtle swipe at carrier gouging and consumer gluttony via the ringtone market.

Hmm, serious developers charging no-brainer prices for "next great platform" apps? I'm in! What about you?

iLounge is reporting the possible leak, via iTunes, of what can only be termed an iPhone/iPod Touch "Fatty". Turns out that the newfangled SDK led a curious developer to Education First Educational Tours "private page" (the tool that would, for example, allow an enterprise to make and release apps accessible only within their own company and not for sale to the general public). Revealed on this "private page" was the tantalizing/horrifying image of the "fatty" (or perhaps the long fabled iTablet Safari Pad?).

Is this just something Education First Educational Tours mocked up? A photo miss-shop? Phil Schiller brainstorming Apple rumors? Or a real leaked product shot (a la 3G Nano?) Only Steve Jobs, Rumor-Smasher, know for sure.

More on this as it develops...

Yesderday's Apple Event was very, very exciting. My wife is a clinician and was almost leapt off of the couch when she saw Epocrates with the new functionality. I was excited by the gaming apps; go figure.

With all of this energy around the SDK, you might ask why am I feeling a bit disappointed? I feel there is still a lot of work to be done with the core iPhone applications and functionality. The iPhone has been out a year, yet there is basic and fundamental functionality still missing. I think we know what the big ones are; copy/paste and MMS. However, there are some areas that I don't feel get enough attention. These areas include search and calendars.

It is very difficult to find an appointment on the iPhone. I literally have to go day by day to find an appointment. Since the iPhone runs OS X, where is my Spotlight?

For those of us who use multiple calendars, why can't I add an appointment to any one of my calendars instead of a default one? While we are on the topic, where is my Notes and Task syncing?

I did notice the 2.0 calendar that was shown had the calendar buttons placed on the bottom instead of the top and a mysterious button located in the lower right. Could it be a task button? Am I getting worked up over nothing? Only time will tell.

Wait…You mean it’s a phone, an internet portal, an iPod AND a gaming device? Apple is certainly following through with this one-gadget-to-rule-them-all motif. In fact, the game demos pretty much stole the show at the iPhone SDK Roadmap event.

Using the three-axis iPhone accelerometer, multi-touch, and pretty much everything else that the iPhone is capable of doing—portable gaming is officially on notice.

Touch Fighter, an in-house Apple creation, which is akin to Wing Commander, uses the iPhone’s intuitive movements for its controls. Tilt the screen to move the plane, tap the screen to fire the missiles. Who’s going to miss the stylus or speakerphone analog stick, after they get their hands on that?

However, the biggest revelation for iPhone gaming is the developers already on board. EA and Sega both demoed early productions of Spore and Super Monkey Ball. Spore for the iPhone is the full-fledged version complete with all 18 levels. Movement for both games is controlled again by tilting the iPhone.

We're only beginning to scratch the surface for gaming on the iPhone—these games only show 2 weeks of development. If more developers jump on board, there is no telling how far and how fun gaming on the iPhone will be.

We're not able to liveblog the event here at Phone different, but we are able to put our two cents in -- stay tuned to this blog post during the event for color commentary on what Apple announces. It won't be up to the second, but you'll get a little more analysis in exchange for those extra minutes.

Bonus: comment on this post and we'll quote our faves in at the top.

T-Minus 25 minutes. When you see the "read more" link below, it's showtime!

All times below are EST, subtract 3 hours for actual Cupertino Time.

12:45: I'm feeling the Reality Distortion Field even though:

1. I'm not there
2. I don't expect to be happily surprised by today's announcement.

I've definitely crossed through that permeable membrane into his Steveness' realm, though.

12:55

Bri Guy: I'll give my first-born for cut 'n paste.

I'd give your first born, too. :p

Bad Ash: why delay a week for an announcement?

Exactly. I still think that they were working their butts off to get something real out the door but couldn't manage it. That's the one ray of light here - that we might actually be pretty close to real apps getting released because they were this close to getting it out.

rener: Games ready to ship? 3G iPhone announced? ActiveSync licensed (purely for Dieter, of course)?

No. No. partly cloudy, with a 30% chance of Exchange.

