No sooner did we ask (twice) whether the iPhone 3G S will speed up the splitting of the iPhone OS platform than Mobility Today finds the little pop-up alert, above, just chock-a-block full of confirmation.
Not the most elegant or user friendly of solutions, so perhaps this ultimately lies more with how developers handle different hardware options than the existence of the options themselves?
Could a video/camera button not disappear for a current iPod touch, default to launching only the camera for iPhone 2G and iPhone 3G, or launch the camera with a video switch (like Apple’s built in Camera app will have) for iPhone 3G S?
This morning we wondered aloud about whether the iPhone 3G S would be splitting Apple’s mobile OS X platform. Looks like we weren’t the only ones wondering.
Engadget’s Chris Ziegler takes a look at the new hardware’s PowerVR SGX graphics-core’s support for OpenGL ES 2.0, and that led him to this language in Apple’s iPhone SDK documentation:
“When designing your OpenGL ES application, the first question you must answer is whether your application will support OpenGL ES 1.1, OpenGL ES 2.0, or both… Your application should target OpenGL ES 1.1 if you want to support all iPhones and iPod touches.”
Sure, with 40,000,000 iPhones and iPods touch on the market, many developers will want to stick with OpenGL ES 1.1 support, but like with any generational transition — even slow ones — eventually more and more might just want to push the new hardware and see what it can do…
Apple has begun their direct email campaign for the iPhone 3G S saying:
Phone 3G S features a remarkable new video camera and hands-free Voice Control. It’s a revolutionary phone, a great widescreen iPod, and a breakthrough Internet device in one. And it opens up a whole new world of applications. All that and more makes it the best iPhone yet.
It’s that second to last sentence that drew our attention. New world of applications? What does that mean for the old world? More after the break…
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