Slashdot Mirror
No iPhone SDK Means No iPhone Killer Apps
iPhoneLover/Hater writes "Gizmodo is running an article analyzing the potential failure of the iPhone as a truly revolutionary platform. The reason: no SDK to harness the true power of Mac OS X and the frameworks contained in Apple's smart cell. From the article: 'According to Apple, "no software developer kit is required for the iPhone." However, the truth is that the lack of an SDK means that there won't be a killer application for the iPhone. It also means the iPhone's potential as an amazing computing and communication platform will never be realized. And because of this and no matter how Apple tries to sell it, the iPhone won't make a revolution happen.'"
you say you want a revolution, well you know, we all want an SDK.
http://xkcd.com/386/
...not the Declaration of Independence. What "revolution" did you envision a phone making? Suddenly people stop talking while driving? That would be revolutionary.
"the lack of an SDK means that there won't be a killer application for the iPhone"
Who's to say that Apple can't/won't write that killer app?
In theory, theory always works in practice. In practice, theory rarely works. <><
With all the stories about the iPhone and it's universally uncanny ability to suck/rule (depending on who's talking), I think we can all agree on one thing.
It's not out yet.
We *are* using the Firehose responsibly, right?
More Twoson than Cupertino
Unless a programmer is good at Javascript, HTML...
And could write killer App with that.
I hate to sound like a Mac Fanboy but with some good Ajax codeing you could make a program that is as good as most other apps. Google shows that, and the fact you know the iPhone uses a more modern browser there is less multi-browser testing. And heck you iPhone Apps will run elsewhere too making them far more available.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Just because there's no SDK today doesn't mean there won't be one later this year.
Apple is trying to defuse outrage over their refusal to provide an SDK (for "security"...) by saying "people can use rich web apps, it's the same thing!" This is incredibly disingenuous and I hope I'm not the only one who won't be getting an iPhone because of it's closed nature.
"If you do something revolutionary like make an SDK unnecessary, you will fail." -- The Establishment
YouTube was written without an SDK, at least no more, or no less, of an SDK than the iPhone has, and yet I'd call it a killer app.
The notion that something has to be compiled into machine language to be a killer app is kind of wonky, if you ask me. Everyone out there already making clever web apps might have something to say about that.
Comment of the year
It's a phone, get a fucking life! I swear, mobile telephones just keep getting more and more annoying.
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
It doesn't need an SDK because it is the SAME as the OS SDK? (drop down tab... compile for iPhone kinda deal.)
While I agree that the lack of an SDK will deter many developers, let's not get too ahead of ourselves here. There is still a way to make your own apps for the thing, and that ALWAYS leads to some pretty interesting things. Remember, using AJAX-style apps on the iPhone only restricts what the client can do - you could still create the next Facebook, Flikr, del.icio.us, or whatever using whatever webserver you want. Besides, isn't an iPod that's also a phone, web browser, etc a killer app on its own?
The biggest limitation I see is not the lack of a killer app(s), but the lack of free, easily accessible WiFi everywhere. You'll need a connection to something to use these apps, and with only a few cities and towns in US with decent WiFi blanketing, this may end up being a huge problem.
But hey - if enough people buy the thing, and enough developers show that you can make it a viable platform, then we'll see some real innovation. Personally, I would love to see someone build a rich web app that could run as well on EDGE as it does on WiFi - and then spread that data efficiency over to the rest of the web.
Right, 'cause it's impossible to develop software (and/or quality software) without an SDK. I guess we'll have to pull a MacGyver: get me Emacs, a compiler, some libraries, a pack of gum, some yarn, a can of WD-40 and some Hot Pockets...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
We know how terribly the iPod did without custom apps.
I'm going to suggest that this is a familiar pattern, that we've seen several times since Steve Jobs took the helm at apple. A new* technology becomes an integral part of some apple product, requiring third-party developers to change their skill sets if they wish to stay current. Complain, complain, but learn the new skill set and stay relevant!
*new to apple if not to the world of technology in general.
No SDK means a lot harder to develop viruses and worms.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
So because development can happen without a specific SDK, no one will develop anything amazing?
I don't remember there being an SDK when Visicalc was created. Just an environment and a need. I think the point that any app could potentially work without specifically trying means the iPhone could be a 'Killer App-liance', rather than a device needing a 'Killer App'.
R: That voice. Where have I heard that voice before? B: In about 365 other episodes. But I don't know who it is either.
why did it take so long for someone to realize this? apple announced months ago that there will be no third party apps supported.
The WWDC demo showed AJAX apps on the iPhone calling into apps on the iPhone.
I don't see a way that this can be done securely. Jobs says they're secure... but in context he means "it uses SSL". Jobs says they're sandboxed, but if they can place calls and access your local data then everything you care about in the phone is in the sandbox and open for a bad guy to mess around with.
This might keep you from taking over the software radio and hax0ring the cellular system (but it won't keep the real bad guys from doing it), but it won't provide you any useful security.
Let's not forget this is only a rev 1.0.... After a public shakedown cruise, i'd bet that Apple will consider releasing an SDK, once newly discovered issues are ironed out.
I do not need yet another loan calculator crapplet.
the browser is the target environment, so all that ajax-y web 2.0 tastiness that i hear is all the rage with the kids these days is there. so 'no sdk' really means 'no native sdk' and we've all seen how much that's hurt sites like flickr, picasa, etc.
If you haven't got them you're simply never going to get a big enough slice of the market for it to be profitable - and Apple have already limited the iPhone in terms of providers already. After years of not making any headway against Windows, and being beaten to a big slice of the big desktop pie (Apple pie?!), as well as seeing people run GPS applications and games like Splinter Cell on their phones, Apple just hasn't learned its lesson even now, has it?
Don't discount the Ajax/Ruby on Rails quite yet.
Some of the things we're seeing here at WWDC could replace most of the desktop apps. Server Admin, for one could pretty much be replaced with this model. Hopefully some of the clever Ruby folks will start coding...
Did anyone watch WWDC? I did last night. The iPhone has the full WebKit framework which means any Web 2.0/Ajax app will run on it if it runs in Safari. You can do things through Ajax like make a phone call. They did a sweet demo where clicking on links would bring up the mail app, make a phone call through Safari, send an address to Google maps, etc.
This seems like a good way to go IMO. You don't need to learn yet another SDK. If you can program with Javascript, HTML, you can make apps for the iPhone. If there is a bug in your app, you don't have to create a new installer and get that new version out to millions of people. Just update the code on your server and now all users have the latest-and-greatest.
Through Safari, you will be able to do tons of things with the iPhone and web 2.0/Ajax stuff, all the core functions of the iPhone are available to you.
General, you are listening to a machine! Do the world a favor and don't act like one.
I wouldn't go so far as to say there will be no killer app, since the killer app could be bundled with the phone. But Apple is adding to the risk that there will never be a killer app simply by virtue of the fact that they are creating an artificial barrier to development.
Is the barrier to development infinitely high? That remains, too, to be seen. Look how quickly people cracked open the AppleTV and made it into a general purpose computer. But as a potential buyer, I have to add uncertainty to the cost of the iPhone: any application I may want/need for the iPhone may never be developed. An accommodating rather than hostile approach to third party development would reduce that cost significantly. And that's what it boils down to for me. I may be willing to pay $500 or $600 for the thing, but the hidden "costs" of Apple's walled garden may prove too steep to ignore.
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
Clearly, Apple wants people to buy it because of it's coolness factor, not because you can create a new environment. Apple is first and foremost proprietary with its goods. Expect an SDK only if someone has found a way to shim the phone OS and opens a hole in the system.
Apple wants you to be free. To be free of independent thought and action. Just drink the kool-aid, it tastes great and makes you look hip at the same time!
Make me a cell phone that is reliable and almost as cheap as POTS. No contracts, no roaming and no other hidden charges.
UNIX/Linux Consulting
Seriously.
The way that mobile phone industry works is the network provider is the only innovator. Perhaps the most famous example of this is music download service on mobile phone networks.
Oh wait, what about all the java-enabled phones? Outside of games, there isn't much of an API to do anything else with it. And it's not like mobile java apps actually run everywhere.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Lame.
This is true and symptomatic of the whole mobile space. If you have experience in the mobile space, this will come as little surprise to you. All the carriers want to lock down and control every bit that flows on their networks so they can extract all the profit out of every bit. It's amazing that Apple has got as much enabled on the phone as it has.
This sort of thing is why mobile networking in the U.S. and many other countries is a total and unmitigated disaster. All of the networks have tried so hard to make sure they get all the profit potential out of the networks they have made it very unattractive for third party developers. As a result, the mobile networking space just rots waiting for a competitor or new form of getting data to mobile points that make the existing mobile networks obsolete (this is hard because of governmental regulation and selling of exclusive rights to frequency bands, so it is also a regulatory disaster). This is why all the services you hear prognosticators in Wired and other magazines rhapsodize about never materialize. It's also ironic in that the carriers would be making more money if they had opened up to the killer apps and therefore increased the overall demand for networking.
