To go along with iPhone OS 3.1.2 (and the iPod touch equivalent) released earlier today, Apple has sent an email to registered developers informing them that:
Phone SDK 3.1.2 is now available on the iPhone Dev Center. If you have updated your development devices to iPhone OS 3.1.2, you will need to download and install the new iPhone SDK to continue your development.
A version of iPhone SDK 3.1.2 is also available to developers who are running Mac OS X Snow Leopard. Please ensure you select the appropriate SDK based on your development environment.
Apple has now weighed in with regards to AT&T’s announcement today that they would be changing their policy and allowing VoIP (Voice over IP) to operate over their 3G network (something they’d previously asked Apple not to allow). When reached for comment, Apple spokeswoman Natalie Kerris told TiPb:
We’re very happy that AT&T is now supporting VoIP applications. We will be amending our developer agreement to get VoIP apps on the App Store and in customers’ hands as soon as possible.
Hopefully this means users on other carriers, liberated by AT&T along with the rest of us, will now also get VoIP over 3G apps. If any international carriers do decide to ban VoIP themselves at this point — yeah, we don’t see that going over well at all.
Ars Technica is reporting, and posting the relevant legal language to back up, that the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement now contains language that says:
registered developers can no longer jailbreak their own phones or assist others in jailbreaking their phones, including (but not limited to) working on projects such as QuickPwn or PwnageTool. Developers are also forbidden from using the iPhone OS, SDK, or other developer tools to develop applications for distribution in any way other than the App Store or Ad Hoc distribution—which of course rules out distribution via Cydia, free or otherwise.
Of course, this won’t prevent iPhone Dev Team from working on future jailbreak-related projects, but Ars rightly points out it may make legit iPhone developers hesitate in helping them out. From Apple’s point of view, this is understandable (they want control of their platform and revenue stream), but from the point of view of certain types of developers and technology enthusiasts, it’s untenable.
However, it remains to be seen what, if anything, Apple can or — more importantly — would do when it comes to enforcing this agreement.
As part of their just concluded iPhone OS 3.0 Preview Event, Apple refreshed the iPhone SDK and announced over 1000 new API for developers which, according to Senior Vice President of iPhone Software, Scott Forstall, are designed to better help developers make great apps. (And a boatload of money for all involved, ‘natch).
Highlights include:
- In-app purchases, which means if you’re play a First Person Shoot, you can pay $0.99 (or whatever they choose) to get yourself a better gun.)
- Peer-to-Peer connectivity, which should allow multi-user, or multi-player interaction for games or information exchange using Bonjour and Bluetooth (no pairing needed).
- Push Notification Service, which was first announced at WWDC last year, will finally make an appearance and allow developers, through Apple’s server, to trigger badges (like Mail’s unread message counter), custom sounds, and modal alerts (like the new SMS message box).
- Maps lets developers embed Google Maps functionality in their own applications with full interactions, but also custom annotations.
- Accessory support means developers can now interact with “made for iPod” certified accessories either via Dock port or Bluetooth — no word yet on Bluetooth keyboards, however.
- iPod Library access — which we’re sure Steve Jobs wrestled from Big Music’s petrified hands — let’s developers access onboard audio content, so users can listen to their own stuff, in 3rd party apps.
There’s a lot more to it, of course, especially at the deeper and more fundamental levels it looks like. Hopefully if Apple can get the App Store sorted out in similar fashion, iPhone Apps could be steamrolling into the second generation!
Our sibling-site PreCentral.net points us to an interesting developer commentary up on Ars Technica which provides this little golden spitball of insight:
he had a lot of good things to say about how Palm is handing the extremely nascent developer community and his hopes for the future of the platform. The developer told us that he has explored mobile development on Apple’s iPhone SDK and found much of the company’s position towards their community to be “developer-hostile”—an obvious reference to their insistence on enforcing a pointless NDA well past its expiration date and their strong hand in regulating what can and cannot be developed for its platform.
Apple, of course, is providing Cocoa Touch, an iPhone-optimized version of their Objective C frameworks that, while highly administrated by Apple, provides desktop-class power with a hefty of amount of access to developers. Palm, by contrast, is using Mojo as an open, web-standards based framework for the webOS, which we’re guessing will be something similar to how Widgets work (half way between WebApps and native apps).
Every solution comes with compromises, so in the end it will be up to each developer to choose which platform(s) best suit their needs and the apps they want to build, but is the way in which Apple treats developers — something entirely outside the SDK — going to be a concern as competing alternatives like Android and webOS become increasingly available?
As revealed by Craig Hockenberry on Twitter shortly after today’s iPhone OS 2.2.1 update: developers hadn’t heard a whisper of this release, no beta, not even a warning, and it wasn’t compatible with the previous SDK. Nice, Apple!
It should come as some relief, then, that the iPhone SDK has now also been bumped to 2.2.1. Says Ars Technica’s Erica Sadun:
In all likelihood, the 2.2.1 SDK is, as suggested, a simple bug update without any significant API changes.
So not much different from the iPhone OS 2.2.1 then?
Of course, with such a minor point release we can’t really expect anything revolutionary (we’ll likely need 3.0 for that). But Apple has been known to sneak some early clues into frameworks, so hopefully we’ll find something to look forward to once the deep code divers get through tearing this one apart.
iPhone developer extraordinaire Erica Sadun over at Ars reveals that Apple has expanded on the iPhone SDK samples, and with some pretty nifty new stuff.
While I can’t claim to understand it, included in the update is aurioTouch and oalTouch for scilloscope and positional audio, Accessory and TouchCells which (apparently!) give greater options in tables and cells, and URLCache and Reflection which focus on Web-based data and image reflections respectively.
Says Sadun:
The iPhone Reference Library is an amazing resource for developers. It offers access to sample code, guides, and release notes. The new items I listed here augment Apple’s already rich iPhone sample code suite. Make a habit of stopping by the library page; Apple will often add new items there without announcement.
Check it out!
Beta release 8 is compatible with the final iPhone OS 2.0 release and must be used to build and sign any iPhone OS application to be submitted to the App Store. As a reminder, you must be a member of the iPhone Developer Program to submit apps.
So quoth Apple’s developer site, continuing its relentless schedule leading up to a rumored Friday Gold Master, and a necessary July 11th iPhone 3G launch.
The latest beta weighs in at 1.25 GB and is identified as 5a345.
What’s new this time around? Aside from stability, new certificates replaced the previous, just-expired certificates. Only time and the usually bit-by-bit code inspection will tell what else may lurk in the strings (like MMS and Secure Erase?).
However the SDK beta does require the also available-to-developers beta of iTunes 7.7, with a new, fresh tab to handle App Store apps the same way its previously handled Music, Video, and the rest of your iPhone content.
We’re through the looking glass, folks.
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This is the month we are supposed to see the unveiling of the iPhone SDK, finally ending all the omgnoappz drama and obviating the need for Jailbreaking for all but the most hardcore of iPhone users. It feels like the wait has taken forever.
Now we see that TUAW is reporting that there will indeed be an Apple event at the end of February. Many are hoping that it will be the release (or at least more details) on the iPhone SDK. Others are hoping for a 3G iPhone announcement — but that seems much less likely given that Apple just released the 16GB model.
So let’s join the bandwagon and assume it’ll be an SDK event. Cool. Now the real question, the one that put an icy lump of fear and doubt into our hearts during the last Phone different podcast: what if it’s just an announcement of an SDK for developers, that Apple won’t let the apps on for another 6 months?
