After waking up on Tuesday to face the dreaded Blue– er… Pink-Screen-of-Death (?!) that signaled the expiry of the 2nd beta release for the iPhone SDK, would-be-developers managed not to go to bed angry as Apple kissed and made-up in the form of SDK Beta 3.

Erica Sadun over on TUAW reports that the latest/greatest weighs in at 1.4GB, or just three-quarters the size of the original beta, with the matching firmware at under 200MB according to a commenter.

What new goodies does this release hold? We’ll have to wait a bit to find out. But with the continual slow, grinding, excruciating march towards an anticipated June release (WWDC? June 30 at 11:59 pm? Little help?) waiting is something iPhone lovers are used to.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

iPhone SDK Beta: Take 3

Rumor gets reported there will be Flash on the iPhone. Rumor gets smashed. Rumor gets reported there will be unlimited music on the iPhone. Rumor gets smashed. Rinse and repeat.

What’s going on? Why aren’t we getting these stories straight?

Turns out maybe these stories weren’t meant to be gotten. Turns out maybe these stories were meant to get us.

There was a time when media really was the fourth estate, when it reported the news. In something akin to the scientific method, media observed what was going on in the grand experiment that is society, looked for pattern and flaw, then contextualized it, gave it form and flavor, and broadcast it by mule and truck and cable and fiber to those who wanted or needed to know.

Now media is entertainment and is competing with itself and other forms of entertainment for your attention and your dollar. One of the ways to compete is to get mysterious “un-named sources” to give you the highly prized “sensational headline”. And instead of digging for these sources and convincing them to come forward, the anonymous sources now trip and push past each other to get to the reporters first. Why? Because controlling the story is important. Information is power and spin is leverage.

Okay, soap-box, what does this have to do with the iPhone? Two interesting and very similar blog posts emerged recently shedding new light on both the Flash and unlimited music stories that have been all over the web lately. Let’s take a look:

Flash first. GearLive heard it was good to go. Adobe said they didn’t know. Steve Jobs said not so much. Adobe’s CEO said the SDK would allow it. Then Adobe contradicted their own CEO. Is there really so much confusion? Is Adobe’s CEO really that tech un-savvy? Is El Jobso?

Robert Scoble (via Fake Steve) calls shenanigans on all of them:

Today I got a note from someone I know who works closely with Adobe and Apple. [...] He says that he’s seen Flash running on an iPhone in a lab and that it’s been running for quite a while and that it’s not a technical issue that caused Steve Jobs to go public about not putting Adobe’s Flash on the iPhone. [...] So, what’s the reason, according to my source? Adobe is playing hardball with Apple over their PDF renderer. “Adobe wants Apple to use the Adobe PDF renderer.” His thesis? Steve Jobs is playing hard to get to get Adobe to give up this demand.

Unlimited music next. The Financial Times reported that Apple, long hating on the subscription model, was doing an about-face and embracing unlimited music, only to have Business Week report the exact opposite the very next day. Both cited high placed sources. Both can’t be right, can they?

Matt Buchanan over at Gizmodo believes they can — if only by virtue of opposing manipulations:

The labels, particularly Universal, are known to be hot on a subscription deal, since it’d provide more reliable revenue from iPods [...] Apple, on the other hand, is already [earning revenue] with iTunes just the way it is. [...] Since the labels really want a subscription model, it makes sense that label sources would play it up to the press, giving them more leverage at the negotiating table by showing the heavy buzz/demand the rumor is generating. Apple-side sources would spin the opposite way, since—if they really were considering a subscription model—it would give them weight to push down the price, both what they’d give labels and what they’d charge us. And as both the FT and NYT have noted, price is likely to be the major sticking point.

Nate Anderson coverage on Ars Technica also reminds us that the manipulations aren’t just limited to Apple, Adobe, and the recording industry — iTunes competitors aren’t going to miss a chance to rattle the “monopoly” saber either:

The argument is a simple one. “Apple has a monopoly,” [eMusic CEO David] Pakman told me Friday, citing their US market share at 80 percent. Companies in that situation have to play by a “different standard,” especially when it comes to anything that could be construed as “tying” (recall that Microsoft was accused of exactly this sort of tying when it rolled new “features” like Internet Explorer into Windows and then had to deal with years of litigation). If every iPod comes with [the hypothetical service], that’s tying,” Pakman said. eMusic and others would certainly bring the matter to regulators’ attention.

