Dan Wood: The Eponymous Weblog (Archives)

Dan Wood Dan Wood is co-owner of Karelia Software, creating programs for the Macintosh computer. He is the father of two kids, lives in the Bay Area of California USA, and prefers bicycles to cars. This site is his older weblog, which mostly covers geeky topics like Macs and Mac Programming. Go visit the current blog here.

Useful Tidbits and Egotistical Musings from Dan Wood

Categories: Business · Mac OS X · Cocoa Programming · General · All Categories

Wed, 10 Jan 2007

iPhone ... YAAAWWWWWNNN if you can't develop for it

permanent link · Topic/MacOSX
/MacOSX

Yes, that's right. YAAAWWWWWNNN to the iPhone.

Sure, it has nice eye candy, and you can do a lot with it. But it isn't that different from a lot of the other over-functional cellphone/PDA/Camera combinations out there as far as what it can do.

What would set it apart would be if one could develop software for it in Cocoa. But apparently that's not in Apple's plans. From Macintouch:

The only two iPhones at the show were under glass, and Apple representatives said it is a "closed platform", refusing even to identify the specific processor it uses, and there's apparently no developer kit for it, though "developers who want to do applications [for the iPhone] are welcome to contact Apple developer relations."

If they are really going to make this a closed-platform appliance, then I really do understand why they are not longer "Apple Computer, Inc." It would be the nail on the coffin for Mac OS X as a computer platform. If they are not going to open up the iPhone for development, then they might as well take the next logical step and release their next set of iMacs to also be appliances that one cannot develop software for. With iLife and Dashboard pre-installed, who needs anything else? Though this is a bit of a hyperbole, that seems to be the attitude.

Me? I'm going to be contacting Apple developer relations and giving them my perspective. Perhaps I'm not the only developer who would like to come up with some cool software for this little gadget, and if enough people express their interest in writing software for the device, maybe Apple will change their tune and we'll be learning all about it at WWDC 2007.

Update: Wolf suggests we file a bug report. Good plan.