12:58: Reports that Disney employees have preferred seating -- that's interesting? Can't imagine that Disney has any relation to apps -- maybe we'll get more info on just why iTunes hasn't met the goal of getting movies in quickly enough, with a side of "every Disney film in on iTunes now"

As an aside, I will forego sourcing each little tidbit here during the liveblog, but will add them after. Kudos in advance to: Ars, Gizmodo, PhoneMag, Macworld, and Engadget. ...who are relegated to the back, but they get free power -- Apple's finally admitted that this live blog thing is real and they're paying attention to it.

Update again: going to put new stuff at top.

12:01: It begins. "Welcome" from Steve, in a turtleneck of course. Stats on the iPhone, 2nd to RIM in the US. Huuuge Safari usage stats, as we've previously reported. I wonder: 90% of people reading these live blogs must already know a lot of these figures -- or am I just so deep into cell phone news that it doesn't occur to me that not everybody knows that the iPhone is rocking the mobile industry.

12:05: Bam. Jumping right into Enterprise news. That bodes well - usually these things end with a bang. If we start with enterprise support, that may mean that the "bang" will be apps NOW. Crossing my fingers.

Yes, he said "push email" wouldn't say it if he wouldn't get it. Right? Right?

12:07: They're doing ALL of these things: push email, push contacts, VPN, security, remote wipe, enterprise config. I didn't expect that. This might just be bigger news, sales-wise and mindshare-wise, than the SDK. I care most about the SDK, but America and Wall Street cares most about enterprise.

Active Sync and Exchange support confirmed. BOOM. Except no "Boom." This announcement was given to Phil Shiller -- a sign that Steve still doesn't really care about Enterprise.

...now, the devil is going to be in the details. How will they implement this. Will the iPhone work with MSCMDM (search WMExperts for that one). If so, this is a RIM KILLER. Both MS and iPhone using the same device management tool? Goodbye RIM.

12:10: Demoing the support. Good and interesting that the support is built directly into the default PIM and Email apps in the iPhone. Good because it just might mean that Apple is going to have real (instead of half-a**ed) Exchange support on the Mac too. Interesting because, well, Apple licensing Microsoft's biggest Enterprise service (Exchange) is big big news.

12:15: Hehehehe! There's a photo showing how ActiveSync is direct, while RIM's NOC is indirect and a failure point. Hi BlackBerry Outages! Just like Palm, Apple's not going to let you forget about that one. When the marketing comes out for this stuff, Apple is going to take potshots at RIM. I wonder - Microsoft Guy and Mac Guy vs BlackBerry guy. I'll give a $25 Phone different Coupon to the person who comes up with the best candidate for BB guy in the comments!

rener: 802.11x is also a must for a lot of university networks

I am stupid - what's 802.11x and why do universities in particular care?

12:19: SDK time. They're really rolling fast. Overview of web apps and adding icons to the home screen. Please please -- give us an admission that "No SDK Needed" was a gigantic slap in the face. We need to hear you say that, to hear that even the Jesus Phone can sometimes stray.

12:20: Whoa - are they "releasing" today? Yes - starting today, we get the same "APIs and tools that Apple uses." Wow - color me pleasantly surprised. I was all doom and gloom before the event started (ref. the last PD podcast, as Bri Guy mentions in the comments below). They're calling it "Cocoa Touch." The basic idea here is that the iPhone is OSX at its core, but as you get to higher layers at some point it assumes you have a mouse and keyboard and no touchscreen. So development must be very similar to OSX development with Cocoa, but instead of Cocoa you have Cocoa Touch.

If they're not blowing smoke about this, then app development for the iPhone is going to be as advanced or more advanced than either Windows Mobile or Symbian in very short order. There are some similarities to developing for Windows Desktop and Windows Mobile (ref. .NET), but that pales in comparison to this.

12:27: Another "Boom" moment without the "Boom:" Core Location. Just like any app can look up a contact, any app can look up your location just like Google Maps does. How does this thing not have GPS?

I guarantee the 3G iPhone, the very next iteration, will have GPS built in. No question. If Location is a deep, OS-level service, then they're planning on GPS. Bank on it.

rener: Curse you Rogers and Canadian Data Rates!

