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Steve Jobs Announces iPhone SDK
An anonymous reader writes "It finally happened. Steve Jobs announced an iPhone SDK today. The plan is to release it in February, and the suggestion is that apps will need to be digitally signed (not unlike digital signing in Leopard). Here's hoping that developing for the iPhone/Touch will be cheap (or free) enough to allow the folks who have been writing apps to continue doing so. Says Jobs: 'It will take until February to release an SDK because we're trying to do two diametrically opposed things at once--provide an advanced and open platform to developers while at the same time protect iPhone users from viruses, malware, privacy attacks, etc. This is no easy task.'"
Bow-ties are cool.
Better to be done right the first time a little late than cause serious security issues. Better press this way...
It makes me suspect that Steve was caught a bit flat-footed, if it'll take until then. If this was the usual Apple release, it would be a total surprise and be available Friday or something.
Of course, it could also be that it's taken them this long for events to prove to AT&T that resistance was ultimately futile and counterproductive. Hard to say, with that crowd.
I am the one true god. However, as an atheist, I don't believe in myself. I guess I have a self-esteem problem.
Here's the quote that may have misled:
So, what they're really saying is that they're hoping to do something along the same lines as signing, but not signing per se. This actually may be the most interesting part of their announcement, in that it could signal the next step forwards in indicating trust and providing clarity of who worked on what. Here's hoping it's not just repackaging.
Misery loves company. Online misery loves unsuspecting random strangers.
Jobs made several comments about securing iPhones and the network from malware, and the route Apple takes to do this is a big question mark. He mentioned application signing as a step in the right direction, with regard to other companies. Leopard brings support to OS X for both application signing and native sandboxing of applications for security. I wonder if Apple will employ either or both of these technologies to lock down the iPhone and, if so, how locked down they will be.
Interestingly, by enforcing digital signing Apple is guaranteeing the survivial of an iPhone developer's "underground" -- instead of writing hacks to jailbreak and unlock iPhones, they'll be writing hacks to get unsigned apps running on the iPhone.
From TFA - quoting Steve Jobs:
The risk of damage would be a lot less damage if every app on the iPhone didnt run as root.
I think you should spell "surrender" instead.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
The only thing i want to add to the I phone is SSH and an external keyboard. Then it would be pretty much the ultimate laptop... if you had a really tiny lap. But it would then serve all my mobile computing needs.
Yep - FTA:
Yes, it would sure have been nice if the article could at least had a small P.S. to note if the iPod Touch was covered or not.
Not likely. More likely your certificate will have to be signed by Apple which may in revoke it at any time. I would not be surprised if part of the delay is an integrating OSCP or some other form of pervasive certificate management into whatever goes for an app installer as well as preparing an OS update with this functionality. CRL checking at install is not something present in current OSX so they will have to add it to be ready to ship.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
My Touch has a PDF reader, SSH client AND an SSH server. ;)
It's great. Best gadget ever. Hacking the touch is pure software too, so you can just restore it with iTunes if an update you have to have comes along.
Considering that the iPhone's OS is a moving target, and the majority of the frameworks and private APIs have changed from 1.0.2 to 1.1.1 (which is why many third party apps broke between 1.0.2 and 1.1.1), I don't think it's unreasonable to wait until things on that front have stabilized before you start providing developers with an SDK.
:-/
I knew that most of the negative responses to this would be along the lines of saying that Apple was "forced" into doing an SDK because of the third party hacking community, when in reality third party development was very likely in the cards all along.
Apple also sent the same information to anyone who bothered to file out a bug report about a lack of an SDK. I mention this only to point out that it's nice that Apple actually took the time to listen to its developers (and not just people who pay an annual fee) and respond. So next time if you're wondering whether your bug report gets read, it appears at least in cases like this it does.
I've recently become a complete Apple-convert. I used to hate Apple, and came from a Linux background. I have to say, though, that from a development standpoint their XCode environment is great, their libraries are well thought out, and it comes with a good number of advanced features that keeps coding fun. If you're wondering why people are so excited about developing for the iPhone, these are a few of the reasons.