In short, through the regulatory processes and lack of fair trade enforcement, the U.S. has sold its mobile networking potential and commons into the hands of thieves, whose greed and hubris have essentially delayed progress in mobile networking for at least a decade. If I could make that statement in stronger terms, I would. The mobile space is essentially what happens when you have the complete antithesis of 'network neutrality' and, though network neutrality might not be a great regulatory strategy in the fixed-network space, the complete opposite of it is surely well-nigh catastrophic as can be seen from the mobile space.
iPhone.
iPhone iphone iPHONE.
Iphone iphone iphone ipHone?
iPhone!
I just had one nit to pick, and it was an Apple-y nit:
All 3d party apps are going to be ugly in one important respect: they will have a browser address bar at the top. And all that goes with that. Will you be able to add an icon to the home screen? Or will all 3d party apps have to be accessed through a Safari bookmark?
For as great as AJAX is, it will just not result in the sort of Apple elegance I've come to expect. In exchange for "security" and "stability" Apple is willing to put up with ugly and inelegant? Maybe they should have poked a little less fun at Ballmer in the Keynote.
I don't need large brains to have a good time.
The device looks very cool. It has all sorts of cool features for storing and listening to music, taking and showing photos, organizing a schedule, etc. Unfortunately, this is a 'convergence' product almost a decade late. Furthermore, it doesn't do the ONE thing I want and need: allow me to take eink notes or annotate over pdfs. Apple really missed the boat here. And I think here we see Jobs' bias against pen input really damaging the potential of this product. I don't need yet another calendar. I need a tool to manipulate divergent notes from a variety of projects. And being able to snap photos of text in a book or original source materials for batch OCR would be nice too.
Jobs made a very nice toy. Unfortunately, I need a tool - and the iPhone ain't it.
Here is another editorial explaining the pros and cons of the issue.
While some people on here despise flash, it could possibly take advantage of the multi-touch interface on the iPhone without leaving the Safari sandbox. Not to mention a lot of popular sites such as homestarrunner.com use it. $500 for a revolutionary smart phone whose browser isn't as good as the psps? No thanks.
Monstar L
I've not seen anyone else suggest this, so I'll throw it out there. Could Apple have seen Intel's upcoming low-power x86 chips and be planning to use them in the 2nd Gen iPhone? If so, they could be making sure 1st Gen users don't get lumbered with ARM binaries that they can't upgrade when Apple move to x86. By restricting 3rd party developers to interpreted JavaScript, they will make upgrades seamless.
Why would a PHONE need killer apps??? (before you start, there is a reason Apple calls it an iPhone)
My ears are bleeding. If you say, "but the ads look great," you're a fanboy. If you call a product that hasn't shipped yet an utter failure, that's sobriety? No it's not. Can't anybody wait to see what we're talking about here? Just why is it that a great phone experience requires third-party developers. Is a phone REALLY a computer? Can you make apps crash on it?
Nothing, I repeat, *nothing* that Apple has released up to this point has indicated that "Web 2.0" apps will be the only type of apps available to the iPhone. Get a clue already. How many clues does Apple have to give you before you see the trail of breadcrumbs?
First of all, go refer to the D5 discussion with SJ and BG. Pay special attention to the part where Steve talks about iPhone apps, particularly why it was felt that a native Google Maps app was more appropriate than a web app.
Second of all, "No SDK required" != "No SDK available". The SDK already exists, but is not required to develop apps targeted to the iPhone. It's called Mac OS X+XCode+Dashcode. Curious that the "Webclip" feature coming in Leopard was conspicously demo'd by Steve, and yet is missing from both versions of the Safari 3 Public Beta...hmm? Safari for Windows exists because of the iPhone, plain and simple.
The "Mystery 12th App"? Obviously the "Movies" widget that Steve demo'd. Just as that came on, I realized one of the most commonly accessed apps on my Palm phone, my Nokia 770, and my other cell phone (Samsung SPH-m610), is movie listings. Of course Apple, with the largest movie preview site on the Internet, would provide such a feature for the iPhone.
It's been obvious since the first intro of the iPhone to anyone with a modicum of intelligence that all the apps on the iPhone are the exact same things that run under Dashboard on Mac OS X. Why would anyone think that Apple would reimplement already existing code when they've already shown that the iPhone and AppleTV both run Mac OS X, especially given the extreme emphasis put on the fact that the iPhone runs the same WebKit engine as the regular desktop OS?
I going to laugh to see all the naysayers tripping over themselves to get ahold of an iPhone and a Mac in a few months once they realize they've missed the boat
The phone will live or die based on the fact that it costs $500 with a 2 year contract. You can make a really nice car that gets 100 mpg, but if the market can't afford it, you aren't going to revolutionize anything. Sure, it may end up like the Newton, with a rabid following; and yeah, some of that functionality will trickle down and affect the industry. But talking about the success of this phone is silly; it just costs too much.
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
I think this has been known since iPhone was announced. Also this won't stop non geek people from buying an iPhone but to geeks SDKs matter.
... take a deep breath and think about it. I think apple is a creative, innovative (often borrowed innovation) company but this is lame. Consider the applications you find most useful during your day. Most of them (especially speciality programs) are not provided by the OS and even fewer are web-based (Google apps aside--if it weren't for them Apple wouldn't have been so joyously promoting the omggreat3stpwningdevelopment platform). We tinkerers considering purchasing this platform and making it more capable will slink back into the shadows...
TODO - Insert Creative/Witty Signature
So
- They might actually have one (eventually)
- It could be that all you need are OSX SDKs and an awareness of the hardware limitations.
As a developer these possibilities sound exciting - If all I have to do is take my existing OSX apps, dial them down for reduced memory footprint, and recompile.... sweet. No new APIs to learn! No wierd config problems with linking libraries! We'll drive flying cars and eat dinner in pill form - because the future is now!Anyone remember this recent story, Google Gears:
"Google is rolling out a technology designed to overcome the major drawback faced by all web-based applications: the fact that they don't work without an internet connection. Google Gears is an open source technology for creating offline web applications that is being launched today at Google's annual Developer Day gatherings around the world."
Does anyone else think it would be rather cool if Apple was shipping this on the iPhone? This would allow offline use of Safari based applets :)
Nuff said.
How we know is more important than what we know.
There's a reasonably good reason, and don't hold your breath waiting for the answer to change.
Whether or not the phone is "really" running OSX is debatable, but keep in mind that many of the CPUs used in embedded devices like phones don't have nearly (or sometimes any of) the memory protection offered on a desktop or laptop CPU. You're also dealing with a much lower-MHz device (for battery consumption reasons) and chances are 100% of the code on the phone runs in Ring 0 (assuming other rings exist) for performance reasons.
So for them to allow third parties to run binary apps would pretty much allow unlimited circumvention of their DRM for the iPod portions (which would violate their agreements with record and movie companies), and as Jobs mentioned publicly would allow any poorly-written or malicious application to completely destabilize the phone or potentially interact with the cellular network in some disruptive or destructive manner (probably violating their agreement with AT&T). I have a Treo with PalmOS on it, and I can attest to the validity of at least the phone stability concern.
So there are a few very legitimate reasons to sandbox third-party code. That being said, there are features sorely lacking on the phone that won't fit in a sandbox - the first of which (for me and my customers) is a VPN client. The last thing I want is a phone running POP3 or IMAP "transparently" connecting over insecure WiFi infrastructure. I'd also like an SSH client, a Terminal Services client, an X Client, and a unicorn - so the iPhone probably won't be for me (dammit).
I would imagine that down the road they will find a better way to provide said sandbox (maybe a Java or Ruby or Python runtime environment?) but in the mean time I respect their desire to provide a phone that emphasizes reliability, even if it means it won't work for me (at least in the first iteration). The wife will probably get one, though.
Help save the critically endangered Blue Iguana
less space than a nomad. no wireless.
Doesn't follow.
If all the key iPhone functionality can be accessed via AJAX and/or flash (and it sounds like it can -- they've got JavaScript hooks for dialing and for diddling the address book and stuff, looks like), what significant advantage do people imagine a "more native" dev kit would have?
Give Daniel Eran at RoughlyDrafted a day or two to give us a six page analysis of why this article is completely wrong, complete with plenty of graphs, Photoshopped pictures of Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer in compromising positions, and plenty of vacuous claims that this article is yet another in a long series by the Microsoft-loving mass media.
Don't let me down, RD.