:p

12:28: Aside for Windows Mobile nerds who know about the HTC video driver issue -- hardware video acceleration is built-in deep and available globally. Send the pitchfork-wielding mob over to Qualcomm and HTC.

12:30: Things we get access to: "multi-touch events, multi-touch controls, accelerometer, view hierarchy, localization, alerts, web view, people picker, and image picker camera" (via PhoneMag).

Hm. I assume that "data" via radio and WiFi are just assumed somehow, that the iPhone itself handles that. "Web view" is a really big deal -- allows for seamless integration of local and remote data, AKA true widgets.

WRT "true widgets," isn't it funny that Palm got this EXACTLY RIGHT nearly 10 years ago with their first wireless Palm device, then dropped it because it was too difficult to code for and not enough people had the wireless devices. Why didn't they bring those back?

12:33: Discussing the development platform now - it is XCode as expected. Want to develop for the iPhone? Get a Mac. That's just fine -- Apple is better off focusing their resources on one development tool on a single platform, they don't need to bring XCode to Windows users, they know that Windows users will come to the Mac just to be able to develop for the iPhone.

rener: That Apple's techs have fit Darwin, BSD networking, OpenGL, and all the Core services into this thing is unbelievable.*

You damn skippy.

12:35: Interface builder is drag'n'drop. Full iPhone emulator on the Mac. This is incredibly full featured and way more powerful that I expected -- I was half expecting them to hand out a flyer with a list of calls and bits of code.

Something this full featured makes me suspect that it's not ready TODAY. But they did say it was. Crazy. They really did delay it a week to polish this thing off. No... maybe they delayed a week to give some 3rd party developer a bit more time? Are we getting APPS TODAY?

12:39: Requisite "Hello World" app building demo. Able to build/compile/whatever (I'm not a developer) quickly. You can test in the emulator or test directly on a sync'ed iPhone.

Ok guys, give us time table. Tell us about distribution. Pricing for developers to get this stuff on iTunes. Apps.

12:44: Demoing some apps now. Touch Fighter -- full access to a really good accelerometer means you can just move the phone around to control the fighter.

Lots of people poo-poohed the touch screen and accelerometer on the iPhone because we've seen both on phones before -- but a high quality touchscreen and accelerometer, now that makes a big different, doesn't it? What used to be gimmicks can become genuinely new and engaging ways of interacting with a device.

I officially declare 2008 to be the year that the Stylus Died.

12:47: Mike Overbo, Editor Emeritus of Phone different and the host of our Podcast, is going to soil himself. EA is on stage and intimating that they have ported Spore over -- with a dev. platform they've never seen before -- in about two weeks.

12:50: Just in case you are missing what's happened here today: Apple took the "IT" phone of 2007 and early 2008 and just made it simultaneously ten times hotter to Business users (via exchange and, just now, a salesforce.com app) and general conumsers (via fun games).

And Steve Jobs hasn't been on stage the entire freaking time. What's the deal there? Giving credit to a team that's clearly been working quadruple overtime? Still bitter that his precious work of singular art is getting sullied by people who don't work at Apple?

12:55: AOL is coming up next. AIM? Yes: AIM. Hunh. That's interesting and I think in a good way. Apple could have said "Screw you guys, we're going to do iChat and stay the heck away from our iPhone, much less our big app announcement."

Instead, they eschewed their own program and let AIM write one instead. Kudos. Kudos Kudos -- it took AOL FIVE days to build it. FIVE. DAYS.

Oh, and now epocrates. I know that a lot of Doctors are hanging on to antiquated PDAs just because of a few medical apps. This helps them a lot.

2:01: Super Monkey Ball with accelerometer support. Swoon. "We had to fly a developer in to upscale the art for the iPhone"

Nintendo DS: You are going to lose market share to this. The big, high-resolution screen is the difference here. see my comment below about quality components.

chadman: Too bad I have to use GroupWise

Take heart, remember that there were rumors of Lotus support. If Apple is willing to support Microsoft and (rumor) Lotus and they're willing to forego writing iChat and let AIM have a shot at it instead, then they'll definitely not complain if somebody cobbles together groupwise support.

