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Remember those long hot summer days, back in your childhood, when the musical sounds of an ice cream truck pulling into your neighborhood sent you bolting out the door and running into the street, painting the sidewalk with your saliva along the way? Well prepare to feed your inner child another tasty treat. Tiny Code, the site behind Installer.app repositories (yes, THAT installer.app) has apparently leaked information regarding Apple’s upcoming iPhone SDK, claiming that it was working with Apple to develop said SDK, no less.

The site, which went down soon after exposing its alliance with Apple, now redirects to Apple’s developer website. Huh, you say? Yeah, that was my reaction as well. But let’s be honest here; the iPhone jailbreaking /hacking community has been so creative in implementing application development and integration, is it any wonder Apple may have to chosen to use this as a base for its own framework? Makes sense to me. As the saying goes… “Always dance with the one who brung you.”

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While I was gone at CTIA, there’s been a bunch of things that have happened that I didn’t get time to properly write about. So today, we’ll have a bit of an iPhone news smörgåsbord. There’s been a fair amount of news, a fair amount of not-news, and some of the things that I’ve been reading are just plain wrong.

Apple Dealing with Film-Makers Directly for iTunes
Apple has sidestepped some of the major studios for some films, opting instead to deal directly with film-makers. This could be a sign of things to come — it would be great to not have to report every major film-studio or TV channel contract tiff.

Apple iPhone Dev Center
Apple has created a web site devoted to developers that are interested in putting their programs on the iPhone. Apple is calling it the iPhone Dev Center, and it’s a repository of tips, tricks, and guidelines to follow should anyone want to make an iPhone web app. It’s also probably a list of instructions that one would have to follow to get listed as a featured application on Apple’s web app listing.

Molson Reveals iPhone on Rogers in January?
For any Canadian readers, Molson ran a contest that had an iPhone as the prize. They had a disclaimer on the iPhone prize, stating that it couldn’t be activated on the Rogers network until January. So, odds are pretty good that the iPhone will be out in Canada in January. Molson has since pulled the language for the contest, saying they have no idea when anything is coming out ever. And they never had any idea. (images below via Electronista)

Is the iPhone Running Leopard?
There’s an article at Wired that delves deeper into Jobs’ open letter about 3rd party applications on the iPhone and the connection to Leopard. One of the tidbits that Jobs talks about briefly is signing applications, and Wired has a good look into what that would mean for 3rd party iPhone apps. And, there’s some discussion whether the iPhone is based off of Leopard or not: “It’s not known for sure at this point, but all indications are that the iPhone is a Leopard-based device,” as stated by Carl Howe, analyst at Blackfriars. It clearly is. Witness the uname -a of my laptop on 10.4 vs. the uname -a of my iphone:

The important bit there is the kernel version. Apple releases the OSX frameworks to correspond with kernel versions of darwin for every version of OSX. The iPhone has been running Leopard (9.0) since it came out in June. My 10.4 laptop is running darwin 8.10.0, which corresponds to 10.4.10.

iPhone Security Faults
Meanwhile, there’s been a rash of complaints about the iPhone’s security. You may have seen headlines that compare the iPhone to Windows 95, for example. It’s of course, a loaded comparison, made for sensationalism. You could just as well compare the iPhone’s security to Windows 98, Windows ME, or Windows XP if you’re logged in as an administrator (which is everybody — you can barely run Office as a limited user). But, Windows 95 gets the headline. Since the iPhone is made of UNIX, user separation is built-in, expect apps to run as something other than administrator/root/super-user when the SDK update comes out. Perhaps earlier; we can’t know as Apple isn’t commenting. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that ‘run as root’ is a good security model. It’s so bad, it’s not even a security model.

iPhone de-bricking: re-virginizer tool available
The Elite team posted a re-virginizer tool that people can use to restore the ability to upgrade. This tool locks the iPhone with the proper bits in place on the iPhone radio; some of the free iPhone unlock tools wrote stuff to the iPhone baseband radio that was invalid; this led to bricked phones when it came time to update the firmware to 1.1.1.

AT&T Upgrading Core Network
Randall Stephenson, CEO of AT&T, was interviewed recently and he talked about many things concerning the iPhone and AT&T’s network. Their core should make for faster downloads for anything that uses AT&T’s networks, wired or wireless. That means us: anyone using an iPhone should see a smidgen of a benefit, but the real help comes when we’re using 3G fast internet iPhones.

There’s a big article in the New York Times that includes an interview with Steve Jobs about the excellent shape that Apple’s in nowadays. Apple is 3rd in computer shipments overall. They might slip to 4th when Acer buys Gateway after Gateway buys Packard Bell, but Apple will still have more growth than the resulting top three. The Times did an interview with Jobs, and he of course has some choice things to say about everything — Leopard vs. Vista, Ultimate Editions, the iPhone’s multitouch interface, the delays of Leopard, and the Newton.

‘Mr. Jobs said that multitouch drastically simplified the process of controlling a computer.

There are no “verbs” in the iPhone interface, he said, alluding to the way a standard mouse or stylus system works. In those systems, users select an object, like a photo, and then separately select an action, or “verb,” to do something to it.’

I’ve written about what Ars Technica called the ‘New Frontier’ of the SDK, and I agreed with Ars that it was coming. Anyone that gripes about the availability of the development kit for making apps on the iPhone doesn’t give enough credit for what Apple has created with multitouch.

Erica Sadun, iPhone hacker extraordinaire and writer at The Unofficial Apple Weblog, has documented the entire set of Cocoa function calls required to program for the iPhone. These header files are used for programmers to properly create user interfaces, network code, and, well, pretty much everything. And the documentation effort is a massive job, usually not something to be done by just one person. I know that this site can get kind of wonky here and there, so I’ll do my best to explain why this is important, but for everybody.