Just a compiler and the standard libraries...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
If Web2.0 and AJAX were the end-all be-all of application development then why aren't all the other apps on the iPhone written that way? Heck even Google Maps, which was born as AJAX, has is a dedicated app on iPhone because there are things you can do with native code that you will never be able to do with an online app.
The most important being that you have to be online to use them. So no third party applications when you are on an airplane. And unless there is a WiFi hotspot nearby you'll be racking up AT&T data charges like crazy. Secondly, there are many situations where I neither need nor want my sensitive data to be stored online, where it is more vulnerable. Anything that processes this data should not be a webapp. Third, even with all the Web2.0 AJAXy goodness, webapps are still not as interactive as real applications, and nowhere near as efficient.
I think that the streamlined webapp capabilities are nice There are several classes of application that IMHO are best done as webapps, in particular any that are front end to some online data base or other content. Things like yellow pages, YouTube, photo album sharing, lookup up movie times, etc. I am glad that they made it possible and easy for these types of applications to integrate nicely into the iPhone.
I can also understand if they aren't willing to release a full 3rd party SDK at this time - they are rolling out an ambitious new product which is sure to have some problems, and the more variable they can remove at launch time the better. It makes sense to wait until things have settled down before releasing an SDK, not to mention the fact that they have probably been too busy to write and test one.
But trying to play it off as "Web2.0 is all the SDK you need" is just plain insulting. It's like saying that Dashboard Widgets are the only SDK that OS X needs.
I agree - using the in built camera to capture text for OCR sounds like a really neat idea for a 3rd party application.
I do something similar with my digital camera - taking photos of posters or adverts to get the important details to follow up later (e.g. website or phone number).
Depending on the horsepower of the iPhone, the OCR might have to be done on a/your "real" computer after syncing (or even online via the net and some grid computing service), but it sounds very possible.
HTML and JavaScript aren't all that new or specific to Apple.
Developers: We can use your help.
So - are there any pocketPC browsers that can work like the IPhone's, which I admit is nice.
Seems to me that Google's interest in WiFi and Apple's device that really needs WiFi is a match made in heaven. Apple's part of the deal is to supply a device loaded up with cool Google apps that, BTW, require lots of bandwidth. Google's part of the deal is to supply the apps and push wireless networking all over the place.
Steve, Sergey, are you listening?
here is a good comparision chart between the two
http://www.linuxtogo.org/gowiki/OpenMoko/iPhone
as i understand the next version of the neo will have wifi
at least they are discussing chipset option on their dev site
um.. really i want a handheld i can ssh into servers with
i think the neo is going to be that device, but i will wiat for the next gen one with wifi support
back in the day we didnt have no old school
What I was hoping for - and what I don't expect to see - is skype or a similar voip client available. I think I'd cry if they exposed audio streams as web services...
Apple read your comment, and that's the last straw.
They're canceling the iPhone, disbanding the dev team, and selling the entire production run at Overstock.com and everyone gets a free Clio while supplies last.
Oh, and you're invited to a party at John Dvorak's house.
You have to bring the Tostitos, Shaw Wu's bringing the Dr. Pepper.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
"the network provider is the only innovator"
BS.
Anything innovative in that market is almost always created by a third party and proposed a network provider. And network providers usually find a way to botch those things by turning them into restrictive billable services or features.
The only innovative things network providers create are fees shorty, fees.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Damn it, now there will never be a port of brickbreaker to the Iphone.
You know the usage of the term "revolution" to describe a cell phone device just makes me sad as a 21st century man. The fact that this is what we apply the term to nowadays shows our supreme lack of imagination or want for something better. If we could have the type of revolution our forefathers had for silly import taxes for health coverage, worker's rights ,the ability for criminal corporations to poison our environment, politicians that adhere to big business's needs more than the will of the people, that'd be really doing something, but no, we'd rather have a phone "revolution." How far we've fallen.
Judges and senates have been bought for gold; Esteem and love were never to be sold.
While I personally don't really like any of Apple's recent gadgets (controlling my mp3 player with a flat nipple is not very appealing to me...neithing is plastic that looks like it belongs to fisher price...but I digress) I highly doubt that no SDK is going to stop the iPhone from becomming the big thing that we all know it will.
In fact, that only two things that I think might hinder the iPhone are A. the fact that it is on AT&T/Cingular only, and B. the price point.
But what do I know, I'm an apple hater.
Living With a Nerd
My Windows Mobile 5 phone would suck far less if it had a browser half as good as Safari. Right now, Yahoo maps almost barely works. The stuff Steve showed off on the iPhone is exactly what I want...
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
don't need an SDK
The iPhone has already been revolutionary. It's not even out and how many manufacturers are releasing products that are "iPhone killers"? When a product sends other companies into a tizzy before the product even hits the shelves, it has revolutionized the industry in some way.
Don't be surprised if the next major revision of X-Code supports iPhone development.
Face it - abstract computing on gadgets is for geeks only.
"Could" without much of subsequent "would".
Functionality of gadget is predesigned - hard to beat it.
If something can beat it today - it is door to the web.
And this was just another solid design choice (unlike
Safari on Windows?).
Servant of karma
Don't forget the iPhone has 802.11 networking built in. People spend so much time in hot spots these days that the lackluster performance of the EDGE network will be an occasional nuisance, not a crippling defect in the product. The future of 3G HSDPA networks looks pretty bright, too.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
For all the talk about NO SDK=FAILURE that has been going on since day one, I haven't seen anyone make even the vaguest suggestions of what they think such a killer-app might be that is absolutely dependent on a direct SDK.
Next you'll be telling me the Mac is "just a computer"!
From the commercials I have seen, the iPhone IS the killer app.
I'm sure Apple will figure out some way to screw with this (custom iPhone dom extensions), but killer apps will thrive when they can reach lots of high-end phone browsers, as opposed to just Apple's share.
I don't think Apple is being particularly virtuous here, rather they had too much hubris to plan for a development platform and rushed this so called "sweet" after-the-fact solution out to placate the demand.
Verizon is going to wind up on the losing end of this battle. Basically all the world's GSM vendors are lining up on the side of a better user experience, since they believe that will lead to happier repeat customers and long term revenue. The wireless companies are mostly aware that they had it easy during rapid growth days, but their cost of getting a new subscriber has been going up, and it's already high. The iPhone might help AT&T see customer satisfaction as a marketing tool. If Verizon doesn't get that, they'll start losing customers who are more sophisticated, basically the high margin smart phone customers, not just to the iPhone, but to other companies that learn the lesson. Crippled bluetooth is going to hurt them in the long run because people will begin to see their friends doing stuff they can't do.
Can you say, "General Magic" ??
I'm surprised the /. crowd doesn't get it. It's a full web browser, something other phones do not have, meaning you can use apps like Google Docs and Spreadsheets etc. It has hooks for dialing and email and the other phone features. The WWDC demo was spot-on, showing an app that a major corp could use for a smartphone, and not needing an SDK because the hooks are present in the browser.
The article seemed to be a what-if piece to me. What IF I need to make an app that takes things out of my address book, or What IF Java apps are slower than my native mail client? Can someone provide me with a concrete example of an app that won't be possible for an iPhone instead of giving me generalities?
So how's that Palm has not brought down any network, but still provides a pretty open platform, including SDK? Is that because Palm OS is ancient?
For those interested:
n t/
http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/d7625zs/eve
Third party development offers not just great rewards and also risk. On desktop platforms, the risk pales in comparison. On mobiles, reward>risk isn't as obvious. Existing phones offer very little potential despite offering "open" platforms. I calculated $449 of Windows Mobile software that is either wholly unnecessary or included on the iPhone. That software is all in the top popularity listings on Windows Mobile sites.
.Net.
Gizmodo complains that Apple isn't offering the rest of the world free reign to build Cocoa apps for the iPhone. That would be great, but would also crack open serious security gremlins. If Apple can't deliver Safari on Windows without heaps of contempt that its beta browser can be DoS'ed or crashed remotely, it is hard to understand that more serious risks might relate to the iPhone?
What could Apple have done to impress people? Shortly before the event, I suggested the only thing that would blow me away would be Cocoa for Windows, or perhaps just Safari for Windows.
Paired with what I already stated would be the only reasonable 3rd party platform announcement for "the 'Phone that isn't yet here," that means Apple is embarking on a strategy of promoting standards compliant, AJAX web 2.0 style development in its first assault on the hegemony of Windows in the cross-platform space.
I find it entertaining that FOSS developers--who love dropping the "web 2.0" buzzword and chastising everything proprietary--are booing Apple for pushing standards compliant web-centric development and for not delivering yet another proprietary mobile development framework to compete against
That quite clearly shows that nothing Apple could do would go uncriticized.
It simply makes the most sense for Apple to continue to partner with Google and Yahoo, and build strong support for the kind of development people already know how to build and are interested in building, rather than trying to immediately deploy something that--like QuickDraw GX--is very appealing in theory, but worthless if nobody pokes at it.