...though it might not be as deeply integrated, instead it would be standalone, I guess?

rener: they could seriously contend for mobile gaming market share.

I was thinking the exact same thing. It also seems like it's a big slap in Nokia's face -- they still haven't gained any traction with their N-GAGE platform.

2:05: "App Store." You can buy apps directly on the iPhone. I can't believe I didn't think they'd do this. It's obvious. Grumbles about having to go through iTunes are going to get overshadowed by the fact that you don't have to think about syncing, .cab files, .prc files, etc.

Good that Steve's finally back on. And yes, you can also buy through iTunes. And yes, I'm seeing the word "Free" next to apps. And yes, unlike iTunes WiFi, you can buy over EDGE or WiFi. And yes, you're alerted if there's an update. And yes, it's exclusive. No other way (short of jailbreaking)

A bit of a bummer, that last bit, but not surprising at all.

2:09: No charge to developer if they give the app away for free. Otherwise it's a 70/30 revenue split, Apple taking 30% is about what I expected. Actually, it's better. Apple is eating hosting costs, cc fees, and they're paying out monthly.

Apple says "no malicious apps or porn." Guess that means this stuff will be policed and vetted by Apple. Does that mean you have to submit your source code to Apple in order to distribute your application?

eeeeeeee.

2:11 iPhone firmware version 2.0. Beta is going out today to developers. Customers will see it in June as a free update.

Darn. Darn Darn Darn. June is close, but not close enough. It's what I expected, though. Unexpected -- another charge for iPod Touch owners because of accounting. $99 bucks in order to publish on iTunes. so Apple's not eating everything, but $99 is much less than I expected it to be.

2:15: One More Thing: iFund. Some VC firm is giving away $100 million (yes, that's the right number of zeroes) to iPhone developers... I guess you can go apply at www.kpcb.com .

That'll spur development and right quick.

rener: No pr0n, realistically, means stay-of-execution for jailbreak

True that. Jailbreak isn't going away... but it's certainly going to be minimalized.

2:20: Asking the press to stay for just a few more minutes. Hm.

Bodes ill? Or it could just be a Q&A

2:23: Q&A Starting. We won't do all of these questions. Just the juicy ones.

Q: Business apps are coming, should RIM be worried? Steve: Go ask them. We're not sending them a message, we're sending customers a message [Gizmodo]

Seriously - Where did Apple buy that humungous gauntlet? You're most definitely sending them a message, Jobso. You're practically mooning them.

2:28: Q: What will happen if someone does a VOIP app? A: We will only stop VOIP over cell networks, but not WiFi.

That's interesting -- I wonder if it's because they know that VOIP over an EDGE connection will be an inherently horrible experience or if AT&T wouldn't let them because of their deal. I suspect it's both.

It's also a little foreboding -- Apple gets to decide what gets published and what doesn't, but I'm still unclear on what the criteria will be. Malicious - No. Porn - No. VOIP isn't either of those... So is the 3rd "No":

• "Whatever hurts our business model with AT&T"
• or is it "Whatever we think will deliver an inherently bad experience to the customer" ??

...Either way I don't know that I like that Apple should get to decide that for me.

2:34: a SIM unlock program will not be allowed in the iTunes Store.

That's an LOL right there.

2:38: Quote from Macworld:

• More talk about iPhone versus Blackberry. "Why aren't CIOs really worried about security? Every email message sent to or from a RIM device, goes through a NOC up in Canada. Now, that provides a single point of failure, but it also provides a very interesting security situation. Where someone working up at that NOC could potentially be having a look at your email. Nobody seems to be focused on that. We certainly are."*

On Phil Shiller's office wall: A photo of the BlackBerry Pearl with a giant target painted over it. I said it before and I'll say it again, expect a massive anti-BlackBerry, poke-fun style campaign from Apple this summer in the same style as their current Mac vs. PC ads.

2:40: "Parental Controls" are coming.

Super Monkey Ball PLUS mom can turn off Safari to stop junior from looking at porn on the net. They'll sell a million this year to pre-teens alone.

