Earlier this week Apple CEO Steve Jobs addressed one of the biggest questions surrounding the forthcoming iPhone handset: Will it support third-party applications? The answer is Yes, sort of, which is better than a No, not as good as a full-on Yes, and quite interesting in its own right.
Jobs told his audience at the WWDC keynote address in San Francisco that iPhone will support third-party development by way of supporting existing Web 2.0 standards. What's good about this is that millions of developers are already familiar with using HTML and JavaScript to create Web 2.0 apps, and thousands of those apps already exist. iPhone's Safari Web browser should run many of those apps just like they run on desktop Web browsers. What's bad about this is that it's not the full-on SDK (Software Development Kit) that would give developers access to iPhone's core functionality, enabling the development of true "killer apps" that take advantage of iPhone's unique functionality.
Then again, this is a solution that allows Apple to encourage third-party iPhone development without worrying too much about software that could somehow compromise the handset during install & running. Additionally, we could see some interesting new software that merges the worlds of desktop and mobile phone browsing. At the least, this adds more buzz to the June 29th iPhone launch.
From Apple's own press release:
"Developers can create Web 2.0 applications which look and behave just like the applications built into iPhone, and which can seamlessly access iPhone's services, including making a phone call, sending an email and displaying a location in Google Maps. Third-party applications created using Web 2.0 standards can extend iPhone's capabilities without compromising its reliability or security."
Read: http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2007/06/11iphone.html'sr=hotnews.rss
Read: http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/459-iphone-sdk-its-called-safari