Mobile Disruption: Apple's iPhone and Third Party Software
I previously wrote about Apple's comments to deliver the iPhone as a closed platform, explaining why this makes sense for Apple, but also presenting why I though that the panic feared by some was overstated. Since I don't make decisions at Apple, and really do not wield any influence at all over those making the decisions, it seemed to make more sense to logically explore the subject rather than quickly pass judgment.
iPhone Gremlins: Crashing, Security, and Network Collapse!
In addition to showing off the iPhone's pretty interface as part of its first impression--including the Google Maps client Steve Jobs used to locate a Starbucks in order to place a crank call for a thousand coffees at Macworld--he also described the rationale behind the closed platform iPhone as a security and stability issue.
An iPhone SDK? Predictions for WWDC 2007!
The fate of third party application development for the iPhone is one of a few objects of speculation for Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference next week. What is likely in view of Apple's existing stance on the iPhone's platform? Here's a look, leading into some other predictions for WWDC 2007.
More Predictions for WWDC 2007: Solaris, Google, Surround
Yesterday's article presented the likelihood of any new iPhone news at WWDC, but it appears that this years' event will be almost exclusively about Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. What's in store for developers? Here's my list of inevitable new releases, good possibilities, a
> I hope I'm not the only one who won't be getting an iPhone because of it's closed nature.
:-(
Don't know how many will reject it for that. As for me, I'm in the "won't be getting an iPhone" camp because:
1) It costs too much.
2) It includes a camera which, as a contractor, I can't carry into the premises of all my clients. And phones without cameras are getting harder to find
What's with this "will never be realized" crap? First of all, the claim that an SDK is required to make a killer app is specious. Secondly, who says they won't change their minds and release an SDK in the next generation of iPhones? When's the last time the first release of a winning product was also the last release?
How was the iPod a revolution? It wasn't, it was an evolution of existing digital audio players (from both a hardware and a software perpective). So it will be with the iPhone. It will do what existing phones do, but it will have a slick, easy to use UI and it will "just work" without a lot of complicated setup on the PC or the phone.
Plus, anyone who thinks that Apple won't eventually offer an SDK is crazy. There will be one eventually, this was just a stop gap solution that could be made available when the phone ships to allow at least some third party development.
To all you people who think Apple's vision of a "Web 2.0 app" is running Safari and clicking on a bookmark, I suggest you take a look at Dashboard.
Dashboard is a HTML renderer, based on Safari. Yet it doesn't look like a browser. Its applications do not look like web pages. Dashboard applications are installed locally through a special type of package. They can store data locally and access OS APIs which a browser is not allowed to grant access to for obvious security reasons.
A end user has no idea that what's really behind all that is just HTML + JavaScript.
This sucks compared to doing Cocoa development, but it's not as bad as some people expect - and certainly there are far more programmers who can write HTML and JavaScript than Objective-C. iPhone will probably do the same: permit locally-installed HTML/JS apps with special access to APIs like Telephony, Address Books and iCal.
Why would a non mobile OS need a SDK specific to the mobile phone, when the OS already has a SDK and Apple and Steve Jobs have said that that the OS on the phone IS MAC OS. I'm very confused......did I misunderstand when Apple said the IPHONE runs MAC OS, so why not use the MAC OS Software development kit and tailor it for the IPHONE, I assume the IPhone uses a Intel processor.
Using Safari as the SDK moves all costs over to the application developer and the customer. Both being charged for bandwidth usage and the customer is getting royally fcuked with the expensive data plans it's going to require just to use all these apps. Cash money for the carriers.
Nihilism means nothing to the dancing peasants
There WILL be killer apps delivered for iPhone.
They just won't be delivered by third party vendors.
Or (thank goodness) by spammers and skript-kiddies.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
When I first saw the IPhone, I was reminded of the Onyx concept phone which I believe pre-dates it a bit. They have some fancy touch sensitive technology which they are licensing out. Their transparent thin film not only detects position, but also pressure. You can expect to see loads of phones which are just one big touch sensitive screen before long, probably with some kind of low power OLED screen.
If Nintendo would put a cell phone in my Nintendo DS and officially sanction the mod chips then it would be the killer platform I've been waiting for.
Is there any indication that these third-party AJAX apps won't be locally stored like Widgets? If they're stored locally and have access to enough system-level calls, why would they be any worse than any other kind of language? This debate reminds me of C++ trolls claiming that Java could never write real programs, or better, ASM trolls dismissing "high-end" languages like C++ and Pascal. As long as the language is turing-complete, relatively fast, and has the keys to the kingdom (i.e. access to system-level functionality), what's the problem?
or iphoto?
or final cut pro? (yes, I know they bought it, but v1 and v6 are a little different)
Apple makes a lot of great 1st party apps. Don't count them out.
Also, what's to stop them from writing custom html hooks into safari that access phone functionality? Isn't that what they did when they supported the canvas tag for dashboard?
It was realized, it just wasn't that high to begin with.
My sentiments EXACTLY.
It's a phone. Apple has done a great job. I don't want or need third party crapware cluttering it up.
I hate to say it, but playing nice with M$ Exchange is going to be very important. My company uses Exchange for just about everything, which limits me to paying for a Goodlink license (Palm/Blackberry) or using Windows Mobile. Does anyone know if iPhone will play nice with Exchange Server?
- I voted for Nintendo and against Bush
The device runs OS X and Quicktime (I assume, it can play MP3s, AAC files, iTMS movies), so I presume that Quicktime is available.
We also know that Safari supports a few extensions for Dashboard, and they could expose whatever functionality they want.
The ONLY people truly wanting an SDK are Cocoa Developers that would like an easy migration path to bring mobile version of their applications to the iPhone.
With my Treo, one of the neat applications was PocketQuicken, that synced when I synced my phone. I imagine that a WebKit-based app could be similar, or not, we don't really know yet.
Everyone has heard Webkit/Safari and decided that the applications are going to be in a browser. It looks more like Dashboard-style widgets as applets, which is NOT the same thing at all. Let's see what happens, but I have the feeling that you'll be able to do more than you think.
Safari for Windows makes developing iPhone apps on Windows possible, then you move over to the iPhone for testing.
We'll see what happens.
So, you'll be able to make a phone call from Javascript? I shudder to think of this. Imagine pornsite pop-ups that dial 1-900 numbers for you!
I'm not entirely bothered by the lack of 3rd party application development for the iPhone. What I am entirely bothered about is the characterization that bookmarking AJAX websites is the same thing as developing 3rd party applications for the iPhone.
The entire iPhone part of the keynote was all, "You don't need a four course gourmet meal. We've got a Pot Noodle for you right here!"
You fail it, Steve.
http://www.subwayshuffle.com/
to the iPhone. With the touch screen, you could literally drag the trains between the stations. It would be the perfect platform.
Oh well.
EDGE, 802.11b, Bluetooth, Java, and PuTTY all on a QWERTY keyboard:Nokia 9500
Expensive (~$1000) successor to the 9500, but is more like 2 phones in one package (same openness, more connectivity):Nokia E90
One of the other ones(S60, small form factor):
Nokia E61i
Yes, despite the European site origin, all are availible now if not upcoming(E90) to the US.
Unlike that iWhat device, all of these can use third party apps, and are open to development.
Twitter supports and protects racists - by smearing their critics with the "Hate Speech" label.
...the killer app revolution will come through AJAXified web-based applications. Nothing new here. The move from desktop-driven applications to dynamic, web-based applications has been happening steadily since ... oh 1995 or so (at least!).
With AJAX, DHTHML, and Javascript, you can build fairly advanced user-interfaces. Google maps/mashups/gadgets show that this is possible today.
My only question is, how fully does iPhone's Safari browser support AJAX/DHTML/Javascript?
Hey! Stop copying my sig!!! Stop copying my sig!!! Stop copying my sig!!! Stop copying my sig!!!
But as long as they're supporting some common public standards, and (TBD?...) providing documentation, isn't that *better* than having Yet Another Proprietary SDK? I don't particularly like Ajax, and I'd rather see Java supported, but it's a reasonable platform to work with. Certainly enough for somebody to write the Next Cool App.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
there can still be a killer app, but it has come come from within apple.
I wouldn't put it past them to be capable of producing a good killer app.
music - http://www.subatomicglue.com
Don't try and pretend that web apps are going to be just as good.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
No SDK for this exciting new mobile platform with a surely simple GUI and integrated multimedia/network OS means that the killer app is a dead-simple SDK that anyone can use to whip out apps.
Some kind of flowcharting tool among existing iPhone components, apps and network resources/APIs that gives anyone with spreadsheet formula or HTML/1.0 level skills the ability to make unique apps would catch on like wildfire. A distribution app for sharing with friends would fan those flames, even if it just works with iTunes.
