Open iPhone
Perhaps the only real news from Steve Jobs’ appearance at the D conference: the iPhone will be open after all.
Q: All indications appear that the iPhone is closed, we’d love to develop apps…
This is an important tradeoff between security and openness. We want both. We’re working through a way… we’ll find a way to let 3rd parties write apps and still preserve security on the iPhone. But until we find that way we can’t compromise the security of the phone.I’ve used 3rd party apps… the more you add, the more your phone crashes. No one’s perfect, and we’d sure like our phone not to crash once a day. If you can just be a little more patient with us I think everyone can get what they want.
(via Engadget)
Thanks to Andreas and Hampus at VisionMobile for including the xPhone in the latest Carnival of the Mobilists.
UPDATE: Aaaargh. He didn’t mean an SDK. He didn’t even mean widgets, as Matthew suggested in the comments. He meant that we are all free to host web sites. I can’t believe how many journalists dutifully reported this as an opening up of the platform. At launch, the iPhone will be the most locked-down device on the US market.
Unfortunately, he later restated his point to make it clear that there would be an sdk that allowed developers to write “small apps”. If you look around the Apple landscape, this most likely points to a widget developers kit. This is a step forward, but it unfortunately won’t allow for Goodlink or a Blackberry client or Skype or IM, etc.
Give it some time. Eventually we’ll all be clicking File>New Project>New IPhone Project in XCode. SDKs are always an afterthought. Step 1: Get the product out the door and selling, Step 2: Allow the product to be extended so that we can make even more money!