Apple’s World Wide Developer’s Conference Keynote was held yesterday and as usual, I eagerly followed along in real time. iPhone Alley offered a real time audio stream from a laptop in the audience. Even though the quality was terribly piss poor, it was still better than simply reading a slew of blog posts. However, I still followed along on MacRumors.com and at NeoGAF to see photos and humorous commentary as they came in.
Note to Apple: Just stream your damn keynote live next time… even if it’s just audio. If you don’t, someone else is going to attempt it so it might as well just be you. That way, you can at least exert some control over the quality of the broadcast.
This year’s keynote focused solely on the iPhone and its supporting services. After the keynote there was a shorter session, not publicly available, detailing Apple’s next version of the Mac OS X operating system dubbed Snow Leopard. Read on for my thoughts of the topics covered in the first keynote.
Here’s a idea I’ve been kicking around that maybe an iPhone developer out there might find useful. I was thinking about how racing games might be controlled on the iPhone and the most obvious answer is that you would tilt the iPhone from side to side like a steering wheel. However, when you do this it makes the game a little awkward to play because the screen and visual would tilt as well.
So, I got the idea that whenever the accelerometer detected horizontal tilting of the device, it would then rotate the visuals in the opposite direction to keep the game’s horizon line level with the player’s. This would make the iPhone feel more like a real steering wheel since the iPhone would appear to the player to turn independently of the game visuals. I’ve created the following video to demonstrate this concept.
It’s been over a week since Apple released the details reguarding their iPhone software development kit. Response to the event was very encouraging and the demonstrations made were more impressive than I was expecting. Over 100,000 downloads of the SDK beta indicates that many ambitious developers are eager to start creating apps for this evolving, new platform.
The predictions I made in my recent post didn’t turn out to be all that accurate, however. Here’s a quick break down:
Developer Registration Codes - This one was easy and I was right on the money. Apple is requiring devs to register with them to receive a code that will be embedded into their apps. Basically, this is DRM for applications. This gives Apple the power to disallow and deactivate malicious developers and apps retroactively. A good policy.
Corporate Custom Apps - Apple is going to solve the issue of corporate custom app delivery by giving corporations their own delivery system (a custom App Store the businesses maintain themselves) as long as they are willing to pay the price.
Developers Releasing of Apps Directly - I missed the mark here. Almost everyone but me assumed Apple would control the distribution of apps and they were right. While being able to directly download apps on the device wirelessly using a simple, universal interface is nice, the Apple developer approval process is still a big concern that I fear could hinder adoption of the platform by developers who want to push the limits.
The third point in particular is both discouraging and welcome. I completely agree that the benefits of quality control, security and stability are issues that Apple’s approval process hold paramount and for that I can not falter them. None the less, the real issue now becomes where will the lines be ultimately drawn and how big will the “grey area” be for developers to work within? Will Apple be more flexible in the future regarding what is and isn’t allowed? How long will it take for developers and/or their apps to be approved for distribution? This all remains to be seen.
These concerns aside, I’m really encouraged by the power of what this SDK brings. For the first time since the 1990s, it feels like we are witnessing the emergence of a new computing platform that could realistically sit along side the desktop and laptop as a full featured computing device that is not simply a peripheral that compliments them but a platform in its own right.
Furthermore, the iPhone is also shaping up to be a serious contender in the mobile gaming market. Seeing games like Super Monkey Ball and Spore already demonstrated in playable form indicate to me that Apple has an opportunity to also turn the iPhone into a competitive handheld gaming system; maybe the first since the Sony PSP to actually be capable of directly competing with Nintendo’s long time portable gaming dominance.
Next Thursday, on March 6th, 2008, Apple will hold a special town hall style event to announce their plans for third-party software development on the iPhone and iPod Touch. We will likely see the release of the official software development kit (or in the very least, a preview) as well as the release of some new third-party apps already built using the SDK.
For a while now, I’ve been assuming that third party applications would only be made available and/or sold through an Apple maintained area on the iTunes store. However, I’ve given it a lot of thought and I no longer think that’s how it will work.