Even just a good Eclipse environment for iPhone dev could be really hot, if not "the next Netscape (+Notepad)".
Apple is really being generous by not filling the market niche with their own SDK. If you make one yourself, it could be that killer app on the newest killer platform. Go do it yourself!
--
make install -not war
Can you really talk for more than five hours on your phone today? Have you tested it?
Standby is very different than talk.
My current phone is a RAZR. I have to put it on the charger about every other day because it sucks so much power just on standby, if it's anywhere the signal stars to get weak. Can it last for five hours talking? I doubt it but would never know since I don't talk that much on a cell phone. In fact I don't believe I've seen more than a handful of people that would realistically talk over five hours a day on a cellphone.
The iPhone does offer 16 hours(!) of pure audio listening, which seems pretty good to me.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Steve doesn't care if you can't run apps on the iPhone. He's not selling it to you or your company. He's selling it to your wife, girlfriend, teenagers, kids in college, etc. He's selling it to all the people who don't care about a Blackberry or a Treo but still have $600 to spend on a phone.
It's a lifestyle device, like the iPod, now with internet access.... and cellular.
That's it. It's not looking for a killer app... it is the killer app. It's phone, web, email, chat, music, photos and video in your hand. Who cares if it's doesn't let you open Excel docs or manage your finances with some 3rd party add on. Use your Blackberry to do that.. have your work pay for it. Then when you're all done doing work, grad your iPhone and head to the beach... call your friends, send directions and a map, listen to some tunes on the way over, take some pics while your there... then email them to anyone who couldn't get off work in time.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
since the iphone is based on safari, you will be getting more than your usual ajax (read javascript + simple networking). Most ajax apps cater to the lowest common denominator of internet explorer.
4 _07.html). If you look at dashboard widgets they are quite a bit more advanced than most ajax stuff.
Webkit on the other hand exposes a number of features such as raster graphics (through the canvas tag), slider controls, composite image attribute, search fields (see http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/hyatt/archives/200
Apple seems to be just wrapping a bunch of cocoa API's and exposing them through javascript, so if they continue this trend in future revisions of Webkit, javascript will become an increasingly attractive platform for application development. It will, however, never be as *fast* or as lean in memory usage as an objective-c application; however, this is not a concern for many applications.
Additionally, I do suspect that apple will eventually release an SDK complete with objective-c crosscompiler for iPhone. They probably don't want to release such a thing in the first iteration, as they are worried about settling on things like ABI's and API's for multitouch. Probably some of the input handling code in the initial apps were hacked together pretty quickly for a quick release and it will take some time to factor out a reasonable class library. They may also want to build some kind of sandbox for security purposes, or they may just want to make people write applications in java.
"no software developer kit is required for the iPhone." Another interpretation: It runs OS X, so we thought it'd be clever to just use the OS X SDK...
Wasn't the iPhone running OS X so it would be easier for third-party developers to make apps for it?
It's a shame there will be no SDK, but I'm not surprised about this coming from a company which closed off their UNIX based OS. It seems only Apple are allowed to play with their toys.
In before Score: -1
Secret services have been able to remotely detonate doctored cell phones for a long time.
What other "killer application" do we need for cell phones?
Somebody with a Treo or a Blackberry might well need or at least want some of the more enterprise oriented features, like exchange support.
Well what about the rest of us that have no desire to receive work mail on such a device (at least not all work mail) and own the RAZR's of the world today? We don't want a device like the Treo or the Blackberry because they are unpleasant to use (and I know, I have used them as I was thinking strongly about moving to them).
What about a Smart Phone for "the rest of us". You know, the 97% of the market who doesn't own a smart phone today. Why not try and sell a smart phone to THOSE people.
Heck, that's where the Blackberry Perl is trying to head. Who is to say the features the iPhone already offers do not compete well against that device, in a wider space? Tell me what the "Killer App" for the Blackberry is, that a majority of people will buy and actually use for that device?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
MacPaint was neat but Photoshop was one of the apps that made the Mac a must-have platform, and Photoshop didn't come from Apple.
Have you ever seen the difference between Adobe's Premiere and Apple's Final Cut Pro? FCP is light years ahead of anything that Premiere could do. I bought a mac just for FCP a few years ago. Its that good.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
My blackberry is pretty smart and it doesn't crash.
Apple doesn't need an SDK to write apps for it.
It's not like Any vendor to date has created something revolutionary for the Mac OS yet that wasn't Apple.
"I have an odd craving to whisper about those few frightful hours in that ill-rumored and evilly shadowed seaport of dea
WinCE (Sorry, Windows Mobile). Treao. Blackberry.
These devices all allow custom programming. They have been out for some time. So then, what is the "Kller App" for those devices that has come from third parties?
When I owned a Palm, I did buy a few applications, but they were just nice utilities, never apps I could not live without (evidenced by my not owning a Palm anymore once it died). Even today I don't see what is so compelling about the third party market that I must have on my phone that could not also be served by a well-written web application.
The Palm itself was a killer app when it came along, because of the totality of the device. The same COULD be true of the iPhone, we don't know yet - but it would not be a third party application that would cause it to rise or fall, even if it would allow lower level development. With consumer devices its the package as a whole that makes or breaks it.
Heck even game consoles today rest firmly on a foundation of first party titles to help buoy them up. Why should a phone be any different? Remember it's not that NO developers will get lower level access, Apple had already talked about things like the games the iPod offers today. It's only the wider market that has to use AJAX for application development on the iPhone, a tired development model that still allows for truly custom iPhone applications - and thus the potential of the mythical "Killer App".
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Just because is there is no SDK fo the iPhone right now doesn't mean that you can't develop for it. It just means you may have to figure out some shit on your own as opposed to having everything handed to you.
All the functional components the iPhone offers have been around for years with the sole exception of "Multi-Touch." My gut feeling is that Apple are essentially right about this. The sorts of things you can do with Widgets may be cooler-looking if done as widgets on that nice glossy interface, but their purpose is not "Killer." Most other purposes have already been tried and failed over and over and over for the simple problem of the interface being too god damned small to be of any real use.
... " -- and usually most people can think of about a dozen things they'd kill to have. That's the rub. Yes, this is neat, but it's just not obviously useful enough yet to produce a "killer app" and opening the SDK isn't going to provide any inspiration if it isn't already there.
People aren't doing that with this thing though. They already know exactly what the SDK would give them, but when you ask why it's basically nothing but "uhm, because I might think of something, well, not me, but like, someone else might, because I got nothin." Now, ask your average person on the street about, say, OLED polymer screens and with just the slightest explanation, they'll give you a hundred applications, invariably including "hey! that'd be so cool if they could roll out of my cellphone because I've always wanted an app where I could
They have a killer app - it's the phone.
;-)))
The don't need no stinkin' killer app!
(Scenario poker is pretty good
spoonerize "magic trackpad"
well said
Yep! Just like the iPod didn't cause any kind of revolution without an SDK...oh, wait...
- dm - The two most common elements in the universe are Hydrogen and stupidity.
The "killer app" ideas for this thing already exist on other platforms. Would it be a _Good Idea_ for them to have a GPS moving-map application on the phone? Yes. Would such an application be enough to drive someone to buy the phone just to get the app (read: the definition of a 'Killer App')?
No.
Like I said, "multi-touch" is the only unique interface ability this thing has. Everything else is elsewhere already, even the accelerometers, and many of those devices as you've so keenly noted already have clear advantages, yet, nope, no "killer app" from them. What would make this device more likely to produce one that others couldn't and, more annoyingly, are the unique qualities of this phone actually a HINDRANCE (try touch-dialing on completely zero-tactile-feedback plexi)?
Come on - It's an Apple product. That means looks over function. It means proprietary city. Is anyone really that surprised?
The bottom line cell phones are just expensive paperweights you can make phone calls on without an open platform (or at the very least, a common platform) to run software on. What is the point of spending money on games/apps for your phone with the next one you get probably won't be able to run them?
That is why I am anxiously waiting for the Neo1973 running OpenMoko. The OS runs on a Linux kernel with telephony services running on top of it. Apps run on GTK and so you can run and develop apps natively in your X11 session. The hardware itself works with GSM networks (quad band), and has integrated bluetooth, GPS, Wifi, and a 2.8" touchscreen. Since everything is open source on it, if it doesn't have all the software capabilities the iPhone does, it can be made to have them. And at half the cost. Not to mention it's not married to any cell network, unlike the iPhone.
If the Neo1973 is as awesome in the flesh as it looks on paper, it will revolutionize the cell phone industry.
-R
Yes google apps on an iPhone sounds great, but they discount the J2ME/Brew push that's gaining a lot of momentum in the cellphone space.
Apple would prefer you to think of all of their computers as appliances, not computers. That's what the Apple TV is: and appliance that is designed to replace the Mac Mini market segment.
