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Apple to Announce 3rd Party iPhone App Development?

janitorC7 said:
I really am way in favor of apple being the one who releases 3rd party apps, though itunes would be great.

I just think that if done though apple, we will have some really good quality control. Remember that that is why mac run so much better, hardware and software, the quality control is amazing
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apple's hardware QC is worse than many pc makers.
aple's software strength isn't god neither, remember the security patch for safari for win 48 hrs after release?

samh004 said:
I don't think you'll get Microsoft developing for the iPhone, or you will and it'll take them 5 years to release their first beta. More likely is you'll get a portable version of iWork, possibly packaged with the computer retail version, and that will be able to open Word, Excel and powerpoint files, edit, and send them onwards.
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I don't think M$ has to be involved, palm has documents to go, which is produced by dataviz.
 
Dictionary

I would love Apple's Dictionary on the iPhone, as well trying out some kind of book reader. I'm not sure if the screen's quite big enough, but if it worked, that would be huge, selling books on iTunes.
 
"apple's hardware QC is worse than many pc makers."
nonsence

"apple's software strength isn't god neither, remember the security patch for safari for win 48 hrs after release?"

why is a security patch a bad thing? that was a 1st beta, fast patches are good.
 
With the amount of speculation involved, this story really should have been relegated to Page 2.
 
clevin said:
apple's hardware QC is worse than many pc makers.
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Worse than "many" PC makers? Examples please?

Surely you're not talking about Lenovo (the company making ThinkPad X61 tablets where the glue keeping the bezel connected to the screen heats up and comes loose)?

Or Dell, whose XPSM1330 launch has been plagues with complaints (loud CPU whine, keyboard bulges, parts not fit together properly, bad screen issues), or the new Inspirons, which have also been the subject of tons of complaints about screen issues, etc.?

Or Sony, who STILL can't seem to make a laptop without a rattling loose battery?

Or Asus, who seems to have become incapable of making a laptop with better than 2-3 hours of battery life?

Yes, Apple isn't perfect, but to say their QC is worse than MANY PC makers? I don't buy it. I think the reality is that QC seems to be going down across the board; but I'd love to see you point out a company with better QC than Apple right now (I'm in the market for a PC laptop, but frankly every company is having some pretty serious problems with QC, even the trusted brands who used to really stand for quality).
 
jouster said:
Their strategy is not in tatters. Most iPhoners could care less about jailbreak or SDKs.
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That's probably true: 51% or more don't care. But there is a very large minority that do care, and other Would-be iPhoners that care as well.
 
My bet is on this being a web SDK, which is fine, despite any shortcomings, on two conditions: That there is offline support (e.g. google gears) and that they add multi-touch support.

With these two simple things the iPhone / iPod touch suddenly has "native" apps. You can do -almost- anything on a website that you would want to use a PDA for, short of playing games, watching video or listening to music. It can be argued that video & music aren't needed anyway.

jouster said:
Their strategy is not in tatters. Most iPhoners could care less about jailbreak or SDKs.
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This isn't true at all. Most iPhone users could care less about -using- a jailbreak or SDK, but that doesn't mean that they don't want to use the outcome of that: 3rd party apps.
 
Moof1904 said:
I don't see how the iPhone can truly succeed in the long term unless Apple opens up development, at least in a limited way.
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I agree. By trying to lock down the iPhone in the name of stability, Apple has paradoxically made the situation worse as the only recourse now is hacking the phone.

Societal trends are toward open source and personalization of technology. Bucking the trends is just going to send your customers elsewhere.
 
samh004 said:
I reckon it will happen eventually, with a initial limited availability of third party apps, as more of a trial, before they open the doors further and further.

As much as Steve Jobs is set in his ways, he's not blind to the complaints from many customers over this issue I'm sure, and something will eventually see the light of day.



It's a rumour and this is a rumour site, what do you expect :p
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I also think it's also a matter of time- and through iTunes. All I really want are a few basic apps, ones that are already available on the hacked iPhone app installer.

I would gladly pay a few bucks on iTunes for an eBook reader and some other programs.
 
clevin said:
apple's hardware QC is worse than many pc makers.
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Apple's QC is rated the highest in the industry. As a Mac forum reader, you are too close to the mac community - you only read about Mac problems, yet there are much more PC problems - there's just no PC site that reports them all.

