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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."
I'm devastated by this. It makes my entire life valueless. How could a company like Apple even think about delaying a software release by almost a month. Oh, woe, woe is me. etc etc etc
Slashdot article summaries usually are shock full of valuable comment, however they have been known to be totally pointless.
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.
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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One sick of phones having nearly-useless web browsers, when the only phone with a useful one is locked.
Any cheap old phone can run Opera Mini. I too was annoyed by the poor quality of my phone's built in browser, but now I never have any trouble. It even has features like server-side downscaling of image sizes, thus reducing download times (and costs) - so even if your phone does have a decent browser, it's worth a look.