What does all this SDK talk mean with respect to the popular DataViz products like Documents To Go? Read on, my friends!
Although it’s easy to be swallowed up in the sea of information spilling forth from the SDK Roadmap earlier today, and even though I’m still hoping for Stevie J to throw us a bone (like copy/paste ready for download from iTunes? ahem), I’m trying to stay calm. Deep breath. Maybe another piece of good news will help.
One of my favorite apps from my Treo days is DataViz’s DocsToGo. I tried to reach DataViz for comment with regard to the SDK release and their plans for bringing their products to the iPhone, but alas, the time-zone gods are against me and all I could come up with was a blurb from their website. Read their statement and glean what you can:
We are currently investigating the opportunity to develop Documents To Go, RoadSync, Passwords Plus and any of our other software titles for the iPhone and would appreciate your feedback.
Here’s our feedback: Yes, Please.
After the break, DataViz CEO Dick Fontana talks up the SDK for Fox News. [via] — “DataViz has a long relationship with Apple which gives Dick reason to be optimistic about the opportunities for DataViz with the iPhone.” — indeed.
Unlimited calling plans seem to be all the rage these days, with every carrier provision subscribers with “all you can speak” plans. Now even iPhone users will soon be able to gab all they want, and not pay dearly for it in the next billing cycle. According to Engadget, AT&T will be soon offer a special iPhone bundled unlimited calling plan for the low price of just $119.99 a month. Not a bad deal I suppose, if you spend ever waking hour of your day with a cell phone symbiotically attached to your face.
Careful observation of one of Apple’s presentation slides taken during last week’s iPhone SDK event reveals a possible firmware 2.0 feature; SPOTLIGHT!In one slide depicting the Contacts list, a small search icon appears at the very top of the screen. Could this be Spotlight for iPhone? We’ll see. It so, I know of many iPhone users who will dance through lawn sprinklers with glee, myself included.
How ’bout some FREE music, compliments of NIN (Nine Inch Nails)?
Following up on Radiohead’s release last year, NIN is offering FREE music for download. Titled “Ghosts I - IV”, Ghosts I are the first 9 tracks available for free download as high-quality, DRM-free MP3s, including the complete PDF. All you need is a valid email address and presto, you got some free music to carry around with you on your iPhone.
No term strikes more fear and fluster in a coder than the word “Java”, and I’m not talking about the scalding hot cup of Starbucks dark roast you spilled in your lap on the way to work this morning. No, I’m talking about Sun Microsystems’s long touted (and lamented) portable programming environment designed to run small applications through virtual runtimes. Java is best known for its ever-reaching marketing slogan “Write once, run anywhere”, though veteran developers will tell you the only thing Java truly excels at is crashing.
Now, for better or worse (I’m leaning towards the latter), Java support is coming to iPhone. For end users its arrival will go largely unnoticed and have little impact, save for its manifestation in mobiles gaming. For corporate users, however, it heralds the iPhone’s arrival in the enterprise where custom Java applications are lingua franca. This is indeed important news. Just not to me. Next!
“We’re going to make sure that the JVM offers the Java applications as much access to the native functionality of the iPhone as possible,” said Java VP, Eric Klein.
Apple CEO Steve Jobs, having previously lavished Java with such praise as (paraphrased) “a ball and chain OS that nobody uses and isn’t worth supporting on the iPhone”, is no doubt in deep mediation over the news.
Java, the technology that enables everything from game-lets on other mobile phones to Blu-Ray’s interactivity layer, while not widely adored in the techsphere, is widely available and offers some cross-platform portability advantages for programers (who want to use their code on multiple OS’s).
Klein also mentioned the possibility of not only JavaFX (which supports Flash-like animation), but the full desktop Java implementation in the future.
Though Sun says they will deploy JVM via the AppStore coming with iPhone firmware 2.0, how exactly they will create what could be a competitive development environment is unclear.
..the iPhone SDK beta [...] includes a beta version of llvm-gcc 4.2 as part of the included Xcode 3.1 beta.
LLVM (low level virtual machine), may allow for this functionality, and will also help with (according to Ars Technica’s Siracusa), “Faster compiled code, faster code compilation, more metadata for the IDE, better portability, easier to improve all of the above.”
We couldn’t wait until our regularly scheduled podcast to talk about the iPhone Software Roadmap. Mike and I were also lucky to be joined by Phone different writers Chad Garrett and Rene Ritchie! Listen in as we chat up all the new announcements about the new Enterprise features and the SDK.
This post is also a Wait-a-Thon post! Your comment posted here enters you for a a chance to win a $100 iTunes Gift Card! Also note that starting today, you can use your User Referral Link (found here when you log in) to get two entries in this week’s drawing.
In addition to these new iPhone network and security features, the beta iPhone 2.0 software provides several new Mail features such as the ability to view PowerPoint attachments, in addition to Word and Excel, as well as the ability to mass delete and move email messages.
But what about the other built-in apps like Calendar and Contacts?
Our own eagle-eyed Chad Garrett has already spotted a mysterious new icon on Calendar, and predicted we may indeed see Task integration (GTD’ers, put it on your to do’s!).
Now BlargKABOOM (via TUAW) has hauled out the iMicroscope and discovered yet another tantalizing new icon, this time in Contacts:
It is a little spotlight icon right above the A on the alphabet.
Does this mean we may just be getting search as well? If so, how will it be implemented, and will it be limited to contacts or (dare we hope?) system wide, SDK-level CoreSearch?
iTunes Wi-Fi Music Store, YouTube, the Weather, Stock and other widgets, and MobileSafari Touch have all had search for a while now. C’mon Apple, share the love!
I love the fact that Apple gives us their events on iTunes! Believe it or not, I still watch the MacWorld 2007 video. I enjoying watching the part where Steve says:
An iPod, Phone and an Internet communicator. iPod, Phone, and an Internet communicator. Are you getting it? These aren’t three separate devices…
hmmm, perhaps I have watched that one too many times.
I do wonder why it is a Podcast though and not a “movie”. I say this because the Podcasts do not refresh… we just get a new one every time.
You can find the link here to the Apple store for download, enjoy.
We’ve mentioned John Carmack at least a couple of times before. The ID founder and famed developer of Doom and Quake seems to have a special place in his heart for Apple and Apple gaming (even if Sir Steve doesn’t return that love).
Posting on Slashdot (via Apple Insider), Carmack tells of rapidly pulling the trigger on his dev application, and then drops this bomb about AppStore:
The iTunes distribution channel is really a more important aspect than a lot of people understand. The ability to distribute larger applications than the over-the-air limits and effectively market your title with more than a dozen character deck name, combined with the reasonable income split make this look like a very interesting market. This type of developer / customer interaction is probably the wave of the future for mobile devices, it will be interesting to see how quickly the other players can react. Based on our experiences with the carriers, I am betting not very quickly.
Wow, anti-carrier combo bonus points! So, how soon will we see a tilt and tap FPS (first person shooter)? And anyone else think Carmack will sneak an El Jobso boss into iDoom?
The iPhone Blog merged with the Phone different site in May of 2008. Both sites were founded on a premise that comes one from one of Apple's old slogans: Think different. The iPhone Blog: for people who dare to phone different.