At one point I played around with the toolchain that was previously being developed by the community hackers. It was relatively easy to put together a simple iPhone app, as the iPhone is running a simplified version of Cocoa. However, the more complex stuff (and interesting parts, like gestures) were not up to par because of lack of documentation.
With the introduction of the SDK, I think we're going to see a batch of really nice 3rd party apps. The current ones are extremely good for what resources are available, but I think everyone would agree there is room for much improvement.
Hopefully Apple will do the right thing in opening up their platform as much as possible. I wouldn't mind getting a free key to sign my code (Google did a similar thing when they opened up their search API). I wonder if they will limit all things internety to WIFI only, as AT&T might complain about random packets flying over their EDGE (even though other phone companies already allow this). I'm still not sure I fully get the malicious code issue, as the iPhone is essentially a dumbed down Macbook with a harder-to-use keyboard. How is the iPhone any more dangerous?
To further clarify, "malware" will consist of:
media players that support additional audio and video codecs,
anything that lets you install ringtones for free using your own licensed music,
anything that lets you make calls on alternative networks.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
Isn't that the truth! It would be even better if Apple provided a glide-path to current developers to becoming "legit" so that they're encouraged to engage rather than fight. Apple really has no reason to be a jerk about it except spite. Unfortunately, Steve has proven that he's occasionally prone to that.
I am the one true god. However, as an atheist, I don't believe in myself. I guess I have a self-esteem problem.
Wrong.
I love all the people who are now going to say that Apple is only doing an SDK because the brave, innovative hackers who just want us all to be able to free our hardware have forced their hand.
Kind of like the only reason they have a battery replacement program for iPods was because of the Neistat Brothers' video, right?
Except that it would be wrong, on both counts.
For a device like the iPhone, Apple probably had SOME kind of SDK/third party development planned all along. But the iPhone's OS is still a wildly moving target, and it's not appropriate to have an SDK before things have calmed down with the OS APIs, frameworks, etc.
But if you want to believe that a statistically insignificant (yes, really - most people don't care, much less even know, about this) group of hobbyists and hackers have "forced" Apple to scramble to release an SDK, go right ahead.
I really cannot understand the whining of people who have been so vocal about this SDK, and now that all this gnashing of teeth has forced Apple to pre-announce, people like you come along claiming this is 'long overdue'.
The fact that Apple is a ~15k person company with a massive variety of products means that there must be focus. In part this slim headcount and focus is what allows Apple to produce really great products. (For comparison - Apple is now roughly worth the same, by market cap., as IBM, which employs around 300,000 people worldwide).
Think for a moment what a considerable development the iPhone is. Particularly the software, there is an ungodly amount of work and rework that has gone into producing the final product that you can pick up at the mall. The last thing that Apple was thinking about during the development phase was a clean documented publically available and stable API. No, you can bet that the iPhone API twisted and turned through the development cycle, massive rewritings, refactorings, and changes over a number of years. For Apple to release an SDK and API they have to be clean, stable, unlikely to change and break existing code - all of the things that during the development phase the internal API was not.
When releasing an SDK and an API, massive resources must be put into considering flexibility and change 2, 5, 10 years down the line. These things take time. Apple decided, rightly, to release a finished device this Summer. All the whining in the world (and I believe we got close to that) could not push Apple's internal API into a publicly usable stable state at that time. I think, considering that this is a brand new phone platform (not something like Symbian etc. which has been around a long time), waiting 9 months for an SDK is nothing, in fact, I'm amazed they've done it in less than a year. Mark though - Apple would have been mad never to have provided one, and personally I expected this announcement for WWDC'08, but I have found it astoundingly ridiculous how people have cried and whined about the lack of an SDK without thinking for a single minute. For crying out loud, it's been only three months. The only thing 'long overdue' will, hopefully, be the shutting of the mouths of all the incessant whining.
This sig has been deprecated.
Nice!