Could they be right? Is whether or not the iPhone can run Flash academic? Is whether or not some consumers might want the subscription model just as irrelevant? Are Adobe, Apple, and Big Media just playing games? Are would-be competitors playing along to send a message? Are reporters, desperate to fill column inches and make post counts, playing along? And are consumers — the people to whom these issues matter most — providing very loud, very public reactions, only to get played by all sides?

If so, this means iPhone users won’t get Flash or unlimited music — even if we want it, even if big business would make money and increase market share by giving it to us — until “those who sit above in shadow” decide they’ve leveraged and manipulated every last little bit they can from us and from each other.

And we should know that by now, shouldn’t we?

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Being Played? Flash, Music, and Manipulation – Wait-a-Thon

Macnn/iPodnn (via The Inquirer) reports that unlike CoreLocation, which gives access to the Google Maps-like location-based services, Apple’s new iPhone SDK will be providing absolutely no access to iPod functionality or the onboard iTunes:

Any functionality related to music playback is inaccessible by the iPhone SDK, a new report claims. While the SDK allows access to many other functions of iPhone and the iPod touch, such as dialing, the camera and Internet access, The Inquirer writes that any components connected to iTunes are off-limits, preventing developers from accessing one of the most popular features of the phone

While this could be an anti-competitive move meant to keep VLC off the iPhone — or to protect consumers from the horror that would be RealPlayer Touch… — it may also cripple any Guitar Hero, Rockband, or iPod-style Phase gaming. (Unless Harmonix and other big game developers like EA are granted that oft-mentioned “special dispensation”…?)

Did it used to about the music, and Apple’s now telling us to just “sl@g off!”? Or are you happy they’re keeping developers’ tone-deaf mitts off your shiny (i)tunes? What do you think?

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

iPhone SDK: No iPod Access for You!

iLounge tells us that Apple has sent out a second note to would be $99-level iPhone SDK developers:

“We have many more requests than we can serve during this initial beta period, so we must limit the Program at this time. We plan to expand it during the beta period, and we will contact you regarding your enrollment status at the appropriate time. We appreciate your patience.”

This follows up on last week’s far more confusing note, and the rampant speculation it caused.

Now TUAW brings word that some developers have, indeed, been granted access to SDK paradise:

The accepted developers were apparently among the first to apply. The accepted developers previously received the rejection letter. The acceptances appear to be random. The program is firewalled. Five iPhone limit. Test devices are iBricks [or maybe not: see update at TUAW]

So does that really clarify anything? Will anxious developers get in before June? Or is Apple dropping the ball?

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Rejected (Or Not?) – Apple Clarifies(-ish) and First Acceptences!

Engadget honcho Ryan Block got his techie mitts on a pre-release version of the iPhone 2.0 firmware, and here are the highlights (and lowlights!):

Exchange over Wi-Fi is not instantaneous (!). No contact search he could find. New button in Calendar don’t do nothing for him yet. App Store error’s out. Cisco branded VPN screen. Parental controls are good-to-go. Wi-Fi order can be specified in prefs. Calc has new widescreen scientific mode and icon. And his favorite new feature — Multi-Select in Mail!

Head on over for a full rundown and gallery o’ pics!

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

iPhone 2.0: Hands-On!

Ah, Apple gone and done it now! SXSW debuted this year’s hottest social trend: Mass Twitter-steria, and now the 140 character mob has its torches and pitchforks ready to storm Cupertino. Or not.

Let’s back up a step. Following the Apple SDK announcement, pretty much everyone and their neck-bearded uncle rushed to developer.apple.com and started their download engines. 100,000 of them in the first few days alone. That’s a lot of love. And even more expectation.

Today, many would-be developers, including tippity-top tier indie sensations, received the following cryptic response from Apple (via Daring Fireball)

Dear Registered iPhone Developer,

Thank you for expressing interest in the iPhone Developer Program. We have received your enrollment request. As this time, the iPhone Developer Program is available to a limited number of developers and we plan to expand during the beta period. We will contact you again regarding your enrollment status at the appropriate time.

Thank you for applying.

Best regards,

iPhone Developer Program

Apple slamming the door, or asking a larger-than-anticipated crowd to take a number and please be patient? Sadly, no rosetta stone was provided to help us suss that out.

