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Apple Targeting Business World for the iPhone
The New York Times is running a couple of stories about the future of the iPhone in the business world and Apple's plan to maintain control of application development. Now that the iPhone SDK has been released and the "App store" has been demonstrated, Steve Jobs is pushing for the adoption of the iPhone as a standard business tool. In addition, a venture capitalist named John Doerr has launched a $100 million "iFund" to spur development of applications for the iPhone. From the NYTimes:
"Mr. Jobs was upfront that there are limitations on what applications can do. He talked about bans on pornography and malicious programs. He also said Apple will not allow any application to be installed on the machine other than through the iTunes store. Nor will applications be permitted that enable an end run around Apple's deals with wireless carriers. Many questions remain unanswered. How much streaming video will Apple allow, because the iPhone is such an interesting video device? Mr. Jobs did say that the application development environment will have a lot of capabilities for video playback. Will Apple allow a service like Last.FM to offer streaming music on the iPhone?"
Watch the video of the announcement yesterday. The Exchange compatability is the best I've ever seen.
As I mentioned in another post, Apple said they would announce a way for companies to release applications internally.
In the press conference, Phil Schiller actually mentioned the opposite and there will be a system in place for enterprise software to be distributed outside the App store.
Jonathanjk.com
Actually you can put it on your phone, just through the the SDK as they showed last night in the QT stream. So you can develop apps for yourself if you want, just not for others.
Jonathanjk.com
Steve Jobs presentation from yesterday is available on the Apple site. Could anyone who complains about the lack of Microsoft Exchange compatibility please watch the keynote first. Most of the posts so far can be answered by saying "You may not have watched the keynote yesterday, but..."
If you download the SDK, you are offered the option of joining the standard programme for $99 or the enterprise programme for $299. As the page says "The Enterprise Program is for developers who are creating proprietary, in-house applications for iPhone and iPod touch." ...and as for you being able to run apps on "every other piece of hardware I own", you sure do have a lot fewer games consoles, phones, routers and vehicle engine management systems than most slashdotters.
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You mean outside of Windows Mobile DirectPush, which does everything that the iPhone does and more?
I'm glad to see Exchange support on the iPhone, but let's not pretend here. The things they licensed from Microsoft were already supported by Windows Mobile anyway, and have been supported for some time now.
Not quite. As I understand it, the SDK is free, and you can compile apps and beta test them on an iPhone connected to the dev machine with the standard cable. If you pay $99, you can sell your apps through Apple.
But your big unanswered question still stands, and is one I'm going to be putting to the test once I get to grips with the SDK.
As already mentioned above, they announced a plan to have complete compatibility with Exchange. They also announced a number of other enterprise features that should make the phone look much more attractive to corporate settings.
I don't know about the USA, but here in Britain, all iPhone contracts have unlimited data built in, so call charges are always higher than data charges for us. I'll give you stupidly redundant, but as for stupidly expensive, skype calls to the USA look mighty appealing compared to what O2 would charge for a voice call.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
I downloaded the SDK yesterday. You cannot even BUILD a deployable target without the key. It throws an actual build error indicating that it cant find your key in the Keychain.
The only thing you can do without the key, from what I can tell, is run apps in the simulator (which sucks, by the way).
Culture is more than commerce
You cannot install any apps on the actual phone without a certificate. Period. XCode will throw a build error if you try. I'd provide a link to the relevant section in the documentation, but you have to have the SDK to read them. For proof, look in the 'iPhone OS Programming Guide'. In the 'Development Environment' chapter read the 'Working With a Device' section.
Culture is more than commerce