Now that we know an iPhone SDK is coming, here are my predictions about it based on all of His Holiness’ statements about “security” and “protecting the network”:
Prediction One. No retail iPhone will run unsigned apps, ever, at all. There will be no possibility to install them by clicking through warning dialogs, as you can on Windows Mobile and Series 60.
Prediction Two. The only way to load apps onto a retail iPhone will be through iTunes (okay, that part’s a no-brainer), and the only way to get loadable apps into iTunes will be to buy them from the iTunes Store.
Prediction Three. To get an app signed and listed in the iTunes store, developers will be required to submit it for approval and certification. Not only Apple, but their carrier partners on a country-by-country basis will have veto power over which applications appear in the store.
Prediction Four. Apple will set the prices for iPhone apps. Either they will all be a flat rate, or more likely they will have several tiers of pricing. Which tier an app ends up in will depend on Apple, the carriers, and what kind of app it is; developers won’t be able to choose.
Prediction Five. Out of the price for iPhone apps, both Apple and the carrier will get a cut, the total of which will be larger than the fees typically charged by shareware registration services.
Prediction Six. The means used by developers to test their apps on real hardware may be hackable, but will not work for general app distribution. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a method that involves ADC membership with a signature that allows app updates to only work with a specific registered iPhone.
Prediction Seven. The SDK will not be free; it will either be sold separately at a price commensurate with other pro development tools, or (more likely) require a paid ADC membership.
Prediction Eight. If there is a way to develop iPhone apps that doesn’t have these restrictions, it will be based on Dashboard widgets, and widgets will be sandboxed at least as restrictively as Java applets in a browser.
So, I guess I’ll revisit this post in February and see how close I got…
With the release of the iPhone, I’ve been considering my options for mobile devices to try to figure out if any of them is ideal for me. The iPhone isn’t — I’ll talk more about that in a later post — and unfortunately it seems like nothing else either. This post, and probably others to follow, is as much for my own benefit as it is a way to publicly record my thoughts in the vain hope that someday, someone might make a device that works well for people like me.
Thanks to my work with Julie at The Gadgeteer and my own fetish for handhelds and PDAs, I have been able to try a number of different things. My current phone/PDA is a HTC TyTn which is arguably one of the best Windows Mobile phones available right now. I’ve used the Treo 650 and also have a Palm TX. I have a couple of Nokia N-Series phones, but unfortunately they’re tri-band so I’d have to switch away from AT&T if I wanted one of those for everyday use.
The options boil down to five smart device platforms:
- Windows Mobile Pocket PC
- Palm OS
- Symbian
- iPhone
- Blackberry
There is a sixth option, which is to use a separate device such as a PDA or ultra-portable PC which is tethered to a phone by Bluetooth when necessary. I’d prefer not to do that, since I already carry too much crap around with me.
Let’s start with the iPhone, because it’s on everyone’s mind right now. First of all I have to say that Apple did an amazing job on the iPhone design and user interface; nothing else I’ve tried comes close. But for me, it falls short in a few key areas.
One of the iPhone’s biggest drawbacks, from my perspective, is the lack of 3G support. Of course, opinions on this will vary based on network coverage. But here in Birmingham, AT&T’s 3G network is pretty solid throughout the city and more populated suburbs, while the EDGE network can get very congested and slow. Theoretically, EDGE can do over 200 kbps; in practice, around here, it’s more like 20 kbps most of the time. For a device where one of the major features is browsing the real web, this really hurts.
The lack of add-on applications is also a big disadvantage of the iPhone, as far as I am concerned. I understand that there are reasons why Apple made that decision for the launch, and I hope that it will change in the coming months, perhaps with the release of Leopard and its development tools. The problem right now is that while the iPhone is very good at what it does do, it doesn’t do enough on its own yet. Web applications are not an acceptable substitute, because inasmuch as EDGE is slow, so are they.
And yes, I do want to do more with the iPhone than it does out of the box. I’d like SSH for server maintenance — one less thing I would need a laptop and a WiFi connection for. VNC would be nice too, or better yet, proper Windows and Apple remote desktop support. I need a text editor or word processor, so that I can whip out a folding Bluetooth keyboard and write. I’d love an e-book reader, so that I don’t need to carry a separate one if I’m going to be waiting around somewhere. Instant messaging is a must, preferably with multiple networks but I’d be happy enough with a mobile version of iChat. Streaming audio and video would be cool too, since the iPhone is also an iPod.
On the “pro” side of the ledger, the iPhone has excellent support for Mac syncing and a great web browser, both of which can be troublesome on other platforms. These may be what make me choose an iPhone in the end, although I doubt that will happen until after Leopard is released (which seems the obvious time to announce an iPhone SDK).
Next time, I’ll talk about my current platform, Windows Mobile. And by “talk”, I probably mean “complain”…
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