Apple likes to sell you a "solution", which is generally well-designed to address the forseen use-cases, but lacks the flexibility to deal with or support revolutionary changes that come from a more organic marketplace.
...because "hacker" sounds way sexier than "code drone."
Sometimes vendors can write killer apps for their own platforms, but that's not usually how it works. The vendor has the vendor's vision about what the product does and about what the user wants to do with it; killer apps happen when somebody has a *better* vision about what the user wants to do. If you've got a good development platform, lots of people can write apps for it, and if one of them's good enough to be a killer, it can make sales of the platform take off. The vendor has the platform expertise and may have better funding and a head start on time.
With the original IBM PC, the real killer app was "it's a cheap enough development platform that thousands of people can buy them and develop applications for themselves and potentially millions of end-users", which allowed development of the perceived killer apps like spreadsheets and word processors. It wasn't the best possible hardware or software, but it was sort of good enough and the price was right for businesses and some hobbyists.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
This seems like an odd move for apple to exclude developers from the iPhone platform. The Apple II got creamed in the market--even though the product was technically superior--because Apple insisted on restricting access to the platform. You'd think they learned their lesson the last time.
I suspect this has more to do with the iPhone OS itself not yet being secure. Apple would get serious egg on its face if the iPhone were pwned like the rival operating system they poke so much fun at.
No SDK rules out the iPhone for me.
.NET framework. Or Java, which it has too. Or C++.
I used to own a T-Mobile Sidekick. I dumped it because I couldn't get the software I wanted.
My Windows Mobile based T-Mobile Dash runs any third party app I want, and there are thousands to choose from. Tired of IE? There's Opera, Opera Mini, Deepfish, and more. Want maps? Google Maps or Live Local - it's your choice. Media? The free TCPMP plays everything from Vorbis to AAC to XVID to H.264. And don't forget Windows Media. GPS? TomTom is there. SSH? You bet.
To those who say that AJAX is enough, consider this - how is an AJAX app going to play music or interface with a Bluetooth GPS? And how is anything at all going to be usable over EDGE, which is marginally faster than 56k and has 600ms+ latency?
To those who say that an SDK is coming, consider this: Danger said the same thing when they launched the Sidekick. And, although the SDK eventually came, the device only ran signed code anyway. Distributing apps on the Sidekick means going through the PDM process, which takes months. Forget having a broad spectrum of apps.
There are over a million Sidekick users. There are maybe 200 apps for the device, 15 of which aren't games, and 5 of which are free.
Maybe the iPhone will be different. But Windows Mobile works today. That's a lot different from "maybe, in the future".
My Dash has the full web, it has Google Maps (and Live Local), it plays music and movies (even Vorbis and XVID), it has Bluetooth (with A2DP), WiFi, and a quadband EDGE phone. It has push IMAP, text messaging, HTML email, photo viewing, and a camera. It has font antialiasing, it multitasks, it has PIM functions, and more.
It also has things that the iPhone doesn't. It has MMS and IM (AIM/Google/Yahoo/MSN/Jabber). It syncs with Exchange. It uses standard miniUSB for sync and charge. It has a removable battery and upgradeable storage. It has a keyboard. It has 10 hours of talk time on a charge. It has real voice dialing - without training voice tags. And, of course, it can run third party apps. You can even write for it using C# and a version of the
My Dash was $125 if you include the $25 2GB microSD card. There is nothing, literally nothing of substance that you can do on an iPhone but not on my device. The iPhone has a better interface, no doubt, but I'd much rather have more functionality and $375 in my pocket.
Oh, by the way - I typed this entire reply on my Dash. So much for the "watered down" internet.
It's silly to say that the lack of an SDK means no iPhone killer app. It just means that such an app would have to be made by Apple. Streaming music and video from your desktop computer or DVR to your iphone could be a killer app, and it's more likely to come from Apple than anyone else.
Kevin Fox
"Killer App" is more of a universal concept, making whatever it is desireable to a wide group of people. Skype is cool. Accessing your home media is cool. But neither is a Killer App, elevating the functionality of the device to any huge degree for most people - who would either simply use the phone to talk, or not even know how to set up the media to serve. For most people media is more practically synced onto the device, and so home media streaming (which I have seen others demonstrate in action) is just not that much more useful beyond what the device already does to be considered "Killer".
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
yeah whoever modded you down just proved your point...lemmings
This would be great if Apple includes something along the lines of Google Gears on it, and makes that easy to develop for. It ould be the best of both worlds: easy development (but with almost no limit on how complex the App would be), and a nice online/offline compromise.
there is an SDK, AJAX and WEB 2. Any app that runs in the new version of Safari 3 on a Mac or Win, will run on iPhone. No, it's not what the geeks of the world wanted, but you can't make everyone happy. You company can have one app that runs on the 'PC's and their phones, it isn't Quake 3 but it is more like what a business wants.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
Who doesn't think Google Gears will ship with iPhone?
http://code.google.com/apis/gears/index.html
OS X already has SQLlite built in.
An "iPhone killer app" would be a good thing for Apple, but an "iPhone killer" would be bad, right?
Is Firefox supposed to be an "Internet Explorer killer app"?
Well, to be fair, Youtube was writen in Python, Java and (I think) alittle bit of C++. Youtube is an awesome server-side app. And yeah, it'll probably also be great to view it on iPhone. But that's not the same thing as calling it an iPhone application.
Nobody here is arguing that you can't do truly neat things with html and javascript, but I knew that I could do that on the iPhone anyway, so to call a web browser the iPhone SDK is bogus. Why stop there? Why not also call it "The Nintendo Wii SDK", or "The Windows Mobile SDK" or "The SDK for Every Fucking Cell Phone Manufactured In The Last Five Years"???I totally agree. Heck, 90% of my job is writing web apps. Web apps are great, but....what if I want to create something other than a web app? What about a voip client, or a paint program, or a 3d shooter?
It's Microsoft who only give away a crippled version of their dev-tools.
It's Apple who give away the complete dev environment with every Mac sold.
Wanker.
Maybe I'm just missing something, but iPhone is running an embedded version of OS X which has a full blown development environment and has Dashboard widgets for even simpler applications. What else do you want? Full hand holding?
Harnessing the Flash-free, Overlord-like power of Safari, you'll be able to store recipes, play Tic-Tac-Toe and balance your checkbook on your iPhone!!!
But it doesn't have to be "just a phone"... Apple has simply choosen to let it be "just a phone".
Sure, those of you spouting "it's just a phone" now might be happy to spend over $1,000 on your "just a phone" iPhone now, but after the novelty of the web browser and the iPod functions wears off (and it will), "it's just a phone" will become "it's not enough", without third party support.
There are numerous ways Apple could have approached this other than redundantly telling us that their web browser does what any other web browser already does now. (Ok, so they didn't say it that bluntly, but instead left it up to the more intelligent of us to explain the obvious to you...)
For example, what would stop them from releasing a devkit for iPhone that only runs 3rd party apps on iPhones equiped with a special SIM chip dongle, and then allowing developers to submit their apps for certification and eventual deployment through iTunes Music Store? Apple could then collect a commission off every app sold.
Instead, forcing developers to go the Web 2.0/AJAX route is going to result in extremely mediocre apps that all look exactly the same, or semi-featured apps that run slowly using the iPhone as a dumb terminal across AT&T's mediocre cellular data network to a server hosted by the developer that does all the processing and spews the result back to the iPhone. Depending on the complexity of these "apps", small time developers won't be able to afford on-going support for them for very long, unless they charge subscription fees... something that won't go over well with iPhone users already paying a premium just to use the network itself.
Either way, third party development is going to be less than impressive, no matter which end of the iPhone you're on... all because Apple is limiting otherwise good hardware to being nothing more than "just a phone".
8==8 Bones 8==8
The guy who wrote this Giz article must be Dvorak's kid or something. What a total load of negative crap. It's also kind of wrong.
... it's not. It's a communicator. It's just a phone that does all the internet communication as well. You can expect it to get things like video conferencing in the future, or to act as your personalised identifier/key/wallet perhaps, because *those* are the kind of apps that make sense for such a device. If you want a "kitchen sink" portable computer, check out Windows Mobile or get a Linux machine and code away to your hearts content.
Yes, Web 2.0 apps are all you can do for now, so what? Is not this device the absolute perfect Web 2.0 platform? What other kind of "killer app" could there be that needs access to graphics frameworks on the device? Possibly the author is thinking of a million crappy shareware games, or one of those things that changes the interface to make it work in some silly way that ten people want it to (as opposed to the rest of the world).
The article is also purposely misleading. Some of the points made (as questions) are already answered in the press, the very press that Giz is supposed to be a part of.