Now the iPhone will have 30 different ways to check stock prices, get weather updates and read RSS feeds!
Hopefully someone makes a Diet Calculator / Calorine counter as well!
Well, as an iPhone owner (and, apparently, a Certified Fanboi(tm)), it's plainly obvious that the software wasn't finished in June and is still not finished. While the core features work well for the most part, any iPhone owner can name a dozen obvious omissions off the top of their head. MMS, copy/paste, SMS to multiple recipients, Safari stability, etc, etc. Not to mention an RPN mode for the Calculator ;)
I'm personally happy to have the device now, as it's extremely useful in a variety of ways (hence the fanboi status). But an SDK is only one of many things that are a tad overdue.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
I'm worried about a Windows CE-like business model. Unlike traditional certificates, with CE you don't purchase certificates but use a signing "service." While that might seem cheaper, you have to sign EACH of your binaries EVERY time a modification is made. That's incentive for developers to NOT release patches. Fortunately, it's not being enforced by many OEMs, but heaven help our wallets should that happen. There are a lot of small mobile shops our there that can't absorb these kinds of costs.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Remember how unwillingness Steve had been about native apps? He even went out on a leg to try and make Web Apps easy to get to by creating that apps repository.... Well it seems that the _large_ number of people who are jailbreaking their iPod Touches and iPhones to install third party apps have been heard. They probably weren't planning on releasing an SDK until Steve realized how popular native apps are/would be.
I never really understood the resistance to third party apps in the first place. The iPhone could not only take a chunk of the phone market, but it could take over the entire smart phone market. The same goes for the iPod Touch and the PDA market.
This puts me in a tough position though... I want a Touch right now, but what if Steve screws current Touch owners by making the SDK cost money? Or only allows for proprietary apps to be installable (locking out the Open Source developers)? or something else... hmmm
I recall Apple saying that they had pulled developers off Leopard to put onto the iPhone before it was launched which pushed Leopard back. Of course that would be an excuse but if it was indeed true those developers were probably put back onto Leopard shortly around the time of the iPhone launch. Now that Leopard is being released next week it may have freed up those developers to work on the SDK.
Mark though - Apple would have been mad never to have provided one, and personally I expected this announcement for WWDC'08, but I have found it astoundingly ridiculous how people have cried and whined about the lack of an SDK without thinking for a single minute. For crying out loud, it's been only three months. The only thing 'long overdue' will, hopefully, be the shutting of the mouths of all the incessant whining.
Steve could have announced the SDK for February 2008 from the very beginning and you'd not see the bitter remarks you rant about.
The strategy Jobs uses for announcing products only when 100% done has its benefits with consumers, but developers hate when you cut them off and don't give them a clear roadmap for what to expect ahead.
Learn from this, don't just add another rant to the thousands.
Yes yes, Hallowed are thy Mac fanboys. I know my post is flamebait, but why did Jobs say there will be only web based sdk? And now after hackers hacked iphone, he says there will be one?
Extreme Programming - Redundant Array of Inexpensive Developers
Wrong.
I love all the people who think Apple (particularly Jobs) is some sort of prophetic visionary. They react to the market as much as any other profit-seeking companies.
Geek cred is a small but significant factor in tech gadgets and Apple knows this, given that one of the primary reasons for Apple's rising popularity is due to OS X, and one of the reason for OS X's rising popularity is the *nix code base.
That particular video may not have been the sole factor for the Apple's battery replacement program, but it was certainly part of the increasing public awareness of the defects in the Apple devices. However, (and I say this in deep admirations) Apple nevertheless found a way to extract even more money out of its blindly loyal customers while at the same time somewhat-sorta-maybe addressing the criticisms.
And your "moving target" theory is just BS. 1) OS X as a platform has been around for long enough, and Apple took pride in announcing that their phone and new iPod runs on the same platform, and being the first non-smart phone to require some 800mb of OS codes. 2) it didn't take lots of arm-twisting for Symbian, Nokia and (dare I say) Microsoft and other companies to release SDKs for their mobile platforms. While they may have varying validation protocols and so on, they didn't parade some random wild BS theory about their OS being "uncertain". Even Jobs wasn't saying this in his bit. If the API's have been settled, they wouldn't and shouldn't have released the product.