My money is on the latter. 100,000 certificates is a lot to process (and almost certainly weed out). That Apple didn’t communicate this effectively is, unfortunately and increasingly, par for the course 1 Infinite Loop way.

It should also be made clear that this in no way prevents anyone from developing on the iPhone, using the free ADC membership and the simulator environment. What this does, however, is prevent anyone who hoped to sign up for the $99 membership from receiving their authentication certificates. This means no transferring apps to an actual iPhone, and more importantly, no testing on an actual iPhone for now.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Rejected! (Or Not?) – Apple Sends Developers Mixed Signals

The internet in your pocket. That’s what Steve Jobs and Apple advertising have promised us since Macworld 2007. Not the watered-down WAP internet, the server-pre-rendered kinda-sorta-internet, or the stunted mobile internet. Just… the internet.

In large part, they’ve succeeded. By promoting open, standards-based support for HTML (hyper-text markup language) structure, CSS (cascading style sheet) design, Javascript actions, and the hybrid interactive richness of AJaX (Asynchronous Javascript and XML) that enable WebApps, Apple has brought us the closest thing yet to a desktop-class browsing experience on our mobiles.

About the only thing missing, many would argue, is Flash.

Adobe’s ubiquitous interactive, multi-media technology powers everything from online office apps to easily embedded video clips to in-our-face banner adds. It also powers it’s own “cookie” (online state-saving and tracking) system. Didn’t know that? Advertisers do. They already exploit Flash cookies on the desktop. And as much as we want our videos clips on the iPhone, they want their cookies more. After all, the iPhone is the “next generation mobile” devices — the one that know everything about us, including who we are and where we are, with all of our private contacts and secure contents just there for the tracking, aggregating, and selling.

The Good, the Bad, and the Flashy

Flash’s general pros and cons have been debated up and down the web. On the pro side, countless users clamor for access to the gigantic online video libraries (both popular and “adult”) that leverage Flash for deployment, as well as web-based applications that use Flash as a development environment. For the cons, the proprietary nature (Adobe owned), accessibility issues, DRM, search engine un-friendliness, and standards non-compliance, along with the history of resource issues with OS X (memory and CPU) raise red flags galore.

Even Steve Jobs, whose company makes and markets both the iPhone and the arguably competitive QuickTime technology, has weighed in: Flash desktop too heavy, Flash Lite not heavy enough, and what iPhone needs just plain missing in between.

But the one issue we haven’t heard much debate about is also potentially the most troubling: Privacy.

The Cookie Conundrum

Most of us are familiar with bowser cookies, those little text strings placed on our systems by many (if not most) modern websites.

Cookies were originally designed to innocently preserve state (the current condition(s) of the browser). For example, when we log into a website a cookie is placed on our system so that the website can keep us logged in as we browse from page to page. This benefits us because it makes our lives easier — we don’t have to login over and over again each time we change pages. Likewise, we benefit from cookies that maintain our preferences or keep track of our secure connections.

Online advertisers quickly saw benefits of their own. With cookies, advertisers can track us not only through their own sites but across the web. And they can use that data to more specifically target their advertising to us, and they can package our data (aggregated with the data of thousands or millions of others) and sell it for their own profit. While we (consumers) may benefit from this in certain narrow cases (Amazon providing better recommendations when we visit the site, or loyalty programs offering discounts on purchases), we are not formally compensated (they don’t share revenue), and it can be difficult or impossible for us to opt-out (ask and ensure that they don’t track us or sell our data).

Luckily, because of the privacy and security issues raised by cookies most modern browsers, including Apple’s Safari (including Mobile/Touch Safari on the iPhone), Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, and Mozilla’s Firefox provide settings to delete or even disable them entirely.

Advertisers know this, of course, and they don’t much like it. Enter Flash cookies.

Flash Bang

The Flash plugin is installed on almost every browser on every computer on the internet, and not only does it provides a cookie system all its own, it provides a way to tie Flash cookies back into browser cookies.

So, what’s the big deal? If old fashioned browsers are already storing cookies, what’s the difference if Flash does it as well?

The difference is that most end-users are completely unaware of Flash cookies. We don’t know that Adobe is providing a way to track our information, we don’t know that they are re-enabling browser cookies we’ve gone to the trouble of removing, and we certainly don’t know how to stop or prevent them from doing it.

