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iPhone SDK May Be 1-3 Weeks Late
tuxeater123 writes "According to a blog posting at BusinessWeek.com, the iPhone SDK could be pushed back by another 1-3 weeks. Unfortunately, the evidence provided, such as the media announcements that are usually made before most Apple releases, suggests that this may indeed be true. Apple usually sticks to their announced deadlines, however they have been known to break them occasionally."
It's interesting that everyone takes for granted that "getting from iTunes and then syncing it over" will be the only way to get apps. It's likely to be one of the ways, but Apple has revealed nothing. It's all speculation so far.
They already host downloadable Dashboard widgets and provide links to all sorts of software on their site and host the world's biggest podcast directory at no fee for anyone, producers or users. I don't see how helping to host applications that could solve every non-hardware related aspect ("3G!") of their product would be *bad* for them, even if some of those applications were free.
I expect to see some way that Apple will help people sell their apps if they do end up with some sort of iTunes app store, but one approach doesn't rule out the other, especially since it likely won't be that easy to get access to their payment/transaction system.
They managed to break records with a phone that lacked many features people have come to accept as standard, with a horrible choice of plans/carriers at a premium price.
Nobody at all seemed to care about the lack of 3rd party apps on it when they handed over their cash for the device. They broke into the cellphone market with just 1 product in record time and you say they got the disadvantage?
Android may do even better BUT it will do in a totally different way. First off there will be NO google phone. Android is closer to Symbian or even MS Mobile OS (whatever they renamed it to this month) then the iPhone. With the iPhone you bought a Apple product, with Android you will buy a phone from any number of phone makers that just happens to run a software suit in which Google had a hand in the development.
Their most likely won't be a google branded phone and none of the others have enough status to sell a phone just because their logo is on it.
Android and the iPhone are completly different products and Apple doesn't need to worry about the same things Google has too. I might buy an Android phone for its openess, but I think absolutly nobody bought an iPhone for any similar concerns. It would be like saying that Ferrari needs to publish the specs for their new car early so 3rd parties can develop roof racks and child seats for it early. Sorry, Ferrari and the people who buy them could care less about that.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Signed applications means that the applications have a cryptographic signature attached to them with *any* trust root, not that they have to be attached to any specific trust root. There's a leap from "applications have to be signed" to "applications have to be signed by Apple" or the more likely "applications have to be signed by an authority whose certificate is trusted by Apple". But let's say that happens: unless all development happens inside a simulator in software (and good luck testing multi-touch then), I definitely think that there'll be a way to run "untrusted" apps, and this way will be exploited to run free apps. I think Apple knows this.
The iPod touch update was curious - the apps were already in the new firmware, and the update just "unlocked" them. (The update weighs in at 9 KB.) Since people won't get to download new firmware every time they get an app, this doesn't confirm much, although I agree that it was probably a dry run of some component in the whole scheme, most likely signing.
So you're insinuating that Apple withheld releasing a proper SDK when the iPhone launched because they purposefully wanted to stunt the platform?
Did it ever cross your mind that maybe the API for mobile OSX 1.0 might have been last priority behind everything else that had to be done to get a 1.0 product out the door? Talk to any iPhone app developer and they will tell you the same thing - iPhone 1.0 looks pretty darn good on the surface, but under the hood its quite ragged as the developers were obviously under pressure to meet a deadline.
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