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iPhone SDK: a new hope

Last updated on July 23, 2020

image If Apple was going to be excessively restrictive with its SDK, there would have been no point in publishing it, Apple noted at the introduction that it was a “platform company” (most of the time anyway). Combined with the $100 million iFund, it appears clear that we are witnessing nothing less than the rebirth of the Macintosh now shrunk to pocket size and inviting a new breed of developers to rethink mobile application development.

Perhaps, contrary to Michael Mace’s post on why smartphone development is dead, the reason is not the “combination of splintering platforms, shrinking distribution channels, and rising costs,” but rather that native applications haven’t been distinguished enough from what you could do in a browser or via platforms such as BREW. Other factors helping development are having the App Store on the device and available over cellular connections and not having to account for countless platform and screen size variations.

Of course, these are all conditions that make it easier to dip the fishing rod. There are still no guarantees that the consumer will bite. But from what we’ve been seeing iPhone users do in terms of accessing the Web and using their music features, they have high potential to create the most successful mobile smartphone application market we have seen.