Anyway, back on topic - even local webapp execution with a some local datastorage would be good. Even if Apple tightly controlled the local storage - it would at least give developers the opportunity to do something.
 
I really hope Apple releases a real, full SDK. Web apps are nice, but not a complete replacement for native apps. I'll admit, I'd like Apple to take it's time to get all the bugs out of the OS & SDK first, but not waste time either. There are so many really great developers out there who don't work @ Apple.
 
i don't think it's coincidence that these rumors of and iphone SDK are hotting up weeks prior to the 10.5 release. the iphone is running a variant of leopard, there's a new version of xcode that will include some pretty important upgrades to objective-c (e.g. automated garbage collection) and specific dev environments for the iphone (final release of dashcode)

i suspect the rumored late october event will be a: here's leopard and btw, you can now develop widget style applications for the phone with xcode3
 
bring me outlook....

I personally don't think that it's very likely.....

but what do people think the chances are that they :)apple:) will allow window's mobile as a 3rd party app. I need word, and more importantly microsoft outlook, for work, and my work would pay for an iPhone and the at&t service if the iPhone would just carry those applications. I don't think that my company is the only one with such policies regarding smart phones and compatibility with microsoft office. It's just a kicker that the iPhone seems to me to be the smartest phone, but it's purposely dumbed down and controlled by apple. If apple wants to be in business with this segment, it needs outlook! I'm sure you graphic designers don't really care, and your work probably gives you ten mac pros and thirty 30" ACDs, but I work in a law/accounting office and apple isn't going to take over this market for a very long, long time. So, I need compatibility. iWork? Stop jesting.

Sincerely,

Ado
 
samh004 said:
I don't think you'll get Microsoft developing for the iPhone, or you will and it'll take them 5 years to release their first beta. More likely is you'll get a portable version of iWork, possibly packaged with the computer retail version, and that will be able to open Word, Excel and powerpoint files, edit, and send them onwards.
Click to expand...

Sorry Apple fanboy, but Microsoft has never released a Office version late and Office 2008 is right on schedule. Microsoft has a hard time releasing their OS on time due to the myriad of hardware they need to support as well as their promise to always support backward compatibility. Apple has neither of these concerns.
 
I would def keep buying every new model of iphone if they open it up. Its simply the best phone out there interface wise. When the software packages start rolling, G3, and GPS come.. look out!!!
 
bbplayer5 said:
I would def keep buying every new model of iphone if they open it up. Its simply the best phone out there interface wise. When the software packages start rolling, G3, and GPS come.. look out!!!
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The question is, will you keep buying every new model of iphone if they DON'T open it up? I'd guess that Apple is doing some calculation about what their closed system is costing (or earning, perhaps) them in terms of sales and fees. I'll likely buy new versions of the phone either way.
 
bbplayer5 said:
I would def keep buying every new model of iphone if they open it up. Its simply the best phone out there interface wise. When the software packages start rolling, G3, and GPS come.. look out!!!
Click to expand...

G3? Perhaps you mean 3G? or are you hoping for an old-school PPC in your iPhone? ;)

-Ado
 
Although a lot of iPhone users right now don't care about 3rd party apps I do think that if they made some and put it on iTunes and even charged for them, a lot of people would buy them (of course there are going to be the people complaining that they are charging for 3rd party apps).
The only application I really really want is SlingPlayer. I would pay for it and I wouldn't care that it's on the edge network. Everyone says that it would work on the edge network but it would. I had the Treo 650 on sprint's slow network and it worked suprisngly well.
 
Just a little tidbit on the way these rumor articles appear....

Is it really necessary to repeat every old piece of conflicting information when you really have only 1 new sentence to put forward?

Couldn't this post simply be:

"Source _____ says Apple may be gearing up to launch a 3rd Party App Development plan. No more info than that, no idea if its even remotely true."

And just leave it at that? Why is it necessary to repeat all of the conflicting information that in some way could be related? We already know this info because we've read it AND had it repeated in every subsequent article.

I just think this method of posting lends too much creedence to rumors. Rumors is what this site is for... but I think perhaps it should be limited to what you know, rather than trying to tie ends together that do not even meet in reality.
 
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