World of Apple

In an interview with Fortune Greg Joswiak, Apple’s Vice President of Hardware Product Marketing has talked about both the iPhone and iPod in some detail.

Following Jobs’ open letter regarding an iPhone SDK, Apple has been mum on progress, but Joswiak mentions that Apple intends to use digital signatures to prevent malicious use of the SDK.

“That way if there’s something wrong with an application, you have a way to track it back to where it came from,” Joswiak said. “So one of the things we want to do, again, is create a development environment that is going to maintain the security and reliability of the iPhone yet at the same time offer developers some really cool things that we can do.”

The exec confirmed that the SDK for both the iPhone and iPod touch would be arriving in February next year, and no details would be released until that date.

“Of course what we want to make sure we’ve done is keep the phone safe and reliable, and that’s why it’s taken us a little while to get this SDK out,” he said. “Especially now that we’ll have a real SDK which means legitimate developers are going to come into the space.”

T3.co.uk has managed to get its hands on a review model of the iPhone in the UK, luckily the model was already loaded with Apple’s latest firmware, 1.1.2.

T3 notes the following about the update:

First off, there’s support for dozens of languages, so if you happen to be a fluent Cantonese speaker, the phone has all the relevant character sets so you can display your language properly.

There’s full support for French and German, with special keyboard lay-outs on the ready to tackle accented characters - perfectly understandable, of course, what with the phone heading for launch across the channel this month too.

Mac Rumors also claims to have heard that firmware update 1.1.2 is destined to arrive in the coming week, just in time for the UK and Germany launch of the iPhone on Friday. According to their sources the update will contain mainly security updates and bug fixes as well as the mentioned language localisations. The rumour site also notes that iTunes 7.5 will be required to sync.

Both T3 and Mac Rumors note that the update will break third party unlocking software and any third party applications.

Apple CEO, Steve Jobs has posted an open letter revealing that Apple will release a third party SDK for the iPhone and iPod touch in February 2008.

Letter reproduced for convenience:

Let me just say it: We want native third party applications on the iPhone, and we plan to have an SDK in developers’ hands in February. We are excited about creating a vibrant third party developer community around the iPhone and enabling hundreds of new applications for our users. With our revolutionary multi-touch interface, powerful hardware and advanced software architecture, we believe we have created the best mobile platform ever for developers.

P.S.: The SDK will also allow developers to create applications for iPod touch. [Oct 17, 2007]

Businessweek reports that Apple may be planning to release an official development kit at next years Macworld Conference and Expo which will be held in mid-January.

Sources familiar with Apple’s plans for an SDK state;

Apple will release a software-development kit for the iPhone in early 2008, enabling programmers to create games, business-productivity tools, and countless other applications for the device.

This goes against an article by Ars Technica that stated Apple has no plans to release an SDK but is planning to release a web based SDK.

As per the rumours Apple has unleashed an online directory of web apps designed for the iPhone and iPod touch.

Developers are invited to submit their own applications for inclusion in the directory which is split into numerous categories; Calculate, Entertainment, Games, News, Productivity, Search Tools, Social Networking, Sports, Travel, Utilities, and Weather.

AppleInsider expects Apple to launch a new part of its website which will contain a directory of official web iPhone applications.

One anonymous source confirmed to AppleInsider that Apple representatives have been tracking down authors of Web-based iPhone apps and asking them to submit official screenshots, icons, web addresses and descriptions of their applications to the company.

Developers have reportedly been sworn to secrecy, the directory initiative is said to be similar to that of the Dashboard widgets directory.

Ars Technica writes that a source at Apple has told them that Apple is developing solutions to expand the power and capabilities of the current web-based SDK “but there are currently no plans to offer a “true” iPhone SDK that would allow developers to create native apps.”

Apple is going to offer several enhancements to the current SDK instead, for example allowing web pages to be accessed while offline, effectively making the iPhone capable of serving up applications while not connected to the internet.

Also Apple is planning to implement the ability to add home buttons as well as more local phone functionalities from applications via JavaScript.

Apple is currently aiming for an unspecified “January” deadline on these updates, with a most likely announcement date of Macworld 2008.

Lucas Newman and Adam Betts have released the first native game to run on iPhone called Lights Off.

Lights Off is a fun and highly addictive puzzle game made even better with iPhone’s touch screen, created by Lucas Newman and Adam Betts.

The objective is to switch all of the lights out. Tapping a light toggles it, along with the four adjacent lights. Once you switch all of the lights out, you’ll advance to the next level!

The native iPhone app took second place in the C4 Iron Coder competition.

The application needs to be installed directly onto the iPhone using existing tools, installation instructions are provided.