The nice thing about the SDK and the prospect of FREE apps through iTunes is that stupid stuff like "apple leaving out a search function" can be fixed with third parties. Since the applications have full access to the same API as apple, as well as the contact list, a developer could make a full featured contact list application that has tons of whizbang features. And also dial the call..
Let's put this particular pony of an idea to sleep gently, hm?
1. No, the SDK will not let you write an add-on for an existing iPhone app. You *might* be able to make a "search contacts" app, but that's not what people need - they want to search for contacts on the, umm, Contacts screen. The one that comes up when you select contacts.
2. No, the applications don't have anything like "full" access to the "same" APIs as Apple. That's a bit of marketing fluff from Apple, and it's largely true , but your non-hacky SDK app won't have access to a number of things on the iPhone, such as the Mail DB, Calendar events, iPod songs, or, heck, your Calculator results.
In the case of Contacts, your interface to them is the Contact Picker, which lets you choose contacts (manually). That's it. I'm not saying Apple won't open this up and let you arbitrarily snoop through the Contacts DB - they might. But the more important message is, just because 1. We have a rich SDK now, and 2. You want feature X, doesn't mean that those 2 things will marry successfully. There will be plenty of functionality that will have to be provided by Apple (and there are very good reasons for this, too).