To give a typical example, we go to a commercial site and it sends a cookie to our browser. We’ve set Firefox to refuse or delete cookies on exit, so we don’t worry about it. Our history is a clean slate. However, this site also sends a cookie to Flash. We go online again and the Flash cookie doesn’t see a clean slate, it sees everything, and it just keeps on tracking us again (and maybe even sees that we’ve deleted our browser cookie and picks up that trail as well). We’ve lost control of our own privacy.

Not so bad? Imagine it was a cheap film-noir detective following us everywhere we go. The store. The bank. Our office. Our bedroom. How would that feel?

Now remember the iPhone knows who we are. It holds all of our private contacts and personal data. And it knows where we are. Google and Skyhook have driven down our streets and through our neighborhoods mapping cell towers and even the Wi-Fi routers in our homes. And EDGE and Wi-Fi allow a virtual open pipe between the devices in our hands and the servers at Apple, Google, Yahoo, the carriers, and now with the iPhone SDK, any developer calling CoreLocation services. And who knows who else? (Not us, that’s for certain.)

So now we not only have our film-noir detective following us around, but we have him (potentially) accessing our phone, digging through our pockets, our wallets, and virtually low-jacking our each and every move. Bigger deal yet?

PCs and Macs have had security experts, privacy advocates, and massive user bases pounding away on them for years. On the desktop transparency is higher, architecture is more easily explored, and environments are far more open and customizable. If we don’t want a certain app, daemon, or service running, chances are someone’s already posted instructions on how to stop or remove it. And if we need an app, daemon, or service to help fix an existing privacy or security problem, chances are someone’s already developed it.

Not true on the iPhone. Though it’s given us a desktop-class browser and has made us comfortable (and indeed eager) to browse on a mobile device, Apple’s “next revolutionary platform”, even post-SDK, is far more of a black box than a little beige one.

(This is not to say people like noted pre-SDK developer Erica Sadun and countless others won’t bang on the iPhone faster and harder than ever to find out, its simply the state things are now and may well remain for most casual iPhone users who don’t scour the blogsphere on a daily basis).

And the Cons Have It

As a longtime corporate web developer who has routinely used Flash (though never Flash cookies!) for years, I thought I would miss it on the iPhone, and that I would quickly file a feature request with Apple and add my voice to the endless comment stream demanding it.

Turns out, not so much.

The clean, low overhead, open standards-based web experience Apple has promoted is compelling. I don’t miss the noisy banner adds, the instant-on video clips, and most importantly, I don’t miss Flash cookies.

But What About our Vidz??!1

While Apple already provides a YouTube app, having struck a deal with the Google-owned online video mega-power to transcode their content from Adobe’s codec to the iPhone-friendly MP4 (H.264) format, all this still leaves us with many, many other sites (among the fastest growing on the web, no less) still rocking the Flash, and thus excluded from our mobile enjoyment. What about them?

Adobe itself has recently announced support for H.264 encoded video in Flash, so there’s always the chance they may produce Steve Jobs’ “just right” sized Flash solution in-between Lite and desktop.

Third party WebApp and native App developers have also discussed technologies that would that would transcode Flash video to H.264 specifically for the iPhone, so if Adobe and Apple can’t get it together, maybe some enterprising young startup will?

Let’s just hope, whatever the solution and where ever it comes from, it provides the excellent user-experience iPhone owners have come to expect, and at the same time allows for the privacy and security control we now demand.

Appendix: Flash Cookie Management

Notes security expert Steve Gibson has previously provided instructions on how to manage Flash privacy settings and control cookie behavior:

