iPhone SDK Is Restricted Freedom
28 Nov 2007
To be honest this was a little dis-appointing when i read it but well when it come to Apple and Steve Jobs this is not a surprise.
Jobs just pulled a Jobs on all of us, when the iPhone was released it’s being Apple locked even for applications was something that did not go down well with almost the whole tech community but God knows which cell phone and network was Steve Jobs using that made him say the following while announcing a revolutionary device (yes im saying it is revolutionary - because in 2007 you wont find a phone that cant record videos)
You don’t want your phone to be an open platform, you need it to work when you need it to work. Cingular doesn’t want to see their West Coast network go down because some application messed up.
And voila, 1 morning Steve Sir just says to himself in the mirror that let’s allow third party developers to code applications for my products - a good thought many said, excited by the prospects of being legally allowed to code applications for the 2 devices and even many more that will follow.
In a recent interview Greg Joswiak - Marketing Head iPod & iPhone talks about the various bold decisions and blah blah Apple took in the past which are paying heavy dividends now as in their move to go into music retailing and going all out with the iPods.
However he has talked about the SDK that will be released and why is it taking time for releasing it, an interesting part in the conversation talks about an Apple Digital Signature which the SDK based iPhone applications will require (which i might point out is not required in case of coding applications for the MAC OS X)
This revelation has caused people to fear that this will hamper the freedom of third party coders to make applications such Instant Messengers; Tweaking Softwares and many such applications which will unlock certain restrictions/dis-abilities in the iPhone which is a legitimate beliefbecause Instant Meesengers pose possible threat to AT&T’s SMS revenues; Custom Ringtones hamper iTunes sales of ringtones; worst of all an iPhone version of Skype would result in AT&T and other exclusive carriers huge losses.
Having said that i still believe that “Something Is Better Than Nothing” and a SDK from Apple will certainly offer a lot of features to the iPhone consumer and i am very pleased about that.
Hoping for the best!