All of the applications available from Installer.app have been written without any formal set of documentation. So, there may be some bugs, since there’s no single place to go for programming information. Usually, Apple would provide the documentation for programming on the iPhone. But, as they’ve recently announced, they’re not going to be doing that until February. So, now anyone that is planning or writing a native Cocoa app for the iPhone or iPod touch now has the means to research how to do it.

That includes both the folks that are hacking iPhones to install and write 3rd party apps, and any larger software companies that want to get a leg up on their software development. With this set of header files, it should be perfectly possible for any large development group to prototype their program well in advance of the official Apple release.

Of course, these header files may yet change. There’s no guarantee that Apple’s set of documentation will stay the same; Apple will definitely be adding to this, and they may not allow some of the function calls documented by Sadun to be accessible for other programmers. No one can tell. But, it’s a huge step for programming native applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch

figure 1: John Gruber

John Gruber of Daring Fireball has posted an excellent discussion on the various subtleties of the language used in Steve Jobs’ iPhone SDK letter. He talks of HTML widgets vs. the stripped-down Cocoa API, the security of the current iPhone, the hidden compliment-slash-dig on Nokia and their recent “open to anything” marketing slogan, signed apps, the iTunes App store, and with his usual attention to detail and insight. Well worth the read there, like any long Gruber post.

Gruber also points to a blog post for OSX developers that intend to write applications for the iPhone, which led to a comment-discussion by several mac developers, and where they intend to aim their development efforts — both in functionality of their applications, and price thereof. It looks like there’s plenty of hope for the $5 app, if they can be guaranteed to be paid. There’s still the lingering question of how available the SDK will be — and that’s excellently addressed by Frasier Spiers on a blog post at his site.

Steve Jobs has confirmed the rumor. It looks like this won’t be just widgets — it will be full, system-level native apps. It will be interesting to see how they perform this — as the iPhone stands, everything is running in ‘ring 0′. My guess is that they’re going to have to redesign the iPhone to run in multi-user mode. That is, some things will be running as root, other things will be running as ‘radio’, and some things will be running as ‘Mike Overbo’, for example. From http://www.apple.com/hotnews/:

Third Party Applications on the iPhone

Let me just say it: We want native third party applications on the iPhone, and we plan to have an SDK in developers’ hands in February. We are excited about creating a vibrant third party developer community around the iPhone and enabling hundreds of new applications for our users. With our revolutionary multi-touch interface, powerful hardware and advanced software architecture, we believe we have created the best mobile platform ever for developers.

It will take until February to release an SDK because we’re trying to do two diametrically opposed things at once—provide an advanced and open platform to developers while at the same time protect iPhone users from viruses, malware, privacy attacks, etc. This is no easy task. Some claim that viruses and malware are not a problem on mobile phones—this is simply not true. There have been serious viruses on other mobile phones already, including some that silently spread from phone to phone over the cell network. As our phones become more powerful, these malicious programs will become more dangerous. And since the iPhone is the most advanced phone ever, it will be a highly visible target.

Some companies are already taking action. Nokia, for example, is not allowing any applications to be loaded onto some of their newest phones unless they have a digital signature that can be traced back to a known developer. While this makes such a phone less than “totally open,” we believe it is a step in the right direction. We are working on an advanced system which will offer developers broad access to natively program the iPhone’s amazing software platform while at the same time protecting users from malicious programs.

We think a few months of patience now will be rewarded by many years of great third party applications running on safe and reliable iPhones.

Steve

P.S.: The SDK will also allow developers to create applications for iPod touch. [Oct 17, 2007]

Charge the defibrillators, my heart just stopped. None other than Steve Jobs himself has officially announced that Apple will indeed open iPhone to native software development, and provide an SDK next February. Apparently plans were in the works to open the platform to developers all along (told you so) but Apple still hasn’t figured a non-invasive procedure for allowing applications to run in OSX.

So, the good news is there is a God. The bad news is it’s Steve Jobs.

Read his excellency’s blessed scrawl after the break. Or go here to see the official announcement on Apple.com

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The Leopard-January-SDK rumor is floating around again, this time at Businessweek (we reported on it here, and there’s another rumor concerning development here. With it comes talk of a system development kit, or a way to get applications on an iPhone that doesn’t require hacking. There’s no indication as to whether it’s a real SDK or whether it’s a way to sync HTML widgets. My gut hunch is widgets, but it’s also possible that the iPhone requires the same version of XCode that Leopard uses. [via

iPhone users may experience sudden loss of bladder control in early January. According to sources quoted by BusinessWeek, who are close to the companies plans – sorry BW, the janitorial staff do not count as sources – Apple plans to deliver an SDK at MacWorld, finally opening the platform to software developers. No more of that freakshow hackware stuff, alright?

The sources go on to say that Apple’s timing has to do with the release of Leopard, the next version of OSX, coming next Friday. Apparently this upcoming iPhone SDK will somehow be tied directly to Leopard itself, through Xcode, though I’m still questioning how that is possible. I assume there are major changes to Cocoa, native to Leopard. Or it could simply be a technical way of luring developers to Leopard in the same way that Microsoft soldered DirectX 10 on to Vista, hoping to sucker attract game developers.

Anyway, pour a pint of ale. Three cheers for it. See you in January, and all that rot.

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Apple has quietly posted a Safari web app directory, similar to the one for Dashboard Widgets, featuring every available iPhone-optimized web 2.0 service or web app created by human hands. Ok, so these aren’t the apps we’re looking for, and there are dozens if not hundreds of directory sites in existence already, but let it never be said we iPhone users are in want of a good web browser. Right? crickets chirping

[Update] Amazingly this directory isn’t formatted for iPhone. Strange that Apple would build a web app directory for iPhone, designed to be accessed from a desktop.

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