Adobe Flash Settings Manager

Steve [Gibson]: So I wanted to mention that to everyone whos listening because many people wrote in having done this experiment. They deleted their cookies, they emptied their browser cache, they shut down their browser, they rebooted their computer, they took their laptop to somewhere else, and they were – and literally at least 40 people wrote in and said, “It still knew me. How did it know me?” And so I appreciated this confirmation that this use of Flash cookies is becoming more widespread, clearly in this case, as he says three out of the three financial institutions he used plant Flash cookies.So to all listeners, into Google you want to put “Flash player settings manager.” Just put in “Flash player settings manager,” and you get a link to Macromedia, maybe it says Adobe now, Im not sure, I dont remember whether theyve changed the URL. But the point is, most of us have Flash loaded in our machines now, which unfortunately is why the banks have all started using it. Its something that survives, as many listeners have discovered, it survives casual cookie deletion. And exactly as this guy has mentioned, it annoys him because it is unknown and is unclear.The good news is, its possible to control these settings and to prevent sites from using Flash cookies if for some reason you really didnt want that, or to restrict sites that you have specifically allowed. Anyway, theres good Flash cookie management available, and its a web-based interface. You dont use your local Flash player, running it like standalone, because it is an embedded web page object. Instead, if you put in “Flash player settings manager,” thatll take you to the Flash site, where youre then able to go to some web pages to bring up a little tabbed interface. Basically it runs your Flash player on the page and gives you access to a user interface you never knew you had. And youre able to browse through and see the domains that have registered cookies on your machine. You can delete them right there. Youre able to change settings. Youre able to do some worrisome things, like you can tell it dont ever turn on my microphone and camera without letting me know. Its like, okay, well, thats probably a good thing to tell it. So youre able to do that and a number of other things.So again, “Flash player settings manager,” and poke around in there. Youll find out who has stored cookies, so you know. Youre able to delete them. Youre able to then block them and prevent them from changing. Anyway, theres a whole bunch of tabs and settings that are definitely worth poking around in.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Flash on iPhone: Video Dream or Privacy Nightmare?

Bonus Podcast!

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.

• Our podcast feed
• Download Directly
• Subscribe via iTunes

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Phone different Podcast 14 – Wait-a-Thon

Everybody here at the iPhone Blog is very, very excited about the iPhone SDK Roadmap. We can’t wait for native apps, for more functionality, for games, for Apple to go after BlackBerrys. We can’t wait – seriously – it’s going to kill us waiting until “Late June” for all this good stuff. We’ve called in a team of psychiatrists, it’s not looking good.

We bet you feel the same way.

So to help ease the pain we’re instituting the iPhone Blog App Wait-a-Thon! Starting next week and then every week until Apple releases the iPhone 2.0 Software Update, we are going to give away a $100 iTunes Gift Certificate to a lucky reader.

You may not be getting your native apps now, but at least your can download some emo music to drown your sorrows, or a Pixar movie to cheer you up, or the first three seasons of LOST¹ to help remind you that it’s not that bad.

Here’s how it will work: Sometime during the week, two to three of our blog postings, articles, or reviews will have “Wait-a-Thon” after the title, that’s your cue to comment on that entry. Comment on that entry and you’ll be automatically entered in that week’s drawing. (Just one entry per post counts, max three per week).

The latest Wait-a-Thon post is always available here. Just take a look over next to the Wait-a-Thon contest graphic!

Full details after the break!

Them Details:

1. Open to everybody who has an iTunes store in their country (Yes, Mods too!)
2. One entry per “Wait-a-thon” post counts, but feel free to post as much as ya like!
3. No cheating on the referrals, we’re watching and we know.
4. Contest will run each week until “Late June” or whenever Apple releases the iPhone 2.0 software update. Yes – if Apple’s late we’ll keep it running. This is a Wait-a-Thon, after all.
5. We’ll announce the previous week’s Wait-a-Thon winner in the next week’s first Wait-a-Thon posting.
6. You can win no more than twice.

¹: Has anybody seriously considered the Apple angle with all the stuff that’s been happening on LOST? That satellite phone was iPhone-esque… Is Steve Jobs Alvar Hanzo? Or did he perhaps spend his early days studying with the DeGroots? Think about that: timeline fits, his counter-culture experimentation fits, …it all fits!

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

App Wait-a-Thon: Win $100 in iTunes Gift Cards

We’re not able to liveblog the event here at Phone different, but we are able to put our two cents in — stay tuned to this blog post during the event for color commentary on what Apple announces. It won’t be up to the second, but you’ll get a little more analysis in exchange for those extra minutes.

Bonus: comment on this post and we’ll quote our faves in at the top.

T-Minus 25 minutes. When you see the “read more” link below, it’s showtime!

All times below are EST, subtract 3 hours for actual Cupertino Time.

12:45: I’m feeling the Reality Distortion Field even though:

1. I’m not there
2. I don’t expect to be happily surprised by today’s announcement.

I’ve definitely crossed through that permeable membrane into his Steveness’ realm, though.

12:55

Bri Guy: I’ll give my first-born for cut ‘n paste.

I’d give your first born, too. :p

Bad Ash: why delay a week for an announcement?

