The SDK/API is also a long-term commitment by Apple. It is a contract with the developers that Apple will have to support for years (decades?) to come. As long as it is internal, Apple can keep tweaking it until they think they have it right.
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Apple to Launch Official Development Kit for iPhone in January?
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The SDK/API is also a long-term commitment by Apple. It is a contract with the developers that Apple will have to support for years (decades?) to come. As long as it is internal, Apple can keep tweaking it until they think they have it right.
As you guys have already corrected, the dock can be used by audio input/output devices. I had one for my old iPod to use it as a digital voice recorder. Unfortunately, it was kind-of clunky (it made the iPod bigger) and didn't work very well.
If you plan to make a lot of calls (even if by Skype), the iPhone is probably the most elegant choice.
<rant>
You may not be old enough to remember the original Atari 2600 video gaming system. It was the first, and they had no controls on developers.
There was sooooo many crap games that every Tom, Dick and Harry put out, that it literally killed the platform and the video game industry in the US.
It was so bad that people thought that video games was just a fad. When Nintendo tried to get into the US, people were so put off with video crap-games, that not a single retailer would buy the Nintendo video game system. Nintendo attended the largest US Electronics show two years running, without a single retailer buying anything!
They had to rebrand it as a toy. Even then the only way the first Nintendo ever sold was because of the Teddy Rumskin manufacturer (Worlds of Wonder) had an agreement with Nintendo. If a retailer wanted to buy Teddy Rumskin, they had to buy Nintendo.
When Nintendo started taking off, they used draconian developer controls. There was a hardware key for the carts, and to promote quality games, the developer could only release five titles per year.
So let's don't forget about history.
Rampant generation of crappy software for a platform, means the death of the platform.
Nintendo only made it by controlling developers, the same as Sony Playstation and Microsoft X-Box.
I truly hope that Apple implements fairly draconian developer controls. It means that the iPhone will be around for a long time. Otherwise the market will be flooded with thousands of crappy apps for the iPhone, so much that the average user developes a bad taste of the iPhone.
</end rant>
edit: Awesome HD Podcast of source information posted above - http://tinyurl.com/ywnhv9
It'll be WebKit, end of story. All these third party capabilities are in WebKit in one form or another.
Flash will be added in via Software Update.
Nothing that either 3rd party set does that Apple hasn't been able to do for years, outside of Flash being Adobe/Macromedia's own.
Pay close attention to the fact that WebKit is not just Cocoa & Qt but now GTK+. WebKit runs on Linux in both GNOME and KDE. KDE 4.1 will be using WebKit for their Konqueror Browser. WebKit is already an option for the latest GNOME Mozilla based browser.
The Linux mobile toolkits will be leveraging WebKit via Qt and GTK+.
Ok.... WebKit is just an html/javascript rendering engine (the guts of Safari, basically).... That's all well and good, but RIA need other cool things like localized data storage, disconnected operation, etc. WebKit doesn't provide that.
Things like Adobe AIR and Google's Gears do. Perhaps apple will add something similar to WebKit? Sure... but they are going to have a hard time moving the Flash developer base over to something else.
If you port Adobe's flash, AIR is right behind at this point.
My guess is that if Apple IS going to add this type of thing to WebKit then that is exactly why Flash isn't on there... and if that's the case then Flash most likely never will be.
Obviously Apple has let someone develop a medical app for the iPod touch.
I just saw on the news tonight how a Seattle area hospital is using it.
Doctors and others use the touch to display body scans and readings.
It was cool to watch. An employee even had a black nano showing a patient some kind of scan.
I just saw on the news tonight how a Seattle area hospital is using it.
Doctors and others use the touch to display body scans and readings.
It was cool to watch. An employee even had a black nano showing a patient some kind of scan.
Come on
When Apple allows 3rd party applications and when the iPhone goes 3g, then I'll hop on the wagon. Might be waiting a while...
When Apple allows 3rd party applications and when the iPhone goes 3g, then I'll hop on the wagon. Might be waiting a while...
Apple do have a spec....
It's called dashcode.
edit: Sure i'm probably being a blind fanboi.
But what better way to work out what can be loaded on the phone and what needs live data than to have widget bundle. Let the "developer" decide.
