iPhone open SDK coming after all?

by Ted Wallingford Oct 16th 2007

When Apple introduced the iPhone at this year's Macworld Expo, there was a great sigh of disappointment when Steve Jobs informed his developer community that only web-based applications would be supported on the iPhone. That is, no Software Development Kit (SDK) to create native programs. Among other things, this letdown limited developers' ability to harness the iPhone's coveted multi-touch user interface features.

But that may soon change. Business Week has a hunch that Apple has been waiting for the right moment to throw down with an iPhone SDK, and not for the reasons you might think. Instead of avoiding ticking off their wireless partner, instead of trying to maintain quality control, instead of assuming Dashboard-quality applications would keep iPhone code junkies happy, it seems Apple may've had a different reason altogether for the long wait: Leopard.

If Leopard is the official development platform for the iPhone (and who would expect Apple to release an iPhone development environment for Windows?), then the wait may've been warranted after all. After all, we've not seen any multi-touch technology from Apple except on the iPhone, and one wonders if multi-touch is hanging out in the background of Leopard somewhere, waiting to get called to duty. Meanwhile, Business Week openly speculates that Electronic Arts has already received the SDK, but this hasn't been confirmed. Madden 2009 on the iPhone? Sounds good to us.

Tags: apple, ea, hack, iphone, sdk

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Matt said 2:27PM on 10-16-2007

I can believe that actually.
After all, we all know the iphone uses core animation. A feature not present in tiger.
Maybe leopard is needed after all...

Jeff said 3:52PM on 10-16-2007

Well, duh. Why would this not be the reason? Everyone is all suspicious that Apple is the new Microsoft and piling restrictions on people. Meanwhile it was just that there was a better way to do it coming shortly.

Apple isn't perfect, but we've also not seen them be evil enough to warrant the suspicion they have been garnering.

james 42 said 6:47PM on 10-16-2007

"...not seen any multi-touch technology from Apple except on the iPhone"

MacBooks and MacBook Pros have it. Not full on like the iPhone, but there is different behavior when manipulating the touch pad with two digits instead of just one.

Gerd said 3:07AM on 10-17-2007

I think that the sandboxing and application signing features of Leopard are a crucial ingredient for an iPhone/iTouch SDK.

This enables Apple to go the same road as JM2E and Symbian wrt. secure 3rdParty Apps.

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Rick Ludwig said 9:49AM on 10-17-2007

Everybody say it with me... "duuuuhhhh"

People have been so impatient about all of this, not to mention when the iPhone was announced, Leopard was supposed to be out earlier. Leopard was pushed back, but there would have been riots, stock tumbles and the end of the Apple world if Apple pushed the iPhone back.

Anyway, we all know how much Apple likes to suprise it's customer!

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