It's a very different matter when we're talking about a platform. Imagine if Apple had sprung the Intel switch on us 6 months after the release of OS X- everyone who bought the new OS X machines would have been ticked, and all of the developers who started building PowerPC optimized Cocoa apps would have thrown a fit.
Opening up the platform to third parties and IMMEDIATELY changing the hardware specs is a bad move. The reason your comparisons don't work is this. The iPod isn't a platform, with ridiculously limited available apps that only work on a limited amount of models. The iBook isn't a small dedicated device.
It's hard to explain the difference, but really, think about it. With a PC, apps eventually come out that outstrip the PC, and over time your computer seems slower and slower compared to the apps you want to run. With smaller, dedicated devices, though, apps either run or don't run. You're not going to be comparing your system specs, CPU power to system requirements to run iPhone apps and then worrying about framerates. It either runs on your model, or doesn't.
Adding 3G and GPS does not pose an issue to devs, because most apps will not care- only specialized apps that use GPS will refuse to run on old iPhone models.
Overhauling the internals means suddenly making the old iPhones unable to run any of the new apps coming out, which is not something anyone will complain about a year from now, but doing it BEFORE third party apps have been released or within a month of the store's launch is just going to be a mess.
It's a pickle for them. the logistics of the App Store haven't yet been fleshed out (can you do demos, limited time demos, demos that can update to the full app ? etc).
How many developers actually have the golden tickets from Apple? What's to say that once NDA'd, they've been given access to more details about the future road map, and a SDK with more functions?
Logically, they aren't going to announce SDK features only relevant to the v2 iPhone till they've announced the 3G iPhone
Logically, they might want as you say, more time between having a change in hardware specs (i.e. the 3G iPhone release) and the updated SDK available.
But, put it another way. Apple has sold say 4 million iPhones. They're going to be producing that quantity in roughly May and June combined, if rumours are to be believed.
Apple could easily filter between the two versions (Does your iPhone have SGOLD2 or SGOLD3? Ok, you can have these apps, and you can have these ones too...)
Why would developers be so myopic, to not realise that there was a possible large hardware shift coming in the second version of the iPhone?
The rumors have been rife and they've been here for a while.
Wouldn't developers go
- I wonder if the next gen iPhone will have a larger screen size, or a better ppi?
- I wonder if the next gen iPhone will have more features such as better accelerometers?
etc.
The article basically predicts better visuals, with better video (HD) support.
In terms of visuals, this is more apparent on games. So now people know that you need the v2 iPhone for the fancy games potentially, if there becomes a 2 tier system. In terms of video HD support - My view is that Apple has been hard at work with integration of HD and video playing and recording and uploading, and v2 3G iPhone will show the fruit of that R&D.
Some of the work so far developing will need to be rewritten. Not "everything" is obsolete. Some, but not all. There will be pain from this, but at the end of the day, it's developers complaining because Apple has made the hardware for the iPhone better too fast.
Hmmmm. I can imagine customers won't complain about that much.
The advancements may not be seen in the v2 iPhone anyhow. It could be a late 08 release, or an 09 release for example. (as you said: whether this would be going into the next revision, or a later revision down the road, perhaps next year)
Good developers would target both specs. Some may cherry pick. As mentioned - in terms of numbers, the upgraded spec iPhone (with or without the chips mentioned in the article) will outnumber the v1 iPhone within 3 months i'd say.
At the very least - They're saying 10 million by December 08. Assume 4 million sold up to June. Release by end of June. That means the updated version outnumbers the old version by November say, i.e. 7 months time. I'd expect parity in numbers to be much before that.
Old iPhone users won't get some apps. That's an incentive to upgrade. They don't have to.
But man, HD video output in a mobile device. That's insane
This is a huge part. So is Google gonna bust Smugmug out of the water? (they're using Adobe h264 in Flash) Seeing as Google owns Youtube, why won't they come out guns ablasing - Apple has to do something to protect Quicktime from Silverlight (which is going to get huge numbers due to the Olympics) and say AIR (potentially).
Which might link into
http://scobleizer.com/2008/04/30/youtube-working-on-live-streaming/
and maybe also
Most interesting to us: His allusion to new, previously undisclosed plans to extract money out of YouTube, which cost Google (GOOG) $1.65 billion in 2006 but hasn't generated more than a trickle of cash to date:
This from
alleyinsider
"BARTIROMO: Which is a huge priority, clearly. A lot of people feel like this is an amazing opportunity for you. So, as far as monetizing that business on YouTube, do you think that takes a year? Does it take the next five years? What's your time frame on that?
Dr. SCHMIDT: We believe the best products are coming out this year. And they're new products. They're not announced. They're not just putting in-line ads in the things that people are trying. But we have a number--and, of course, Google is an innovative place. The Yahoo! team are trying various new forms of advertising, ones which are much more participative, much more creative, much more--much more interesting in and of themselves. Google believes that advertising itself has value. The ads literally are valuable to consumers. Not just to the advertisers, but the consumers."
Apple's gotta work out what to do with data usage for video too. Fun times.