2:45: We're done! Expect a LOT of posts in the coming days analyzing this big big news!

MacScoop [via] drops some new rumors just hours before the Roadmap event. Biggest piece of news is that applications will have access to the EDGE radio, contrary to previous rumors. Also: Apple gets a cut of application sales - color us shocked. Lastly, development needs to happen on a Mac, obviously, with an updated version of XCode

We weren't invited to the fancy-pants event, but that doesn't mean we won't be watching it with our beady little eyes. Check back at the main page a sometime during and definitely after, though, for some color commentary and a wrap of of the whole deal. Here are some folks who will be there:

• Phone mag
• Ars Technica
• CNet
• Macworld, who also claims that MySpace already received an early version of the SDK.

Also asked and answered at the Apple shareholders meeting covered earlier was a question about the oft-rumored Flash player for iPhone. CEO Steve Jobs put a Goldilocks-esque kibosh to the rumor thusly:

• Desktop Flash is too slow on the iPhone to be useful.
• (Mobile) Flash Lite isn't sufficient or advanced enough to iPhone.
• And there just isn't a mid-level version that would be just right.

John Gruber's toldjasos and youmustbejokings were interrupted only by Jobs stressing that Apple and Adobe (who makes and markets the ubiquitous player) maintain good relations, so potential enough remains to feed the rumor-mill for posts to come.

However, it's worth remembering that:

• Flash is a notorious resource hog on OS X and Adobe has never really addressed this for the desktop
• Regardless of its ubiquity Flash remains a proprietary standard and Apple has stressed open standards (like AJaX for MobileSafari)
• And perhaps most importantly, Flash is a competitor to Apple's (admittedly languishing) QuickTime and Apple could very well be preparing to put some of their sudden mobile browsing penetration behind their own product rather than just handing Adobe the space.

Macworld also adds that, with regards to raining on Dieter's iPhone SDK parade tomorrow, "you'll see a lot of applications out there this summer."

Mike and Dieter speculate on the SDK announcement, discuss enterprise email support, and read from your letters. Listen in!

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News

• SDK Event Thursday (tomorrow)
  • Predictions article
  • locked down (Dieter told ya so!)
  • Lotus, Exchange?
• 3G iPhone Rumor that's actually believable
• Jailbreaking and unlocking remarkably drama-free with 1.1.4
• iPhone LoJack
• Web Apps vs. Native Apps

How To

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Our music comes from the following sources:

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• DC 3000 by Thievery Corporation via Wired 12.11: Sample the Future

Thursday brings the SDK. You know, the one that needs no other identifier. The one that the entire tech-verse has been chomping at the bit for since roughly 0.001 seconds after Steve Jobs slipped the iPhone from his pocket at Macworld 2007.

But that’s all we know: SDK Event March 6th.

We don’t know whether the SDK will be ready to code that very same day, who’ll be given access to it, how they’ll test for it, what type of approval process Apple will require, how apps will be distributed, how they’ll be priced, and most importantly for the end user: whether or not “OMG teh iPhone can has WoW!!11”

However, that doesn’t stop us from guessing!

Trying to predict what Apple will do at any given event is a little bit science and a whole lot black magic (of the 8-ball variety). Let’s face it: the Apple Campus at 1 Infinite Loop could teach the NSA a thing or two about how to keep secrets.

Why is Apple so close-lipped? Equal parts competitive advantage (Apple prefers that it takes Microsoft years and not months to copy their latest innovations), marketing strategy (how else to get the “faithful” lined up at 3am, and the ‘net brought to a crashing halt before every Jobs Note?), and making bloggers and pundits who write “prediction” articles look silly the day after.

In that spirit, here we go:

Will the SDK be finished and ready to code with on March 6th?

While I’d like nothing more than for Steve Jobs to take the stage, Tap Tap Revolution in hand and ready to ship on Day One, I doubt it. Rumors say the SDK will still be in beta, and while it may go out early to Electronic Arts-class partners, with a later drop to ADC members (who may be able to run tests via a "simulator"), I don’t think we’ll see it officially released until Apple’s Word Wide Developers Conference in June.