Exactly. I still think that they were working their butts off to get something real out the door but couldn’t manage it. That’s the one ray of light here – that we might actually be pretty close to real apps getting released because they were this close to getting it out.

rener: Games ready to ship? 3G iPhone announced? ActiveSync licensed (purely for Dieter, of course)?

No. No. partly cloudy, with a 30% chance of Exchange.

12:58: Reports that Disney employees have preferred seating — that’s interesting? Can’t imagine that Disney has any relation to apps — maybe we’ll get more info on just why iTunes hasn’t met the goal of getting movies in quickly enough, with a side of “every Disney film in on iTunes now”

As an aside, I will forego sourcing each little tidbit here during the liveblog, but will add them after. Kudos in advance to: Ars, Gizmodo, PhoneMag, Macworld, and Engadget. …who are relegated to the back, but they get free power — Apple’s finally admitted that this live blog thing is real and they’re paying attention to it.

Update again: going to put new stuff at top.

12:01: It begins. “Welcome” from Steve, in a turtleneck of course. Stats on the iPhone, 2nd to RIM in the US. Huuuge Safari usage stats, as we’ve previously reported. I wonder: 90% of people reading these live blogs must already know a lot of these figures — or am I just so deep into cell phone news that it doesn’t occur to me that not everybody knows that the iPhone is rocking the mobile industry.

12:05: Bam. Jumping right into Enterprise news. That bodes well – usually these things end with a bang. If we start with enterprise support, that may mean that the “bang” will be apps NOW. Crossing my fingers.

Yes, he said “push email” wouldn’t say it if he wouldn’t get it. Right? Right?

12:07: They’re doing ALL of these things: push email, push contacts, VPN, security, remote wipe, enterprise config. I didn’t expect that. This might just be bigger news, sales-wise and mindshare-wise, than the SDK. I care most about the SDK, but America and Wall Street cares most about enterprise.

Active Sync and Exchange support confirmed. BOOM. Except no “Boom.” This announcement was given to Phil Shiller — a sign that Steve still doesn’t really care about Enterprise.

…now, the devil is going to be in the details. How will they implement this. Will the iPhone work with MSCMDM (search WMExperts for that one). If so, this is a RIM KILLER. Both MS and iPhone using the same device management tool? Goodbye RIM.

12:10: Demoing the support. Good and interesting that the support is built directly into the default PIM and Email apps in the iPhone. Good because it just might mean that Apple is going to have real (instead of half-a**ed) Exchange support on the Mac too. Interesting because, well, Apple licensing Microsoft’s biggest Enterprise service (Exchange) is big big news.

12:15: Hehehehe! There’s a photo showing how ActiveSync is direct, while RIM’s NOC is indirect and a failure point. Hi BlackBerry Outages! Just like Palm, Apple’s not going to let you forget about that one. When the marketing comes out for this stuff, Apple is going to take potshots at RIM. I wonder – Microsoft Guy and Mac Guy vs BlackBerry guy. I’ll give a $25 Phone different Coupon to the person who comes up with the best candidate for BB guy in the comments!

rener: 802.11x is also a must for a lot of university networks

I am stupid – what’s 802.11x and why do universities in particular care?

12:19: SDK time. They’re really rolling fast. Overview of web apps and adding icons to the home screen. Please please — give us an admission that “No SDK Needed” was a gigantic slap in the face. We need to hear you say that, to hear that even the Jesus Phone can sometimes stray.

12:20: Whoa – are they “releasing” today? Yes – starting today, we get the same “APIs and tools that Apple uses.” Wow – color me pleasantly surprised. I was all doom and gloom before the event started (ref. the last PD podcast, as Bri Guy mentions in the comments below). They’re calling it “Cocoa Touch.” The basic idea here is that the iPhone is OSX at its core, but as you get to higher layers at some point it assumes you have a mouse and keyboard and no touchscreen. So development must be very similar to OSX development with Cocoa, but instead of Cocoa you have Cocoa Touch.

If they’re not blowing smoke about this, then app development for the iPhone is going to be as advanced or more advanced than either Windows Mobile or Symbian in very short order. There are some similarities to developing for Windows Desktop and Windows Mobile (ref. .NET), but that pales in comparison to this.

12:27: Another “Boom” moment without the “Boom:” Core Location. Just like any app can look up a contact, any app can look up your location just like Google Maps does. How does this thing not have GPS?