As usual, they were just testing the market to see if they can make even more money out of 3rd parties and customers, which is after all, the goal of every profitable company.
"The last thing that Apple was thinking about during the development phase was a clean documented publically available and stable API."
First of all, you're making that up.
But second of all, even if you are right, then Apple would have to be the dumbest development company ever. Here's a company that has a 30 year history of making products that have API's (yes, even the Apple ][ had API's of a sort), but on their latest computer, the one they saw had a huge strategic impact, they never gave it a thought?
Seriously, what you're suggesting is so ridiculous, that I'm guessing you're trolling or astroturfing.
My guess is there never was going to be a publicly available API, but Apple finally realized if they didn't make it available, they'd be overwhelmed by people who actually want to use what they bought in the way the want to.
Wrong again. If geek cred is so important, Apple would've made Apple TV a much better product, with DivX/Xvid support out of the box. But they haven't and they won't. Geek cred means very little to Apple. Gamers are a much, much larger market than geeks and Apple has never made the Mac a game-friendly or game developer-friendly platform. They don't give a crap about geeks or gamers.
Well I can agree that Apple was probably short-staffed during the development of iPhone, they could have at least announced their intention to release an SDK at a later point post-launch (oh, like, I dunno, the rest of the SDK-providing mobile companies... few devices come out with an SDK ready to go, it's usually provided in a more complete form later).
No, I don't think Apple ever intended to release the SDK - but I think they're starting to realize that to compete with other smartphones (and to quiet the deluge of bad press) they really need 3rd party developers on the bandwagon, and they're starting to create docs and polish up the API.
Sadly, I'm not sure if this will be available to us "laymen" developers. I suspect Apple will restrict this to ADC members only, with even less creative BS than they've fed us so far.
Because if he announced there would be an SDK, but not until next year, some people would wait to buy it until then. The same reason Apple says noting about new computer models until they're released. Actually, I'm surprised they announced the SDK early at all.
Digital signatures offer security only when all IPC (including kernel/system calls) is signed, and when signature logs survive an attack by that signed app. Otherwise, after the attack, the signed app can cover its tracks. ActiveX signatures, for example, are worthless.
Since the iPhone depends on its network for all app installation, and nearly all its operation, it can enforce those policies. Since practically all the data on the iPhone, including voice call data, is private, that enforcement is an absolute necessity. Apple should include a server account that backs up the signature logs, and encrypted key storage to other accounts the iPhone is used to access.
Once people are used to that minimum assurance of accountability of installed apps and data on their mobile phones, maybe they'll start to expect it on their notebooks and desktops. Apple could leverage the service to those products, too. And maybe that competition will finally force Microsoft to secure the vast majority of the world's private data that their platforms are responsible for.
--
make install -not war
Every time one of these stories comes out I point out that the situation will be the same as with the iTunes SDK: to get the SDK you'll have to sign an agreement that gives Apple veto power over your application. Every time people flamed me. It still looks like I'm right.
Anything they don't like, gone. They say its to protect users from spyware and other forms of malware but it'll be used to eliminate anything they don't like. Just like there isn't any decent music sharing functionality in iTunes, there won't be anything on the iPhone that doesn't settle well with the ultraconservatives in Apples Ivory Tower. Instead you'll get crippled functionality, like music sharing with ridiculous limits on the number of people/playbacks per day. As if all of their developers and customers are children who can't be given responsibility. Children don't own copyrights, so they don't need the discretion to share music beyond what Apple believes is "fair enough."
People are still going to flame me saying that we should wait and see. Well, I've been waiting and I see no way to set an mp3 on your iPhone as a ringtone. Is there any reason not to give this functionality other than to protect Apple's new ringtone business? Why would any reasonable person believe that Apple won't do the same thing when granting ISVs permission to deploy applications on iPhone?