Chalk it up to limited resources meets high security demands (for a mobile computer storing all your personal data and documents), further complicated by Apple’s obsessive need to control every little aspect.

How much access will developers have to the hardware?

The l33t hax0rs want to write to the metal: their Guitar Hero axe plugged into the dock connector rocking out over Skype while VNC’ing to their torrent server. Apple wants certified developers writing superficial games and productivity apps that don’t for a single moment harshen the Zen-like beauty and user experience of their hand-held gift to the world.

We’ll likely see something in between. Developers will be able to access the same protocols already surfaced via custom links (i.e. the phone, the web, email, perhaps the QuickView-like functionality), as well as things like the accelerometer and camera to allow for more interactive gaming.

The mic would enable both voice recording and Nintendo-DS style cloud-blowing action, but would also open the door to VoIP, which would delight users but could make Big Telco grumpy (do it, Apple!).

According to previous reports, the dock cable will be off-limits, which would mean no hardware keyboards or other peripherals, but Apple already has an extensive dock licensing program in place where developers could explore those options, and if the Bluetooth radio is made available, the Apple Bluetooth Keyboard would be one sweet ultra-mobile option! (And if the WI-Fi radio is there as well, goodbye Apple Remote and hello iPhone to control Apple TV and iTunes!)

And I don’t see carriers letting anyone run wild over the EDGE radio.

Also, I agree with The Gruber that there will be different levels of developers granted different access to the hardware, from very close, very trusted partners (like the aforementioned EA) given very broad privileges, and free ADC members getting more limited access.

Bonus prediction: Longtime Mac developers will initially be given the "limited access" snub, leading to an explosion of blog-rage, resolved by a price-drop-esque Apple-a-culpa and policy change.

How will applications be made available?

Almost certainly via an initially very stringent Apple certification process and distribution exclusively via iTunes.

Let’s face it: Apple spent an incredible amount of time and money on the iPhone user experience and they’re going to demand just as elegant, easy to use, and (cough MobileSafari cough) stable apps from their 3rd parties.

Likewise, iTunes is the little store that could (pass Best Buy to become the #2 music retailer in the US, that is). If Apple could force Big Telco to hand over cell phone activation to iTunes, I don’t for a minute think they’ll let just any old Eastern European 11 year old install wild on their box.

Music sales have shown that there is a market for simple, safe, and secure online transactions with iTunes, and the $20 iPod Touch mail, notes, maps, stocks, and weather apps strike me as just that type of proof-of-concept.

That same $20 update also raises the question of whether or not there will be a way for developers to make their applications available for free via iTunes? I think so. Apple has shown they understand the benefit of provide free content with Podcasts, iTunes University, iTunes Free Tuesdays, and free promotional videos (recently for American Idol). 3rd party apps could and should benefit from the same type of enlightened thinking.

Anything else?

A handful of "booms", three "the best", and a "gorgeous". One C-level 3rd party exec up on stage. Non-licensed Exchange support.

(Now go forth and, if past predictions are any indicator, enjoy watching Jobs bring a developer-friendly Balmer and much-relieved Carmack up to show off the ready-to-ship Mobile Office 2008 suite, and Quake running over EDGE via dock-connected rumble pad).

iLounge brings word that, according to their sources (all familiar with the situation and plans, of course), the upcoming SDK will sport the following "features":

• Locked down via iTunes. All apps will be distributed exclusively via Apple's iTunes store in a manner similar to today's iPod games.
• Approved by Apple. Apple (no doubt via a single Steve Jobs thumbs up or down) will elevate any given app to the heavens of iTunes, or drop them to the lions of perpetual delay or refusal. No unapproved apps will be released or releasable.
• No docks for you. 3rd party apps will not be able to call on the connector, removing hardware keyboards and other dock-dependent offerings from the table.
• Radio/camera open. BT is unknown, but 3rd party devs should be able to access most if not all core features of OS X mobile, including Wi-Fi, phone, etc.

Also, the same sources agree with previous 'net chatter that the March Event will only see a beta release of the SDK, not the full fledged version, along with increased enterprise support.

