Business Week: iPhone SDK To Arrive 1-3 Weeks Late

[sjo]

Excuse me, but when did Apple ever state that iPhone ran FULL OS X? They said it runs OS X, not that it ran full OS X. Of COURSE it doesn't run the full thing. If it did you wouldn't get the same battery life, and a lot more of your iPhone's 8GB space would be gone to the operating system installation..

What they did, as far as I can tell, is roll it out "ASAP." Everything ran as root, and hence it was locked down. I would be certain that their internal APIs had not matured either. What they've been doing for the last 6 months+ is tidying that up, putting the APIs in place, and firming them up so they can make them public. That's what happens when you develop software! Ideally you lock down the APIs right away, but that's not always possible, and Apple has sold probably 5M+ of these things now, so the odds are that they're comfortable with the decision to roll it out originally, warts and all.

I personally have no problem with any of that. I've been loving my iPhone since day 1, and I can live with the fact that custom apps are 9 months away.

Bottom line, it's NEVER about technology. EVER.

way different apis from the desktop osx => less of an osx than they claimed earlier => requiring more work to polish and document. not a good thing.

and apple rushing things out of the door half-finish, not a good thing either, but may well explain delay in iphone sdk as well as the problems ppl have been having with leopard and persistance of those problems.

the further you delay fixing problems in software the more expensive it becomes and the longer it takes. even worse, it's a vicious cycle to get into.

 

[MacsAttack]

Except for the copy and paste, you can email notes to yourself...so it can kinda sync with comps

But it doesn't work both ways...

It Apple had just synched OS X Stickies with iPhone Notes I would have been perfectly happy... But they didn't, and with no cut and paste I can't mail something an turn it into a note either.

 

[StophMac24]

I feel your loss....but as Steve Jobs said, who ever sticks with Apple till the end will be rewarded...

I hold to that promise, seeing as Apple has overcome all expectations and is a leading company beyond what Bill Gates and his crappy company are or will ever be (same thing goes to Dell)

C'mon stock miracle!!!

u forget that at the beginning of last year apple was an around 80, to then end the year at just over 200. While this does seem predictable of apple, take into consideration the current state of the market. With the domino affect in play due to the real estate market and the dieing interest rates, this sort of drop is expected. Look at google, from 715 to barely 500. Everyone has fallen. Give it time, it will pick up again....

 

[klimegreen]

Personafile reports the delay is because of iTunes, http://www.personafile.com/products. Anyone else hear this?

iTunes clearly needs a bunch of changes in order to support iPhone apps. Not only the charge part, which is probably already covered by what they did with the Touch apps, but also an apps manager tab in the iPhone sync area.

The question is not how long we have to wait for the SDK but how long it takes any developer to get out an app we care about.

 

[darkblu]

so it's not the full osx it was hyped to be.

hardly anybody in their right mind expects an embedded osx to be what a desktop osx is.

an os is a huge collection of services, some of them provided by the kernel, but much more by dedicated servers and layers on top. an embedded version of an os will likely have similar kernel-level services, but the rest of the services provided by the higher-level layers are largely field-of-application-specific. so yes, maybe an embedded osx shares (partially) APIs with its desktop counterpart on kernel and UI levels, but guess what - that hardly covers what an os provides.

no, in companies that take their coding seriously. when you have more coders than a few and the lifespan of the product is years, if not tens of years, you'll have a mess without proper and enforced coding standards. of course, such a mess would explain why apple's is delaying, not delivering.

what developers put as documentation to their code and what ends up as API documentation are seldom the same thing. have you ever opened a serious commercial SDK documentation page? do you believe that amount of information was put there by the developer(s) responsible for the code at development time? and have you heard of technical writers?

- they didn't understand that ppl wanted to install 3rd party apps before customers started jailbraking (really bad)
- they haven't documented the code properly (really bad)
- the iphone osx is less of an osx than implied earlier (bad)
- the resources allocated for sdk in the first place have been reallocated (bad)
- they have general lack of developing resources (bad)
- the resources they have are not (yet) fully qualified (bad)

*clap clap clap*

 

[AidenShaw]

bloated, late, increasingly buggy....

iTunes clearly needs a bunch of changes in order to support iPhone apps.

Yet another wart being glued onto Itunes.

Too many different and mostly unrelated tasks in one application, with the expected consequences.

Apple's quest for "simplicity" collides with the goal of getting as many eyeballs on the Itune$ $torefront as possible... $$$ wins.

 

[iSheahan]

Take as long as needed to get it out. You think people would complain about it being released late? Just imagine the complaints if Apple were to release an on time but worthless and buggy p.o.s.

Yeah, "Blue Screen" comes to mind - and BSOD and Apple don't jive!

I'm impatient, but will live until its released...

 

[yobdren]

Hi,

We at infurious have been waiting for an SDK for some time now and have a number of application ideas lined up for it. We just need to see how open the architecture is.

As an ISV software developer that develops mobile applications for other software platforms (such as Windows Mobile etc) I have keenly awaited the release of the iPhone SDK in order to be able to review the feasibility of supporting the platform.