The argument that phones are somehow more vulnerable than any other network connected computer and need to be controlled by a central authority is specious.
"Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you. May your chains rest lightly upon you..."
As some of the hacker community will readily point out, splitting open Springboard (the Finder/shell equivalent) in the iPhone, you discover Springboard always had some support for additional applications... and going forward, more was added. In 1.1.1, Springboard even added code added that supported multiple pages of applications... a pretty clear indication that either Apple was planning to add a LOT more apps, or were thinking of third-party dev.
There were lots of other little clues people found that the iPhone had either had plans for a third-party SDK which was scuttled, or had a third-party SDK in the works but not yet announced. So I admit, I am with the folks who are saying that Jobs probably had this planned from day one, but held off on the announcements until closer to the SDK/security methods being sorted out for marketing/publicity/spin reasons.
3 months after the phone was released is not a huge waiting period, but if he'd announced ahead of time that the iPhone would have a native SDK in February, lots of folks would have waited both on buying phones and on doing iPhone development. Instead, now we have hackers who have already worked on third-party native apps, there's all kinds of web-apps to keep those who won't jailbreak busy in the meantime.
Love him or hate him, one thing Jobs knows how to do is build anticipation, and manage publicity. He'll take bad press for a while simply so that he can sit on some announcement to greatest spin effect.
--Rachel
Gamers are a much, much larger market than geeks and Apple has never made the Mac a game-friendly or game developer-friendly platform. They don't give a crap about geeks or gamers.
Man, I am getting tired of the anti-Pippen bias around here!
For the humor challenged, yes, that was a joke.
"Our opponent is an alien starship packed with atomic bombs. We have a protractor."
Well, I can solve one of them for you, without hacking the Touch.
.doc, .xls, .rtf, .txt, .jpg, .jpeg, .png, .gif, .pdf, or .html on the Touch (or iPhone) for offline viewing via Safari. It seems to encode the document actually into the bookmark datastream, which seems a bit hackish - but it works.
Have a look at FileMark Maker. It is an app that that runs on the Mac and lets you sync and store any
It's a joy to use on my Touch, and I've tried it with a 100 page PDF. However long filenames screw up the bookmark display seem to be a bit of a problem, so trim them down a bit before syncing.
I'm just surprised that more people don't seem to know about this app.
Let me get this straight. Apple released a product that contains an operating system that's still in alpha?
No. Their OS works well and will have passed QA before they shipped. Like any humans, Apple make mistakes, but they generally at least try to adhere to "it just works".
They ported their (stable) OS to a new architecture. The internal developers put up with the codebase (with any extant foibles), and they wrote a completely new UI framework (based on, but different to, Cocoa). They did sufficient QA to get the built-in applications working correctly, and then shipped the device, hitting their target.
Now that it's out, and there's less pressure, they've been tidying it up, and polishing the UI framework, the compilers, any OS routines, and they've announced they're opening it up to 3rd parties. Presumably this means they've been patching the areas they worked around internally.
There's nothing too surprising in any of the above, in fact I'm surprised the "official" SDK will be available so soon. Porting an OS and writing a good accelerated UI framework is a non-trivial task.
Simon.
Physicists get Hadrons!
So, even if apps require formal signing and they all cost money, I still kinda expect that one thing we'll get is IBM's WebSphere Everyplace Micro Environment.
It exists for PalmOS, it exists for Windows Mobile, it exists for other handhelds, and I imagine that both IBM and Sun would explode with joy at the possibility of getting it onto the iPhone and iPod Touch.
For those who don't know, this is IBM's J2ME/JavaME runtime for small systems. If you have Java on your PalmOS, Windows Mobile, or even many Linux handhelds, it's probably due to this being loaded on or embedded into it.
If we don't get that, maybe we'll get a port of the open-source reference implementation of JavaME:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PhoneME_(software)
It already builds for both ARM (current iPhone) and x86 (rumored future iPhone) instruction sets.