Tom Cook, Chief Operating Officer of a little Cupertino company named Apple, spoke at the Goldman Sachs Investment Symposium, mercilessly teasing the faithful with the following bombs:

• Apple is not "married to any [single carrier exclusive] business model". It's apparently all about the "best phones in the world", baby, and if unlocked, CDMA, and/or pre-paid proved, in the future, to provide the greatest sense of childlike wonder (or complies with future Congressional mandates), Apple could (possibly, maybe) go with that flow.
• Apple believes the global unlocking epidemic is a good sign of the iPhone's potential, and that there will always be a percentage of unlocks in the wild because of the high demand.
• That the upcoming iPhone SDK would allow developers to "only be limited by [their] imagination." (And whatever restrictions Apple imposes on accessing the metal and distributing via iTunes, 'natch).

To the delight of Wall Street, Cook also continued to hold firm on the 10 million iPhone march through the end of 2008.

Check out Apple Insider for all the details.

Is Cook telling us Apple will make good on their promised smart phone utopia? Or Is he just cranking on his own mini Reality Distortion Field? Hit the comments and let us know what you think!

It's coming, the SDK is really really coming. Thank the lord. Apple has sent out invitations to an event titled "iPhone Software Road Map." That may or may not mean they're actually releasing the SDK, but it doesn't sound like we'll be getting a slew of new apps next week.

Yes, it technically is late for the February release, but it's a relief to not be so in the dark anymore. Also interesting:

Apple also said to expect details on "some exciting new enterprise features," which at first blush sounds to me like a method of getting the iPhone to work more closely with corporate e-mail software - CNET

Hello Exchange support?

If you're a dirty, dirty iPhone Jailbreaker or iPhone Unlocker, move right along because I'm sure it's going to take awhile for this to shake out. If you're a mere mortal, though, go on and open up iTunes and apply the update to version 1.1.4. What's on it? "Bug fixes." That's all we know for sure just now.

Hopefully one of the bug fixes is getting rid of the dropped calls (especially with Bluetooth) that folks have been reporting (hat tip to Merlyn3D for reminding me that this issue persists).

Hopefully it also contains some behind-the-scenes updates to get every little thing ready for the SDK. Good thing this year is a leap year - it gives Apple one more day to get that SDK out. Or maybe it really will be late. I guess we'll know for sure before the week is out.

Thanks for the heads-up, Chadman!

Update: Installed and I'm still impressed with iTunes' backup and restoration ability - everything was exactly as I left it, from the pin I was looking at on Google Maps to Web Clip icons on my homescreen. Poking around, it sure doesn't look like there are any new features. Chadman mentions that it's a full 162.1mb download, that sounds like a "bug fix and framework for the SDK" to me...

The SDK might be delayed one to three weeks, says Arik Hesseldal of BusinessWeek:

I’m hearing from one source that its going to be late. I’m not yet hearing any reasons why, and it’s sounding like the official release date could slide by anywhere from one to three weeks. [...] However I’m also hearing that the situation is fluid, and a lot of last-minute decisions are close to being made about what precisely will or will not be disclosed next week, if anything. There are, apparently, a lot of moving parts to something this complex.

A lot of "moving parts," eh, ya think? It would be a major bummer if the SDK is delayed, but it wouldn't be too shocking - the sand is quickly running out of February's hourglass. Fairly soon, though, we're going to have some information about the SDK and I have to admit that my expectations are rising the more I think about it.

This is related (again) to Mike and my discussion in our iPhone Podcast last week. As I see it, there are four ways that the SDK announcement (whenever it comes) can shake out. Read on for some thoughts on what we might see and what I hope to see.

So those four ways are a combination of two sets of possibilities. The first set is pretty straightforward, and they're what Mike and I discussed:

1. The SDK is announced, as is the method of distribution (iTunes-only or something more open), but no apps are released.
2. Same as above, but we're treated to new, 3rd party apps immediately.

I am sincerely hoping for the latter, of course, but my hunch is we'll see the former. The big question here is whether the distribution method is iTunes-only or whether developers can distribute directly (and whether 3rd party software stores can get in on the action). Again, my preference is for the more open option, but hunch is that we'll see the less-open option.