Reading the Leopard 300+ page for Dashcode there is even mention of the project manager to bundle the widget, into a self contained unit for distribution. Plus it's all based on webkit, so all it really needs is the iPhone Templete file.
Then they can just start adding links to native libraries as they please.
/edit
I disagree
Use 3G regularly, and all I can say is, the author is wrong. Speech quality is great, signal dropouts rarely occur and Web experience is good.
Maybe this author should travel to Europe or Japan, before dissing 3G!
Haven't used an iPhone yet, but I guess there will be some interesting reads in November, when it hits the shelves in Europe.
Use 3G regularly, and all I can say is, the author is wrong. Speech quality is great, signal dropouts rarely occur and Web experience is good.
Maybe this author should travel to Europe or Japan, before dissing 3G!
Haven't used an iPhone yet, but I guess there will be some interesting reads in November, when it hits the shelves in Europe.
Did the author 'dis' G3?
I thought his point was that web like low Latency.
Phone networks are high Latency.
So smart designing for limited bandwidth (ie. reduce demand) will pay off when you get high bandwith but still have high Latency.
Sounds to me like iPhone widget bundles, that can contain as much as possible local would be killer on either EDGE or G3 or Wifi or WiMax, or what ever comes next in the evolution.
Man did you nail that.
I've enjoyed watching the moaning from the 'developers' on this list who think that Apple should design their consumer electronics business plan around them.
Most developers wouldn't recognize a good business plan if it bit them in the ass, as evidenced by the fact that they think mass sales can be achieved by focusing on niche markets.
Uh, most developers (and I'm using the term in a restrictive sense here) are employed by companies which do have business plans. You can bet that many of those companies are watching the iPhone intently, and would love to move in on a rather wealthy and gadget-happy market like that.
Then you get the indie & small company developer crowd, who are making a fine living without mass sales (Omni*, Coda & Transmit, MarsEdit, NetNewsWire, etc...). I've asked some of them about it, and they would love to target the iPhone.
and then you get the open source developers, crazy enthusiasts, people with poor business plans, etc... who really aren't going to make any money off it.
I fall in the first and last category, although the last is where I'd be really excited about making iPhone apps.
All that said, you're making a strawman argument anyway, since I don't think anyone's claiming that Apple's iPhone strategy should be based around third party apps. Instead, they're saying* that third party apps would enhance Apple's iPhone strategy, just as they have on almost every other platform in existence**.
* heck, in some cases they're just saying "man, that would be awesome", which it would be.
**with the iPod being a conspicuous counterexample.
If Apple hadn't left out bluetooth, a headset + Touch +skype would have worked out nicely.
As it is a cludge for mic use needs to be thought up (via the dock connector).
Holy flashback Batman!
I had forgotten all about that. I remember Nintendo going all out with Robo! the little robot that pushed the buttons for you on the NES controller. I think I still have my Robo... somewhere in the basement. That was a very creative leap there for Nintendo marketing wise, in order to attempt to overcome the perception of video game consoles suck.
I remember all the crap games that came to Atari also because of the lack of developer control.
I agree with the concept 100% . Apple does need to implement developer controls so that garbage doesn't wind up on the iPhone. I just hope it happens sooner then never. And right now, Never seems like the reality considering I'm going on almost 6 months into my 2 year contract.
Hm. Y'know... has ANYONE tried the iPhone headphones on the Touch yet? For that matter, has Apple said anything about the "Voice Recording" staple of the iPod brand? Along with FM Radio accessory support, there are still some gaping holes in the new multitouch platform.
~ CB
The fact is, and I'm sure Apple knows this, that iPhone + Flash + 3G + 3rd Party Apps + sub $300 price = a true smartphone killer. No other phone would have a chance in the consumerworld and if you could get it to talk to Blackberry servers then B.I.N.G.O.
I don't know if we'll see all that @ MWSF, but if we did it would be tremendous and AAPL would shoot up 20-30 points instantly as RIMM, MOT, SNE and NOK got knocked down 5-10%.
I don't know if we'll see all that @ MWSF, but if we did it would be tremendous and AAPL would shoot up 20-30 points instantly as RIMM, MOT, SNE and NOK got knocked down 5-10%.