Either way, looks to me like once there's a general dev kit, a JVM isn't going to be too far off. Anyone want to make predictions about how long it'll take or what form it'll come in?
I think, according to many rumors, that Apple had an SDK planned for a long time. But what's true about this announcement, I think, is that they got a lot of bad publicity from 1.1.1, and it was time to staunch the bleeding. I think, too, that with the release of 3rd-party apps, they're also going to HAVE to bow to the law, and either sell unlocked iPhones in the US or at least allow unlocking while continuing to update its other features. I don't think they actually buried the first batch of apps on purpose, but that they had to patch holes that the hackers had exposed, because unauthorized access is unauthorized access. I've read that at least one of the 1.1.1 hacks depends on creating a buffer overflow with a "malformed TIFF." Well, excuse me, that means a flaw was discovered that Apple HAS to fix. Anyway, very good news that they're allowing what should have been allowed -- or at least announced -- a month or so ago.
The iPhone essentially runs a cut and trimmed version of OSX, so getting an SDK for it is NOT some massive undertaking
I mean, look, despite Apple's attempts to keep people from using their own phones, random hax0rs got a working SDK up within days
A iPhone SDK would use a gcc cross-compiler (since the iPhone isn't running PowerPC or Intel chip -- by the way, gcc makes it easy to build a cross-compiler so this isn't a big deal)
Not a massive undertaking at all.
No, that's trivial mate. Tell you what, we'll do you two, in case one breaks - have it to you next Tuesday... Not.
Writing whatever they needed for the initial (general public who don't give the shake of a rat's tail about the SDK) release, then writing/polishing a general developer release is so obviously the way to go, I can't believe people are still talking about it. And if you expected 'The Steve' to lay out all his plans ahead of time, you've obviously been in a coma for the last decade. Welcome to the new century.
Simon.
(*) I think this is actually resolved in version-3 of the compiler. I'm still stuck with v2 because I can't get the LLVM part to compiler on my mac for some reason.
Physicists get Hadrons!
Perhaps some faction at Apple truly thought that web-apps would be enough. Or they couldn't release an iPhone, Leopard, and a SDK all at the same time. Or the web-based SDK was a trial balloon, floated to see if they really needed to do all of that work after all.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
[flame]but, but, but! Apple can't get viruses? They say so in the commercials![/flame]
You have confused two very different things.
No one is saying OS X *cannot* get viruses. There are always security holes.
What we are all saying is that you *don't* get viruses, because there are none. Pick your reason - better security model, faster TTF (time to fix), smaller marketshare - the thing is there are no viruses in teh wild to catch right now. That may change but that's how it is currently and has been for years.
Until you can understand the distinction between security flaws and active exploits, you really should refrain from commenting on anything security (or even Mac) related.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Here is why:
- he brought the Apple II to me when I was in highschool
- he brought the Macintosh to me when I was in College
- he brought the NeXT to me when I was just starting my career
- he resurrected Apple from the Dead
- he created OS X from NeXT Step and OS 9
- he brought the iPhone to me last summer
And last:
- he has the ability to change his mind when he's wrong.
Many people can't do that. Jobs wanted a closed iPhone. Remember his announcement at WSJ? At the dev conference? His recent "cat & mouse" comment? For whatever reason (alienating his developers, lost AT&T revenue is lass than increased sales, iPhone developers can't be stopped, some other reason...) he's changed his mind.
For this I love him.
Well, sort of. They didn't mention that the iPhone version of the OS has UIKit rather than AppKit, for example. hello.c would Just Work (if you have Mobile Terminal in which to run it), but J. Random GUI App wouldn't.
You need more than stable API's, you also need stable ABI's, and they could well have released it without stable ABI's - all the bundled apps would have to be recompiled if the ABI changed, but that's doable. You might believe that they shouldn't have released the iPhone without stable ABIs; I believe otherwise, and, quite frankly, think arguing that they shouldn't have released the iPhone without stable ABI's is bogus.