For instance you *can* have AJAX apps that reside on the phone itself, they don't need to be in constant communication with the web host and the person who wrote the article should know that. Also, let's make no mention of DashCode and widgets even though they were announced at the same event. You will be able to store some data locally, and you will have access to multi-touch. All of this has been covered already if the author was truly doing his research.
It's pretty clear to me that the iPhone is perfectly positioned to be a runaway success. It's the web 2.0 stuff that everyone has been talking about for ages. If they announced it six months ago, not as a smart phone but as a "Portable Web 2.0 interface device" it would still be the same device but the "reporters" at Giz and all their high school buddies would be falling all over themselves with praise for the thing.
If it was positioned as a UMPC or even a PDA, the argument for outside development of core applications makes sense, but the thing is
Lastly, does anyone really think that if a company came up with a "killer app" especially in the form of a widget, that Apple would shun them or something? Currently, widgets can be installed on your desktop right from Safari and there are several excellent choices that would complement the iPhone very nicely. Even if Apple initially disallows this behaviour for the iPhone, does anyone think that these will not eventually find their way onto it if they are good enough and actually usefull?
If the iPhone was totally open, you would see Linux addicts trying to install OpenOffice on it, ridiculously large graphically intensive FPS games that slow the entire Phone to a halt, and of course spyware installed through the browser to rip off that goldmine of personal information stored on it. It's likely that if the phone actually rang in the middle of Joe average coders FPS, he wouldn't have coded the game properly enough to suspend itself gracefully either, and that would kill the one "killer app" they have now, which is the phone itself.
The only surprising this about this article is that the author didn't compound his errors by arguing that it should be Java compatible as well.
If the iphone actually delivers the same CSS, Javascript, and HTML capabilities as safari on OSX, it's already a better platform than every single mobile device on the market today. If you could get geolocation information (GPS or cell id, which can be used to map into a database and get approximate locations) and a mechanism to maintain socket connections (difficult, but it's been done before), then you've got yourself an excellent development platform. Hell, the last can be worked around using xhr for the most part. Of course, I suspect that the CSS, JS, and HTML support won't really be up to snuff with safari, but I assume it's better than the existing mobiles, virtually all of which are giant pieces of shit.
...who built Apple in the beginning? It was third party developers... Yes, it was a long time ago.. before the dark times... before the iPod..
The iPod was something that should have been programmable... it could have been made to do all sorts of cool things... but no, we can't have innovation... suers cannot be allowed to do what they wish with the product they bought...
I knew that the iPhone would be closed off to development.. after all, the iPod has been, and no one made a stink... so, why not close off everything else?
This is the beginning of the end of general purpose computing... if the iPhone is successful, more and more systems will get locked in... it's profitable! I think even the Mac will eventually be locked out to developers... with the cheapening of software development by inexpensive H1B imports, no one really cares about appeasing us... we are cheap and worthless in the eyes of the tech world... who cares what we want... users will do what they are told... they are lemmings and will be happy with what they've got...
Typical of Steve Jobs... and a very sad omen for the industry...
Thanks,
Mike
By saying "The iPhone doesn't need an SDK," Apple might mean that "The iPhone doesn't need an SDK."
To interpret further, maybe they already have tools available that aren't specific to the iPhone.
I'll bet the services provided to the Ajax on the iPhone will allow these applications to get your phone number and send it to, for example, Doubleclick.net. I would proceed carefully, this whole thing seems dangerous.
(%i1) factor(777353);
(%o1) 777353
Twelfst?
+++ATH0
I disagree that stability is a lame excuse for the lack of an SDK because Treo and Blackberry owners have seen firsthand how unstable those platforms can be, particularly with poorly written apps.
No, it's still a lame excuse.
Bob makes a computer for Mike.
John writes a program for that computer.
Mike loves his computer. As soon as he installs John's program on his computer, it starts crashing.
When he removes John's program, it stops crashing.
Why the Christ would Mike blame Bob for his computer crashing?
All Apple has to do is say from the outset, "we can only guarantee the stability of the iPhone with programs that have gone through our quality assurance process." "Stability" problem solved.
Even a Java VM is still crippleware. Give us Cocoa ffs, Apple.
+++ATH0
This is where I laugh...
You have the Apple fanboys jumping up and down and telling us all how incredibly secure Mac OS X is. On the other hand, you have the Apple fanboys talking about insecure OS X is--so insecure that Apple can't allow any applications that have not been prescreened.
Which is it? Is OS X an insecure mess? Or is it bullet-proof? After all, isn't that the beauty of the iPhone--it's runs a "real" OS X?
Umm... 1998 called -- they want their technology back. Ajax is not a new technology.
-I like my women like I like my tea: green-
"However, the truth is that the lack of an SDK means that there won't be a killer application for the iPhone."
The Killer App for the iPhone will be Linux.
The above is not worth reading.
The "killer app" for iPhone is that it combines a cell phone with the iPod, and the neat design and interface of the iPod. If I wanted a phone that would let third-parties develop their own "killer apps", I would buy one of the clunky qwerty-phones. But most "killer apps" for phones so far, has been in hardware, not software. They have added cameras, flashlights, GPS units, mp3 players and FM radios, bluetooth headsets, etc... Sure, the watch, calculator and calendar can be handy at times, but I don't want or need third-party software. I want to buy a phone with exactly the features I need. If someone develops a "killer app", and I find I need it, it will be on the next phone I buy. Phones don't last forever...
Don't get me wrong, I hate Apple as much as the next guy, but seriously - it really may not need an SDK. I know this may be hard for all you opinionated open source zealots who think you know everything to believe, but has even a single one of you actually built a dashboard widget in OS X? If you had and you knew what their real capabilities were this idea of a SDK-less embedded device that still allows for rich 3rd party development is not so asinine.
Do your research kids.
Okay. Granted, I only scanned the +5 modded posts, but no one seemed to point out the obvious:
I would expect that Dashcode will be available for Windows in short order. Given their current push to get Safari on Windows.
The word from a developer at WWDC is that Apple hasn't yet produced a sandbox for the phone that can't crash it. No surprise, seeing as the phone has taken QA resources away from Leopard -- stability is going to be the first priority for the product. After all, the first wave of users are more interested in making calls and using the device as a really cool iPod. However, it's a pretty safe bet that the phone will have an SDK eventually. Processor-wise it's not that far removed from most BREW phones, and Apple's toolkits should target the device nicely when the time comes. Believe me, lack of J2ME on the phone is a feature, not a shortcoming -- J2ME is very brittle, and support for most of the extensions that would make for a killer phone app is very uneven across handsets, so apps are very kludgy. Everyone's treating this Safari/AJAX announcement as this big deal, but it's actually more access than anyone was really expecting out of the gate. Apple doesn't seem to really 'get' the mobile market -- the thing that they've overlooked that at&t subscribers really care about is the availability of personalization content like wallpapers and ringtones for purchase. So far, Apple people have been saying that this is something they'll get to later. However, conventional wisdom in the mobile market is that most consumers buy personalization content the first couple of weeks they have the device. None of these things are going to stop this device from selling well -- the price point might, but the technology in the phone is elegantly integrated, visually appealing, and easy to use. Those things in themselves are a killer app.
Bullshit for so many reasons.
... still people hate it.
First, iPhone comes with four killer apps built-in. All a device needs is one. The iPod is a sensation and it has one killer app: seamless integration with your iTunes audio video collection which enables on-the-go playback of same anywhere, anytime.
The iPhone has:
1) Calls - the killer app from phones
2) iPod - the killer app from iPods
3) Web (Web 2.0 even) - the real full-featured Web, the killer app from the last decade of mainstream computing
4) Email - the killer app of the Internet some say
Notice that Apple put these four along the bottom of the iPhone's display. The other 11 apps are chachkis. You can do Google Maps or calendaring online.
Some have called the iPhone's UI a killer app. If you have been frustrated by a phone UI before you may agree.
OK, but what if that isn't enough for you? What if you are considering an iPhone but you really don't need it for the phone, iPod, Web, or email features? (Please read the previous sentence again while considering the absurdity of it.)
Then for you, the iPhone has many avenues for third-party accessories:
1) Ajax applications
2) iPod dock connector applications
3) Bluetooth applications
4) Wi-Fi-n applications
5) custom hardware modifications (this is huge in phones already)
6) iPhone-related Mac/PC apps
7) cases, holders, mounts, etc.
The funny thing is, with the original Mac you could install software on it, and developers complained about not having any accessory slots to put hardware. Now iPhone has a slot that is being ignored and everybody wants to install software on it.