First up, judging by their event flyer, Apple appears to be emphasizing the enterprise market much more than I would have imagined. In the enterprise space, companies like to develop custom applications for their end users to run that are exclusive to their business. These people aren’t going to want proprietary apps like these listed in some kind of public directory. They’ll want to distribute these apps privately making the idea of an “only available through iTunes” delivery method unrealistic.
Secondly, if Apple seriously wants iPhone development to be huge they wouldn’t create some kind of manual, per-app approval process. This would only limit and slow down available titles. What they really want is to rally developers to create selection and diversity while at the same time controlling what these apps can do. Thus, all they need to do is require developers to use their SDK where the APIs contained within control what developers can and cannot do.
Thus, here’s my best guess for what Apple will announce:
The SDK will be free but each developer will have a unique code embedded into their apps. They will have to register this code with Apple before they can compile their applications and distribute them. What this does is guarantee that only apps built using Apple’s approved APIs can be installed while also giving Apple a mechanism (via software updates) to retroactively disable rouge apps from being run.
Developers will likely release their apps themselves via the web. If apps do show up in iTunes, it’ll only be through an optional, multi-developer maintained area similar to the webapps area hosted on Apple.com or the podcasts section in iTunes. Keeping this maintained by the developers themselves would prevent Apple from running into conflict of interest issues.
The apps will come as a file with a new extension that is registered to open in iTunes. Double clicking this file adds it to the user’s library of available, sync-able apps. At the same time, the file’s developer key can be checked against Apple’s servers to ensure that the developer and/or the application is legit and not flagged as being harmful before being installed on the device.
These are just my predictions. If Apple goes another route, I won’t cry foul however I certainly hope they’ve considered these same issues. Whatever their solution, I hope they can provide at least the same amount of flexibility to make the iPhone and iPod a strong platform in the future.
Steve Jobs finished giving the MacWorld 2008 keynote presentation just a few hours ago. What has become a sort of tradition for me, I decided to take the day off so I could relax at home and follow all the online coverage in real-time. Knowing full well that it would take something miraculous to top last year’s legendary iPhone announcement, I went in with modest expectations. Overall, the presentation was rather ho-hum even if the super-lightweight new laptop revealed was far, far thinner than expected.
Broken into four parts, the Steve started by covering how much of a great success Leopard has been. I agree but this is old news. Part two covered the iPhone and its success. As expected, he talked about the new 1.1.3 upgrade which was leaked weeks ago. It adds several nifty new features such as pseudo-GPS to the maps application and customizable home screens. More importantly, they’ve set the groundwork to make adding more third party apps to the device easy in the future. Unfortunately, he didn’t actually announce anything in the area of third party applications so I’m going to have to wait until February to find out more. That’s when the official SDK is scheduled to debut. None the less, I’m happy to have the new firmware installed.
The third part of the keynote was dedicated to what is probably the most significant announcement in my opinion: movie rentals in both standard definition and high definition from the iTunes store. This coupled with a new version of the Apple TV set-top box shows Apple has a strong desire to own the home theater space. While I think it’s great Apple is going to offer rentals, this isn’t something I’m probably going to use much of. With Xbox Live, I already have this functionality. What Apple does bring that’s unique is the ability to share your rentals between your TV, computer and mobile devices. Also, they got every every movie studio to back them on this deal; something Microsoft wasn’t able to do.
The fourth and last announcement was the hugely rumored MacBook Air. This thing is slim and light. Apple was going for pure sex factor with this design, even so far as to take out some practicality. For example, it only has one USB port. However, I respect their bold design decisions in what is clearly designed to be an “ultra-portable”. I’ve already heard people complaining about the lack of an internal optical drive but that is silly. In my opinion, optical media is on the way out anyway, Apple is again just being a trend setter. No-matter how sexy it is though, the price is high ($1799) and should be considered a luxury device. One last interesting note about the Air, it has a thin 80GB hard drive (PATA) but they also offer it with a 64GB solid state drive as an option… but for an additional $900 bucks! Clearly, solid state drives are, at least for now, an option only for people with money to burn. All said, that doesn’t make me wish I owned one any less.
This blog covers the life and pastimes of a modest web developer and damn proud geek who goes by the handle "ckohler". A long time Internet user, he's into video games, movies, computers and technology so expect to see a lot of that here. Just don't expect a lot of excitement. He lives a modest, mundane but otherwise rewarding existence.
