Apple’s Greg “Joz” Joswiak met with PC Magazine writers yesterday to talk iPods and iPhone, and Sascha Segan of PC Mag’s Gearlog blog has some tidbits, including some vaguely encouraging words about the state of the cold war between Apple and iPhone hackers. (Namely, that there isn’t one.)
I asked him about independent, native software development for the iPhone. He said Apple doesn’t oppose native application development, which was new to me. Rather, Apple takes a neutral stance - they’re not going to stop anyone from writing apps, and they’re not going to maliciously design software updates to break the native apps, but they’re not going to care if their software updates accidentally break the native apps either.
This is actually quite refreshing to hear — it’s that Apple has taken the same attitude toward iPhone hacking at TiVo has toward the hacking of its DVRs. Namely, that while the company isn’t going to worry about maintaining compatibility with the crazy things that hackers are doing on their product, they’re also not going to launch an all-out war on the hackers in an attempt to stop them from doing what they’re doing.
Of course, the best solution would be for Apple to roll out an official developer kit for the iPhone (and for iPod touch as well, of course). I think that day is coming, but until then the hacking community is doing a great job. (These days you can hack your iPhone with a simple, safe Mac installer program: get the details here.)
I think Apple will provide an SDK eventually, but think about all these poor guys coming out with their own way. I think it's a plan by Apple to keep otherwise "hackers" gainfully employed for a few months. Think about it. The more time these hackers spend developing iPhone hacks to help improve productivity on the iPhone is less time they spend writing destructive hacks. It also gives Apple an idea of what they are up against later when they do tighten down the bolts. ;-)
I agree with Michael Rose over at tuaw.com;
"Any iPhone SDK would also be (most likely) tightly linked to the Leopard code base, so trying to regress the SDK to Tiger while simultaneously developing for OS X iPhone's future would be a useless exercise in platespinning."
That Leopard comment is a good point... Part of the reason the iPhone was delayed was in part to get some of the Mac OS X engineers to work on the product. If I recall, some people who have been hacking/programming with the 3rd party toolchains are saying they're finding a few things changed from Tiger-which are definitely 10.5 hooks Apple can't quite reveal yet.
I do think an SDK will come eventually as well. Apple can't ignore the popularity... and if you have to get a Mac to "officially" program the iPhone, that's even more money in Apple's pocket. I think they are also waiting for the dust to settle on the iPod Touch as well so they can note what's different in each product.