Chiming in on the iPhone SDK discussion
There is a lot of bubble talk lately about the decision from Apple to make "Web 2.0" the only SDK the iPhone will get - for now. Nobody on the big news sites talking about it seems to be looking deeper into the issue. Its all so apparent.
Steve specifically mentioned "sandboxing the applications" in his keynote to be the biggest problem with an open iPhone SDK. The last - very last - things Apple needs are any kind of malware on the phone that starts dialing your sprouse and connect her to a sex line while the phones speakers are turned off and the phone is in your pant pockets. Thats a VERY big concern because if that happens its a marketing backlash that will drop the Applestock back to $10 in less then a month. So especially for the first round its all about making this device secure as hell therefore overly controlled. Giving users the ability to run Web 2.0 apps is already a wide stretch in this security model but then some other developments that steve talked about in his keynote are very interesting things.
The original iPhone released end of this month will run Mac OSX 10.4.10 (or 10.4.9 or some other chimera in between) Mac OS 10.4 and earlier does not have any systemwide secure sandboxing model in place as is. BUT Leopard - according to Apples own developers talking "publicly" at the WWDC - will have a system wide sandboxing mechanism for all apps. So an iPhone 2.0 which will probably run a spec'ed down version of Leopard will maybe bring an SDK where all 3rd party apps run inside a sandbox.
Safari 3 is probably on the iPhone and Safari 3 might run its own ultra secure sandboxing mechanism (windows version seems not to)?!
Until then I am sure there is a way to "hack" this thing easily as this seems Apples way of doing things lately, because if it is a hack then Apple does not have to support it until they have figured out a way to do things right (which not always works of course).
I for one think that MOST application that might be usefull for a PHONE could be small widgets (and dashboard widgets are basically what will become "Web 2.0 iPhone 1.0 apps"). Exception is of course games and media managment and manipulation stuff.
Very interesting would be to know if it runs Quartz Composer Compositions (if the Quicktime for the iPhone supports these that is) because if it does then media manipulation can be done without any core level functioning (at least to the degree where the iPhone makes sense). Leaves us with games...
For those I think Apple will initially sell some through a trusted partner network (iTunes store) (EA games anyone? ID with its "we have another mac related announcement at the next games conference" Carmack comment?) to then with iPhone 2.0 and sandboxing modell of Leopard opening up the platform to any developers? (next years WWDC?)
As said it all makes a hell of a lot of sense and seeing the immense news coverage for this phone Apple has to pull out all its legs to make sure this thing is absolutely secure and bug free in its first iteration. There will be enough people complaining about the keyboard and "Video loading times" etc to manage a virus outbreak or similar on the device is absolute publicity hell.
So I will still not get a Apple 1.0 product no matter how cool it is EVER again in my life and a lot of Mac diehards who have been with Apple gear for more then 5 years probably are going down the same route. Its nice to have unsuspecting windows users betatesting apple hardware now :)
PS: And noone says that the Safari Web 2.0 SDK has some iPhone specific extensions to like read out the iPhone sensors etc. It already has the "transparency window mode" for dashboards so that seems like a clear path.