I guarantee the 3G iPhone, the very next iteration, will have GPS built in. No question. If Location is a deep, OS-level service, then they’re planning on GPS. Bank on it.

rener: Curse you Rogers and Canadian Data Rates!

:p

12:28: Aside for Windows Mobile nerds who know about the HTC video driver issue — hardware video acceleration is built-in deep and available globally. Send the pitchfork-wielding mob over to Qualcomm and HTC.

12:30: Things we get access to: “multi-touch events, multi-touch controls, accelerometer, view hierarchy, localization, alerts, web view, people picker, and image picker camera” (via PhoneMag).

Hm. I assume that “data” via radio and WiFi are just assumed somehow, that the iPhone itself handles that. “Web view” is a really big deal — allows for seamless integration of local and remote data, AKA true widgets.

WRT “true widgets,” isn’t it funny that Palm got this EXACTLY RIGHT nearly 10 years ago with their first wireless Palm device, then dropped it because it was too difficult to code for and not enough people had the wireless devices. Why didn’t they bring those back?

12:33: Discussing the development platform now – it is XCode as expected. Want to develop for the iPhone? Get a Mac. That’s just fine — Apple is better off focusing their resources on one development tool on a single platform, they don’t need to bring XCode to Windows users, they know that Windows users will come to the Mac just to be able to develop for the iPhone.

rener: That Apple’s techs have fit Darwin, BSD networking, OpenGL, and all the Core services into this thing is unbelievable.*

You damn skippy.

12:35: Interface builder is drag’n'drop. Full iPhone emulator on the Mac. This is incredibly full featured and way more powerful that I expected — I was half expecting them to hand out a flyer with a list of calls and bits of code.

Something this full featured makes me suspect that it’s not ready TODAY. But they did say it was. Crazy. They really did delay it a week to polish this thing off. No… maybe they delayed a week to give some 3rd party developer a bit more time? Are we getting APPS TODAY?

12:39: Requisite “Hello World” app building demo. Able to build/compile/whatever (I’m not a developer) quickly. You can test in the emulator or test directly on a sync’ed iPhone.

Ok guys, give us time table. Tell us about distribution. Pricing for developers to get this stuff on iTunes. Apps.

12:44: Demoing some apps now. Touch Fighter — full access to a really good accelerometer means you can just move the phone around to control the fighter.

Lots of people poo-poohed the touch screen and accelerometer on the iPhone because we’ve seen both on phones before — but a high quality touchscreen and accelerometer, now that makes a big different, doesn’t it? What used to be gimmicks can become genuinely new and engaging ways of interacting with a device.

I officially declare 2008 to be the year that the Stylus Died.

12:47: Mike Overbo, Editor Emeritus of Phone different and the host of our Podcast, is going to soil himself. EA is on stage and intimating that they have ported Spore over — with a dev. platform they’ve never seen before — in about two weeks.

12:50: Just in case you are missing what’s happened here today: Apple took the “IT” phone of 2007 and early 2008 and just made it simultaneously ten times hotter to Business users (via exchange and, just now, a salesforce.com app) and general conumsers (via fun games).

And Steve Jobs hasn’t been on stage the entire freaking time. What’s the deal there? Giving credit to a team that’s clearly been working quadruple overtime? Still bitter that his precious work of singular art is getting sullied by people who don’t work at Apple?

12:55: AOL is coming up next. AIM? Yes: AIM. Hunh. That’s interesting and I think in a good way. Apple could have said “Screw you guys, we’re going to do iChat and stay the heck away from our iPhone, much less our big app announcement.”

Instead, they eschewed their own program and let AIM write one instead. Kudos. Kudos Kudos — it took AOL FIVE days to build it. FIVE. DAYS.

Oh, and now epocrates. I know that a lot of Doctors are hanging on to antiquated PDAs just because of a few medical apps. This helps them a lot.

2:01: Super Monkey Ball with accelerometer support. Swoon. “We had to fly a developer in to upscale the art for the iPhone”

Nintendo DS: You are going to lose market share to this. The big, high-resolution screen is the difference here. see my comment below about quality components.

chadman: Too bad I have to use GroupWise

Take heart, remember that there were rumors of Lotus support. If Apple is willing to support Microsoft and (rumor) Lotus and they’re willing to forego writing iChat and let AIM have a shot at it instead, then they’ll definitely not complain if somebody cobbles together groupwise support.

