Jun

19

Why there is no iPhone SDK

June 19, 2007 |

Josh Bancroft today has some interesting observations about why he thinks there is no iPhone SDK and why it infuriates developers so much:

Members of the Apple Developer program could buy an Intel-based development kit MONTHS before the first Intel Mac was available at retail. As soon as the switch to Intel was announced, in fact. Why did Apple make those available so early? So apps would be ready. Why have beta versions of Leopard been available for so long to developers? Same reason.

They didn’t do any such thing with the iPhone. And because of that, I think developers feel like Apple gave them the finger instead. At least, the ones I’ve talked to (and I talk to developers for a living). The whole “use the web to make your apps!” thing was just insult on top of injury. It’s a major change from how Apple (and any other major hardware/software company for that matter) operated in the past with regard to their developer community.

iphone and jobs.jpgI agree - but somewhere, I can see some of Apple’s reasoning behind not fully opening up the SDK to developers just yet (Apple must have an internal one) - Jobs apparently said that they didn’t want AT&T’s whole network going down because of a bad application. But then, other manufacturers have no problem with allowing third party apps on the device. However, other third party manufacturers don’t have this much riding on one product. Any flaps and they can kiss their $10.000.000.000 business goodbye.

Two other points: a) Apple wants to control the user experience top-to-bottom - that is what Apple has always done and b) Apple doesn’t want some rogue dialer running up bills for the first generation customers and they are apparently not yet quite sure that they have secured their system enough to prevent this.

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