The above questions aren't as important to me as the below, however. The real question is what kind of SDK Apple will provide. Although it's not quite right to break this down into two categories (a sliding scale is probably better), I'm doing so anyway for the sake of a quick and dirty analysis:

1. A "lite" SDK that offers "high level" access to the iPhone's operations but doesn't offer "low" level access that lets you get into the "guts" of the OS.
2. a "full" SDK that really opens up the iPhone and enables all sorts of system-wide hacks and tweaks.

Obviously, if you haven't gathered by now, I'm hoping for the latter but expecting the former. If we receive the "lite" SDK, I fully expect the current Jailbreaking / app developing iPhone subculture to continue -- there are just too many people too interested in doing too many interesting things with the iPhone to stop it. It would be a real shame if Apple kept the sort of innovation that's happening with iPhone app development marginalized to those who are willing (and able!) to jailbreak their iPhone.

This fits into an overall feeling I have about the Smartphone industry, one I've expressed (perhaps in a flawed manner) over at WMExperts by saying that the iPhone isn't a smartphone. Here's the important bit:

It may have been crude, but Ballmer was exactly right when he chanted "DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS!!."

It's almost impossible to state just how important 3rd party developers are to a platform like the iPhone. They're what make it a platform in the first place. The "fuller" the SDK, the better off we will all be. A full SDK will allow many -- if not most -- of our hassles with the iPhone to go away.

By making that claim, I'm disagreeing with a guy I don't often disagree with, John Gruber, who wrote over the weekend that:

To add third-party support for “corporate” email — by which he means Microsoft Exchange — you’d have to write your own entire email client. Possible, perhaps, but an enormous undertaking. And copy-and-paste? No way will that be something that a third-party developer can provide. The whole point of copy-and-paste is that it’s a service provided by the system, shared between all apps. To be clear, just like everyone else, I hope Apple does add copy-and-paste — but if it doesn’t come from Apple, it isn’t coming.

Yes, an email client is an "enormous undertaking," but it's one that many developers have successfully undertaken for both PalmOS and Windows Mobile -- sometimes with more success than the original developers of the platform. Given the many complaints about Apple's iPhone Mail client, I have little doubt that the same can (and will) be done for the iPhone.

As for cut-and-paste, it clearly is going to depend on whether or not we get a "full" SDK or a "lite" SDK. If it's a "full" one, then a developer will find a way--just like PalmOS developers found ways to alter the behavior of the Treo's LED, vibration, screen, alarm system, and more. The Windows Mobile Registry offers so much deep-level customization that it's almost difficult to believe. Will the iPhone SDK allow us to change the hated Marker Felt font in notes? I have to point out that changing the font on the PalmOS is fairly easy and it's even easier to change the font on Windows Mobile.

The point is that I fully believe that if Apple doesn't offer system-level improvements like cut-and-paste, somebody will eventually. The breadth, depth, and persistency of development on the other smartphone platforms and the "Jailbreaked" apps we currently have are both evidence that developers will always push a smartphone as far as it can go. (Heck, there's even a PalmOS emulator for the iPhone now.) I could be wrong -- the technical hurdles on the iPhone could be too great -- but I doubt it.

I hope that when these system-level improvements come, they'll be available to everybody, not just the people savvy enough to jailbreak their iPhone. If a delay means we'll get a fuller-featured SDK, then my response is simply Yes, please delay it.

Mac Rumors is reporting that the Apple Event, the one we were all hoping would bring the announcement of the SDK and end the omgnoappz saga, happened last night. It was Linkin Park playing a show at an Apple Store. They're also reporting that the dearth of press invites bodes ill for a full-on press event for the launch of the SDK.

In other words, though we've heard that Apple is supposed to still be able to meet their self-imposed February deadline, things are starting to look bleak in terms of their being much more than just the release of the SDK. I hope I'm wrong and that I was wrong in my podcast prediction: that if Apple makes the deadline, we'll just see an SDK released to developers and the iPhone update that allows for apps will take awhile longer.

(Also: Linkin Park is still around and popular? Hunh. I thought all they did was get stalked.)