…though it might not be as deeply integrated, instead it would be standalone, I guess?

rener: they could seriously contend for mobile gaming market share.

I was thinking the exact same thing. It also seems like it’s a big slap in Nokia’s face — they still haven’t gained any traction with their N-GAGE platform.

2:05: “App Store.” You can buy apps directly on the iPhone. I can’t believe I didn’t think they’d do this. It’s obvious. Grumbles about having to go through iTunes are going to get overshadowed by the fact that you don’t have to think about syncing, .cab files, .prc files, etc.

Good that Steve’s finally back on. And yes, you can also buy through iTunes. And yes, I’m seeing the word “Free” next to apps. And yes, unlike iTunes WiFi, you can buy over EDGE or WiFi. And yes, you’re alerted if there’s an update. And yes, it’s exclusive. No other way (short of jailbreaking)

A bit of a bummer, that last bit, but not surprising at all.

2:09: No charge to developer if they give the app away for free. Otherwise it’s a 70/30 revenue split, Apple taking 30% is about what I expected. Actually, it’s better. Apple is eating hosting costs, cc fees, and they’re paying out monthly.

Apple says “no malicious apps or porn.” Guess that means this stuff will be policed and vetted by Apple. Does that mean you have to submit your source code to Apple in order to distribute your application?

eeeeeeee.

2:11 iPhone firmware version 2.0. Beta is going out today to developers. Customers will see it in June as a free update.

Darn. Darn Darn Darn. June is close, but not close enough. It’s what I expected, though. Unexpected — another charge for iPod Touch owners because of accounting. $99 bucks in order to publish on iTunes. so Apple’s not eating everything, but $99 is much less than I expected it to be.

2:15: One More Thing: iFund. Some VC firm is giving away $100 million (yes, that’s the right number of zeroes) to iPhone developers… I guess you can go apply at www.kpcb.com .

That’ll spur development and right quick.

rener: No pr0n, realistically, means stay-of-execution for jailbreak

True that. Jailbreak isn’t going away… but it’s certainly going to be minimalized.

2:20: Asking the press to stay for just a few more minutes. Hm.

Bodes ill? Or it could just be a Q&A

2:23: Q&A Starting. We won’t do all of these questions. Just the juicy ones.

Q: Business apps are coming, should RIM be worried? Steve: Go ask them. We’re not sending them a message, we’re sending customers a message [Gizmodo]

Seriously – Where did Apple buy that humungous gauntlet? You’re most definitely sending them a message, Jobso. You’re practically mooning them.

2:28: Q: What will happen if someone does a VOIP app? A: We will only stop VOIP over cell networks, but not WiFi.

That’s interesting — I wonder if it’s because they know that VOIP over an EDGE connection will be an inherently horrible experience or if AT&T wouldn’t let them because of their deal. I suspect it’s both.

It’s also a little foreboding — Apple gets to decide what gets published and what doesn’t, but I’m still unclear on what the criteria will be. Malicious – No. Porn – No. VOIP isn’t either of those… So is the 3rd “No”:

• “Whatever hurts our business model with AT&T”
• or is it “Whatever we think will deliver an inherently bad experience to the customer” ??

…Either way I don’t know that I like that Apple should get to decide that for me.

2:34: a SIM unlock program will not be allowed in the iTunes Store.

That’s an LOL right there.

2:38: Quote from Macworld:

• More talk about iPhone versus Blackberry. “Why aren’t CIOs really worried about security? Every email message sent to or from a RIM device, goes through a NOC up in Canada. Now, that provides a single point of failure, but it also provides a very interesting security situation. Where someone working up at that NOC could potentially be having a look at your email. Nobody seems to be focused on that. We certainly are.”*

On Phil Shiller’s office wall: A photo of the BlackBerry Pearl with a giant target painted over it. I said it before and I’ll say it again, expect a massive anti-BlackBerry, poke-fun style campaign from Apple this summer in the same style as their current Mac vs. PC ads.

2:40: “Parental Controls” are coming.

Super Monkey Ball PLUS mom can turn off Safari to stop junior from looking at porn on the net. They’ll sell a million this year to pre-teens alone.

2:45: We’re done! Expect a LOT of posts in the coming days analyzing this big big news!

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

SDK Roadmap: Color Commentary