Although it is possible to develop apps without the official iPhone SDK, I am sure that I am not the only commercial developer holding out until an officially supported approach is available. There's a large number of people who don't know what jailbreaking an iPhone means, or are not comfortable/wanting to do that kind of thing.

To me I'm not so much waiting for the release of the SDK to the general developer (it's exact ship date doesn't really matter to me). I'm more keen to find out more about what the eventual developer platform will look like.

The questions which seem most important to me revolve around analysing the costs and possible hurdles needed to be jumped in order to get custom applications to run on arbitrary consumer purchased off the shelf iPhones.

There have been a lot of rumours on how security, code signing, application deployment and delivery are being dealt with. Getting those kind of things cleared up is more important initially to developers than a shipping SDK, since it allows people to start to put plans in place for when the tools eventually come.

Thanks.

 

[sachxn]

not good

It is sad to hear that the SDK has been delayed. Apple don't copy Microsoft please.

Sachin

 

[Alphy]

We should have an announcement either today or tomorrow confirm as to whether the SDK will come out this week or will be delayed. I bet Jobs had them working all weekend, we still might be able to get a SDK/apps this week.

 

[iphonewiz]

At the very least.....

Whatever the case is, I hope they make some sort of annoucement one way or the other!

 

[BIrwin49]

So what all is the SDK going to allow? Are we going to be able to do things like Summerboard? Custom ringtones or pay (even though there is a workaround without having to jail break the phone) what about custom text and email sounds?

How much is this going to cost and will the applications be free?

 

[Jefe]

I feel your loss....but as Steve Jobs said, who ever sticks with Apple till the end will be rewarded...

How do you know when the end is here?

 

[--Bender--]

I didn't read EVERY single entry here but did anyone consider ZiPhone? I jailbroke my 1.1.3 phone and it has been as sweet as when I had it broken in 1.1.1. Part of me wonders if that has anything to do with the delay. I'm sure there are other factors but I would have to imagine that this would have to make some kind of impact on the SDK. Maybe I'm way off. Who knows. Gotta love speculation.

 

[Jefe]

We should have an announcement either today or tomorrow confirm as to whether the SDK will come out this week or will be delayed. I bet Jobs had them working all weekend, we still might be able to get a SDK/apps this week.

Jobs to developers:

"Yeah.. uhm.. I'm going to need you to go ahead and come in on ... Saturday.. yeah.. so if you could just go ahead and ... do that.. that'd be great. Oh yeah.. and while I'm thinking about it.. I'm going to need you to also come in on .. Sunday. yeah.. we've lost some people and we're kind of playing catchup.. mmmmkay? Thanks."

 

[Alphy]

Jobs to developers:

"Yeah.. uhm.. I'm going to need you to go ahead and come in on ... Saturday.. yeah.. so if you could just go ahead and ... do that.. that'd be great. Oh yeah.. and while I'm thinking about it.. I'm going to need you to also come in on .. Sunday. yeah.. we've lost some people and we're kind of playing catchup.. mmmmkay? Thanks."

More like, "You WILL be coming in on Saturday and Sunday, and depending on your efforts, we may or may not let you out for a 15min break with ankle bracelets that will give a dehabilitating shock if you try to leave the Apple campus."

 

[aLoC]

It's too early in the life of the product to settle on the APIs yet. They could end up supporting some APIs that, with a bit more experience with this kind of device, turn out to be rubbish.

 

[amacisbetter]

Time is running out!

Only three and a half days left before the beginning of March!

 

[deannnnn]

The only reason Apple gave a timeframe in the first place was because of all the iPhone crybabies who wouldn't shutup about an SDK. If it was up to Apple I'm sure they would of liked it to be a secret or at least not acknowledged until it was ready to be introduced. Apple doesn't usually disclose features until they are at least able to be demoed unlike Microsoft but this time they made an exception to shut people up so what do you expect. It's not like 1-3 weeks is a big deal. If it was a 6 month delay then I would be complaining also but it's not so get over it.

I love how friendly everyone around here is.

 

[Alphy]

I love how friendly everyone around here is.

Being an Apple fan or hater, is serious business.

 

[kdarling]

what developers put as documentation to their code and what ends up as API documentation are seldom the same thing. have you ever opened a serious commercial SDK documentation page? do you believe that amount of information was put there by the developer(s) responsible for the code at development time? and have you heard of technical writers?

Some of the huge companies I do work for, had dozens or even hundreds of technical writers just ten years ago.

Nowadays, they've laid off so many people and sent so much work to India, that there's no one left to do the technical writing!

 

[elcid]

I dont know why they still give dates, or a range of dates for something to be done. It will be done when we get it done would be most appropriate.

 

[stoutboy1]

please dont let this be true. I dont even know what aps id add but I hate when things get delayed.

 

[cbrain]

I would not be surprised at all if the SDK is delayed.

 

[TurboSC]

whatever it is, and whenever it gets here, it will be grand, and I can't wait