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.'"

Comments

Re:It's just a phone...

[ewhac]

The "revolution" that is sought (at least within the United States; the rest of the world has a functional cell phone market) would be to take away the wireless carriers' control over software on the handset.

Ask any Verizon subscriber how "easy" it is to move address book contacts in and out of the handset. Or music. Or videos. Or any other kind of data.

There are only two effective ways to break this control. One is legislative. (You can stop giggling now.) The other is for a handset maker to create a handset so powerful and compelling that people fall all over themselves to try and get one, and then for the maker to stand firm and refuse to give control of the handset to the carriers. Eventually, market pressure will force at least one carrier to cave in and take the phone as sold, after which, all the carriers will follow suit.

Apple has an opportunity to help this happen, but it's not clear if they're interested in that outcome.

Schwab

Re:well..

[shmlco]

On the flip side, go up to Handango and check out the "applications" for a PDA. Top sellers including a replacement for the shell, a program to make the close button "work", a file explorer, a backup program, a ringtone manager, several clocks, a weather widger, note and to-do list managers, yada, yada...

In other words, things that any decent system should have been able to do out of the box, and nary a one a "stunning" advance. And, near as I can tell, the iPhone already all of these things out of the box. And, from what I've seen, does most of them extremely well.

I agree that the iPhone has immense potential. But I also think that forecasting doom-and-gloom before the first one has even been sold is as equally shortsighted as you're making Apple out to be.

If I had the time, I know I'd be looking hard at what could be done NOW with an always-on always-connected phone/internet device and making that a "killer-app", instead of wasting time crying over the tools I could have had...