The consumer market is all about zero configuration. Installing and updating software is configuration. Nine out of ten people fucking hate it. It's why most people still do not have PC's. People will make outrageous sacrifices to avoid having to configure something. They'll use lab computers at school, surf the Web only at work, or use online productivity apps that suck, just to avoid owning their own computer or installing software on it. Among Mac users, the majority do not install software, and it has been reduced to dragging and dropping one icon from some other storage to your hard disk
Everybody wants to know, what is Apple's secret? What makes their stuff so easy to use, what makes people like it so much? It is zero configuration. When Apple did Mac networking in the 1980's the Macs networked themselves, you just had to physically connect them. When they rebuilt their OS for the 21st century they re-built the zero configuration networking as well, this time around TCP/IP. There were 20 years of "configuration TCP/IP" before Apple switched from AppleTalk to TCP/IP and created zero configuration TCP/IP. Why didn't somebody other than Apple build zero conf networking first? Apple is the only computer company in the consumer market. All others are in the mainframe replacement business. So it is no wonder that non-technical people like Apple's zero configuration products, because non-technical people fucking hate configuring things.
Oh, they hate it. They hate it worse than taking an exam, they hate it worse than going to the doctor. If your business plan involves consumers configuring things, then get out of the consumer industry now.
It is amazing to me in 2007 that the PC industry a) still exists, b) hasn't gotten a clue yet. ZERO, I mean ZERO configuration. You turn it on, it works (built-in apps). You plug it on, it works (dock connector). You click it, it works (Web/Ajax).
I've said it before on /. and I'll say it again:
The Sony Ericson w810i rules. Screw iPhone. You can get one of these bad boys for $50 now from cingular, get a 4gb pro duo card for $60 and de-brand it for $15 with davinci. Voila! It does everything, it's small, and their are no DRM worries. I've had mine for 6 months, and it is the shit. I am not a cell phreaker or anything and I got it all setup just how I want it with a few hours work (and it was kinda fun cause I was learning). Oh, and there is a torrent out there with 1200+ games for this phone...
... except it's revolutionary user interface. It still just played mp3s, like all its competitors. But it ALSO had a killer interface. Yet it sparked a real portable music player revolution.
So far, that's the best of -- IMHO -- many sweet attributes of this machine. Like the iPod, it's coming at a time when all competitor UIs suck hard. They're playing the same game over again, and it's likely to revolutionize again.
Just wait until the iPhone Mini comes out. Then the iPhone Nano. Then the sexy RED iPhone Nano.
eric http://www.ericdfields.com/
I think Apple has a chance to make a huge impact on the market. I'm still not sure of the useability of the iPhone (how do you type on it?), but even if it's awesome, only being able to run apps under the Safari browser stinks. Someone will hack it soon and it will become an open platform though.
I'm as disappointed as anyone at the lack of an SDK. Apparently AJAX isn't good enough for their own Mail and Google Maps apps, but it's a Really Sweet Solution for everyone else.
But there is a silver lining: Safari will presumably support SVG, as it does now on OS X and Windows.
You can stuff a lot of rich functionality into a small SVG+AJAX application vs. a web app that requires HTML, CSS, PNG, Prototype/JQuery, etc.
In other words, the bandwidth problem is real, but there are some options.
doesn't require an SDK to develop to it.
and developers are bitching? sorry, don't buy it.
He knows what revolution means, he is lamenting that people are getting worked up over something as irrelevant as a telephone, when there is so much real misery in the world which could do with some attention instead.
Of course he overlooked that fact that most people just don't give a shit about others.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
This just blows. I was hoping someone would develop a VOIP client for the phone. That way - in wifi enabled areas I can tap into my asterisk box and pay less on calls.
--- Nothing better than a healthy helping of fresh pancreas. ---
Haven't talked to teenagers lately?
Apple will sell millions of iPhones based strictly off of Teenage Buyers,
let alone anyone over the age of 19...
iPhone will not be AS popular as iPods (phones need a plan with monthly fees)
but this is iPhone 1.0, imagine what iPhone 5.0 will bring...
because he has a problem with reading comprehension, instead mod his parent up.
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Think about it: Wouldn't a 1% marketshare for the iPhone drastically increase possibilities for an effective cellphone virus at last? I mean, it's not that those devices are more secure than say, your average Windows PC. So far, they just haven't been connected and similar enough to enable malware on the order of magniture on which we have it on PCs. And I have no illusions that Apple would manage to create a 100% secure iPhone.
To use a public network, the iPhone has to use public standards, chips, interfaces, protocols, etc.
Yeh, there will be a heap of proprietory stuff in there, not least of which is Mac OS X, but it's only a matter of time before somebody hacks iPhone an unofficial SDK. DVD encryption couldn't be cracked, Generic PCs and Apple TV couldn't run Mac OS X, iPhone can't have an SDK. Yeh, right.
"I hope you like Guinness, Sir. I find it a refreshing substitute for, er... food." Col. Jack O'Neil, SG-1
Password manager.
Safari has that today? Why shouldn't it have that on the phone? In fact, I fully expect it to also carry over my passwords from OS X where they are held already in Keychain (and probably something similar for Safari on Windows).
Unless you were saying more generally, a password manager app. I agree those are handy (it's one of the few things I bought and used when I ahd a Palm) and it's also something trivial to have as a web applcation. With any luck we actually have an interface to Keychain, and then it already comes with a great one and you don't need to build one yourself.
I'm sure others will have different killer apps, and that's part of the point here.
But something an INDIVIDUAL wants cannot by defintion be a "Killer App", which is an application that drives people to a device or other thing in droves. It's the "Killer" use of the product that makes everyone want one. So while for me a dive compression recording application was very handy indeed, it really would never be a killer app since diving is not prevelent in the population at large.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
what is meant by some people by "real apps."
There is no reason beyond Apple's software lockdown that the iPhone could not run VLC, VNC, a terminal, emacs, vi, TextEdit, Skype, or any number of games.
+++ATH0
I don't think my clients would appreciate me storing the details to their servers and e-mail accounts on a web app.
If you can use Keychain, that's local to the device.
If you can use a local cookie to store password and account details, that too would be local to the device, even though the page might come from a remote server (and the Javascript could encrypt said cookie with a password you enter on the page so the server cannot parse the cookie). Not to mention, it could ALSO be your own secure server running your own code and using SSL to talk to (that was my plan).
If there is a hook to store data (remember, we don't know how or what exactly the iPhone integration does) that too is local to the device.
You seem to lack imagination.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Indeed I'm sure many people will seek to provide a replacement when a fuller SDK comes around. I am just saying even that example can be replaced in multiple ways that are still secure.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
But it was hacked. And there were apps for the iPod long before Apple even considered third party development.
If the will is there to run SSH clients and other apps on iPhone and Apple does not provide then I reckon others will. It is running OS X (sic) after all.
I have to lean towards the type of phones and phone networks the nomads had in the book Distraction. Small, disposable, cheap phones with cheap, easy to install, access points.
Once we have WiFi everywhere it'll be a real option. That is one of the reasons I'm against securing access points. (IMHO security should be at the application level.) I made a wireless VoIP phone back in like 2000 after I became disgusted w/ my proprietary cell phone. It was kind of large (it'll be interesting to compare to the iPhone) but worked as a PDA, MP3 player, and digital camera. I would have liked it to be able to use the cell network when it was available and WiFi wasn't but I wasn't able to find a PCMCIA device to let me hook up to the cell networks (at least not one that worked/ Linux).
The revolution will happen when people discover they no longer need a commercial carrier. At some point the wireless infrastructure will get good enough and then there will be nothing to stop companies like Vonage and Skype or even hobby hackers from offering ultra-cheap or free alternatives.
It'll probably work better too because the commercial models are so much more complex due to the need to track usage for billing reasons. If you've ever worked for a phone company you know how much complexity they have that could easily be jettisoned if service was free and didn't need to be monitored.
THAT phone revolution will revolutionize society - yet again.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
But wouldn't you consider the iPod functionality to be the killer app?
-50 DKP for lame post!
Right, there will be no "killer apps" for the iPhone. What does that really mean? There will be no crap, or malware written for it that will kill your iPhone, or require a reboot or paperclip reset to recover, like in the plethora of windows-based phones.
It's an internet-connected device, everybody loves so-called "web 2.0" apps, and here's the perfect vehicle to demonstrate their usefulness.
Leave the virus and malware infected phones to those buying so-called "smart phones", which really implies "I'm dumb enough to run suspect code on my phone".
starkruzr I looked up your name online I read about you and your arstechnica friends here:
t icleid=41095&cpage=208#feedbackAnchor
http://www.windowsitpro.com/articles/index.cfm?ar
You are far from an authority on computing. It seems that by comparison to people that actually know what they are doing, you outright suck, as do your friends from arstechnica and osy. Impersonating others online as well is something you apparently get into doing. You are a stinking trollish freak and slimebag. I recommend anyone reading this post to see this idiot starkruzr show you in his own words just how stupid he is and how pitiful he and his arstechnica friends are in reality.