<Rebuttal>
Yep! I remember the 2600 quite well. The "Pac Man" was particularly terrible, but it was an early example of a home console game. And, to dwell on this example, have a read on the wikipedia article about the 2600, particularly the sections called "Launch and runaway success", "Decline" (which credits Atari *blocking* third party development as a decline), and of course, "The console that refused to die", which talks a bit about renewed third party game development.
But, if we're choosing examples from history as to why third party development is somehow bad, might I refer you, once again, to the Macintosh. Completely open, unhindered application development, and in the days of pre-OSX, not even much official support out of Apple, beyond some books and notes (there was no Xcode - only CodeWarrior). The third party developers played large roles in the success of this (and windows) platform, and one could easily imagine that if the origin company had to release ALL the software, it'd never be able to fill the general consumer need. Plus, someone would point a monopolistic finger at them.
Nowadays, software development has come a long way, and we have highly evolved development tools and everybody is using some form of object oriented approach (which makes even the poorest of coders behave). The development platform provides consistent user interfaces, built in protected memory management, and wonderful tools to help developers write quality apps without near the commitment of even 10 years ago.
The odds are that the market will be "flooded" with bad apps is pretty low. This isn't the 1980's where software lives on dusty shelves in stripmalls, and you make choices based on the description on the back. If an app is good, you'll hear about it. If it sucks, well, you'll hear about that too. It works well on the Real OSX, so it should also work well on the Mobile OSX. It's a free market, and one with so much feedback, it flies in the face of entropy itself.
(Besides - there's already a ton of crappy "WebApps" out there, and it hasn't dented anything (and I do mean crappy!))
With the exception of the fact that it's been demonstrated that all native apps on the iPhone (at least up until and including version 1.0.2) run as root.
(That's ignoring the discussion about just how much of OSX is actually present in the thing. Remember, if they designed it to run all applications as root, then maybe they just didn't bother porting over any of the non-administrator security framework. Assuming that they always intended to have a closed system, those components would only serve to take up additional space without ever actually being used.)
If all native applications are granted root privileges, it doesn't matter how airtight the underlying security frameworks in the OS are - there'll still be the potential to do damage. I can only think of two possible remedies:
1) Add non-root user accounts on the iPhone, along with all the frameworks that are required to truly implement them.
2) Enforce strict controls on the types of applications that are allowed to make it on the iPhone in the first place.
Option (2) might be the easier path to take. In my view, that would mean Javascript/WebKit for all the script kiddies out there that want to play in Apple's limited public sandbox and make their neat-o programs, and full access to the powerful native OSX APIs for the serious developers who want to sign Apple's NDAs and revenue agreements.
By this logic, Apple should control 3rd party apps on OSX just in case someone releases a crap app.
Despite console games being a bit more controlled, there's still a lot of junk out there.... so controlling isn't always a good thing and doesn't mean automatic high quality.
No one is forcing people to install a crap app, or any apps at all. If people are that worried, they can only install iPhone apps that come from Apple. Its a really simple concept.
You don't need 3G for that. Its an iPhone limitation - other phones on the market can receive calls while connected to internet ( via GPRS et al ).
Despite console games being a bit more controlled, there's still a lot of junk out there.... so controlling isn't always a good thing and doesn't mean automatic high quality.
No one is forcing people to install a crap app, or any apps at all. If people are that worried, they can only install iPhone apps that come from Apple. Its a really simple concept.
You don't need 3G for that. Its an iPhone limitation - other phones on the market can receive calls while connected to internet ( via GPRS et al ).
I did hear that this was the current case, and if it's true, then Safari is already running as root right now. The Apple guys must have something up their sleeve to ensure the safety of this most dubious of apps, as far as security is concerned.
I would think it would be easier to impliment your (1), which is a separate non-root user. You even see this for faceless processes like httpd who runs as it's own user for this very reason. I would think it'd be awkward to have to type in the "root" password on your iphone whenever an app needs to do low level stuff.
Exactly. People's concerns about what "they" might put on "their" phone shouldn't stop me from experiencing the freedom to totally wreck mine with crappy apps. There's enough rules in this world. I just really worry about a tightly controlled environment where I don't have the freedom to innovate a solution to a problem I happen to have that Apple hasn't thought of. And, those of you who think a WebApp or some clever javascript solution will do "all I need to do" is, imho, shortsighted. I want more than a "RSS Reader" (which doesn't even exist yet!)