Even API changes, although they're more disruptive to the code base, wouldn't be out of the question.
Unstable API's and ABI's, however, do cause problems for third-party apps, so they need to stabilize those before releasing an SDK.
I think you are partially right, that the iPhone is still in flux, and thus difficult to make a real API for. But I also think that the more important point is that since the iPhone uses the MacOS X kernel and lower layers that the same team that was working on the iPhone also has the 10.5 rollout on its plate, and so has not had time to work on the API for the iPhone.
Notice the timing: the MacOS X development team is just winding down from the marathon to get MacOS X 10.5 out the door, and so now are available to do things like this. Personally I think that February is pushing it a bit for this. I was surprised that it would be so soon.
You can't take the sky from me...
You can't take the sky from me...
There's much to be suspicious about whenever someone like Steve Jobs suddenly has a "change of heart" regarding product policy. Does anyone really believe Jobs wasn't at all planning this back when he asserted that developers would take down the west coast cell networks if allowed to develop native apps on the iPhone? There's obviously more to it than this thinly-veiled blessing announcement that just happened to conveniently coincide with the release of Leopard next week.
Just wait... there will be some sort of costly compromise to be met for developers to use this SDK. Perhaps certain applications of the SDK, such as creating a VoIP app, may be considered a breach of contract. Maybe something more draconian, such as zero freedom to distribute an app without Apple as a middle-man, including a mandatory Apple tax for the privilege. (After the whole pay-to-play 802.11n firmware upgrade fiasco, I put nothing past what Apple might do if it means an extra buck.)
Needless to say, the former "crazy ones" are now committable.
8==8 Bones 8==8
The Steve, 6000 years ago, created signed apps with the rest of the iWorld. However, as he is a vengeful God, he gave this innovation to Microsoft, for the greater glory of Apple, may it live forever.
What is is all that is. Isn't that obvious?
I wanna hear him 'say' it. I'm blind and listen to Slashdot comments through a voice synthesizer, you unrefined fellow who is not responsive to my personal feelings!
Bow-ties are cool.
But if you want to believe that a statistically insignificant (yes, really - most people don't care, much less even know, about this) group of hobbyists and hackers have "forced" Apple to scramble to release an SDK, go right ahead. So if they were planning it all along as you assert, why did they wait for 3 months after the release to announce it? It's not like they're saying "Here's the SDK right now! Surprise! Have at it!". They announced it'll be available in 4 months. You don't make any sense. One of the biggest blemishes on the iPhone release was the lack of third party apps. Every review I've read of the device has slammed Apple for it. All that they had to say to get rid of this was to say "The SDK will be ready in February" and all of that criticism disappears. But they didn't.
I don't believe that the hackers were solely the cause for the SDK, but make no mistake, market pressure forced Apple to capitulate. They weren't planning this. They were blindsided with negative press and pressure from their customers and potential customers. At first they attempted to lay this at the feet of AT&T saying that AT&T was concerned with network stability, but that proved to be a big pile of BS, as evidences by AT&T's software development site assisting in software development for every phone in it's lineup except Apples.
And to say that the Apple battery replacement program wasn't directly influenced by that video... well, I see you've drank a little too much of the Steve Jobs Kool-Aid. Enjoy the dreams that he's told you will come.
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
I don't have an iPhone, but my guess is that meebo probably works in Safari:
http://wwwm.meebo.com/
Au contraire; now that the SDK is announced I am much more likely to buy one. I only want to know one more thing: will I be able to freely upload my own native unsandboxed code to my own iPhone/iPod, without paying Apple and then having to get a digital signature every time? If the answer is yes, I will buy an iPod Touch tomorrow.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
Wait, gamers aren't geeks?
Possibly the security issues of SIM unlocks, chat and VOIP apps, where by security, Apple means "our security that we make a lot of money from contracts and people send a lot of SMS messages" :-)
Seriously though, with the announcement of an unlocked iPhone in France, I wonder whether Apple will still go after the SIM unlock hacks so vigorously.