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Craig Hockenberry, the widely acclaimed Mac developer of Twitterific, has had extensive experience developing for jailbroken iPhones and iPod Touches. So, when he weighs in on the iPhone SDK, it’s definitely worth a read.

From the 70/30 split to the $99 publishing fee, the lack of information about distributing 3rd party apps to beta testers, the possibility of try-before-you-buy demos, and the mechanism for paid upgrades, Hockenberry pulls no punches:

One thing that disappoints me about the iPhone SDK sign-up is that the entry fee of $99 is too low. I look at the entry fee as a way to filter out developers that aren’t fully committed to the platform. [...] A higher entry fee would lessen the chance of this becoming a bottleneck for getting my product into the system. Please charge me $499 and let move to the front of the line.

Wait… Charge developers MORE? And what, pass the costs on to the consumer?

Not according to former Apple programmer (and writer of Apple’s GeekGameBoard sample code), Jens Alfke. He thinks $0.99 - $1.99 might just set off the perfect high-volume price storm:

So assume you spent some evenings and weekends writing a cool little utility or game. You submit it to the App Store and set the price at $1.43. You get $1 of pure, unadulterated profit from every user of the app. [...] Steve promises us there will be ten million iPhones in the world. If a tenth of a percent of them impulse-purchase your $1.43 app, that’s $100,000.

Alfke also covers the interesting possibility of Xbox-style game expansion packs as revenue streams, and takes a not-to-subtle swipe at carrier gouging and consumer gluttony via the ringtone market.

Hmm, serious developers charging no-brainer prices for “next great platform” apps? I’m in! What about you?

Response to Apple’s release of an iPhone SDK has been overwhelming; literally. Since it became publicly available yesterday, Apple’s developer website has been swamped with user registrations and download requests. I personally have made numerous attempts to download the SDK, all unsuccessfully. If that’s any indication of the frenzied bustle of app development we might expect, I’d say we can expect a torrent of iPhone applications in the coming months. Bring your umbrella.

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Apple has posted the video from its March 6 iPhone Software Roadmap event, available for viewing. Go here.

[Photo credit: PhoneMag]

Wait…You mean it’s a phone, an internet portal, an iPod AND a gaming device? Apple is certainly following through with this one-gadget-to-rule-them-all motif. In fact, the game demos pretty much stole the show at the iPhone SDK Roadmap event.

Using the three-axis iPhone accelerometer, multi-touch, and pretty much everything else that the iPhone is capable of doing—portable gaming is officially on notice.

Touch Fighter, an in-house Apple creation, which is akin to Wing Commander, uses the iPhone’s intuitive movements for its controls. Tilt the screen to move the plane, tap the screen to fire the missiles. Who’s going to miss the stylus or speakerphone analog stick, after they get their hands on that?

However, the biggest revelation for iPhone gaming is the developers already on board. EA and Sega both demoed early productions of Spore and Super Monkey Ball. Spore for the iPhone is the full-fledged version complete with all 18 levels. Movement for both games is controlled again by tilting the iPhone.

We’re only beginning to scratch the surface for gaming on the iPhone—these games only show 2 weeks of development. If more developers jump on board, there is no telling how far and how fun gaming on the iPhone will be.

Months ago Apple made a promise to developers, committing to one day release an SDK and open the iPhone for platform development. Today it made good on its promise, and reaffirmed that old adage “good things come to those who wait”.

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For those of you looking for forward to building apps for iPhone, don’t plan on writing that code on Windows. According to story posted on iPodNN, Apple will be making its upcoming iPhone SDK available for Mac only, with Leopard as required OS. That?s not surprising given that iPhone runs on an embedded flavor of OSX, and it?s not as though Mac software can be written in Microsoft Visual Studio. Apparently Apple will be releasing an enhanced version of Xcode, with built-in tools for iPhone application development.

So there you have it. Buy a Mac mini, fire up Xcode, and start compiling.

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Today is the big day for soon-to-be iPhone developers, anxiously awaiting for an SDK to drop from the mothership. Before that happens, I’d like to clear up some comflicting reports that are spreading through the ether. As you might have guessed, Apple’s distribution portal for native iPhone applications will be iTunes, just as it now for iPod media and games. However, according to my sources that will only apply to commercial (as in BUY NOW) software.

Free and or open source applications won’t by tied to the great orifice that is iTunes. Those applications will have a method for loading on iPhone, provided they adhere to Apple’s development guidelines and are signed with a special digital signature, ala Symbian, for security purposes.

Now, that is what I’ve been told by reliable sources. We’ll find out in just a few hours whether this is fact or fiction. I’m banking on the former.

Mark your calendars for March 6, 10:00 am PST. Apple will be holding a special event for members of the media, outlining the company’s iPhone development roadmap, as well a possible SDK release for developers. Apple began sending out invitations to the press early this morning, except for me of course. Steve Jobs has never forgiven me for photoshopping his head on Napoleon’s bust. And I was so looking forward to the free crab cake.

Stay tuned.

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.