iPhone SDK
Apple’s Software Development Kit for the iPhone is/was due out sometime this month, based on the company’s initial projections for a release date, announced at the end of 2007. The SDK will allow third-party applications to be created for the iPhone, and will hopefully (for Apple) establish them as the leading smart-phone open platform. However, with just over one week of February remaining, no specific date is yet known and instead we are faced by a strange situation whereby details have become oddly tricky to establish…
The current state of play is that Apple never set a single date for the SDK launch, but rather initially announced February as the release period. Latest rumours have suggested that the SDK’s arrival will now be delayed until the beginning of March and that, with many features still not ready, this will only be an alpha or beta release. In the meantime hack SDKs such as ziPhone have enabled programmers to develop ideas and skills over the past few months, inadvertently ensuring that when the official iPhone SDK is actually released results should be pretty rapid, thereby generating momentum and the image of an instant success. The interim period has also allowed Apple to monitor potential security vulnerabilities that surfaced through hackers’ experience with ziPhone and implement safeguards in the official SDK. However, with Google’s Android SDK having finally received a crucial update last week, Apple cannot afford to procrastinate too long over its own release for fear of Android’s progress.
With Apple’s SDK staff currently working round-the-clock secret overtime shifts, the rest of us are busy debating which apps it would be useful (and possible) to create. The iPhone’s impressive hardware offers seemingly endless possibilities, and so, with that in mind, here’s a few apps that would make me seriously consider trading in my Sony Ericsson for one of Apple’s shiny new wonder-toys…
1. Bluetooth music lending function - lend albums or tracks downloaded from iTunes to your friends via Bluetooth, for a pre-specified time, after which the files could become locked on their hard disks and unlocked again on yours (your friend could regain access by now choosing to buy their own copies of the data), ensuring that music is not illegally duplicated. Would allow us to do digital album swaps, negating the need to burn CDs…
2. Instant chat client with drawing mode - use the touchscreen to draw your friends/colleagues a picture and send it in an instant chat message (Microsoft MSN Messenger added a similar feature called Handwriting in v7.0). Would capitalise on the fun-potential of the iPhone’s touchscreen.
3. Line-out function for video streaming so that iTunes movie rentals can also be watched on a television or laptop screen if one is available. Simply use your iPhone to choose a title, pay using your iTunes account, and then plug into your television and enjoy the movie.
4. External hard drive device manager - users who store extended music or film collections on an external hard drive could have access on the move, rather than having to transfer the media they would like to carry with them in advance (this is only really a short term problem until the iPhone’s hard-disk capacity is increased). Similarly USB pen-drive compatibility would be great (would obviously require some sort of additional socket hardware converter).
5. Copy and paste function - I think pretty much everyone with whom I’ve discussed this has also voiced a similar wish…
I guess we’ll have to wait a few more weeks before the extent of the SDK’s potential is seriously explored, but there can be little doubt that; with the iPhone’s current dominance in the smart-phone market the incentives for developers are already huge. If Apple can overcome their reputation for slight inattention to detail when it comes to security, and deliver a robust and invulnerable SDK (while retaining openness), then the field of mobile technology could soon be in for some of the most exciting developments of its history…
Dejan Levi
