Well holy shit, it looks like we’ve all been carrying around 80% of a Macintosh in our pockets for half a year.

The Apple SDK for the iPhone exposes nearly all the guts of the system, as well as sophisticated integration with other apps, OS components, and hardware. Apple claims that my cell phone and my laptop are using the same kernel. (I guess we knew this but it’s nice to hear it from the horse’s mouth).

The jailbreakers will have their work cut out to compete.

The first “blessed” 3rd party iPhone app I’d like to see in June is a streaming MP3 player. I’d like to listen to DirtyRadio and my stack of various NPR stations whenever I’m bathed in WiFi microwaves. (Or, dare I dream, even an EDGE connection?). Based on what I’ve seen, this is plainly no challenge at all to someone competent to write any kind of media player. (by which I mean basically connect a network socket to an audio buffer and then go have a drink)

But Fuck! You could get fancy and use the iPhone to triangulate your geographical position and then present a list of regionally appropriate streaming radio stations. You could then animate an old-time tuning dial and probably even fade each one into the other with static overlaid in between. Literally you can do this on a god damn cell phone. Apple has videos explaining each component. You can go nuts!

The second app I’d like to see, I’ll try to write myself. Nothing too extraordinary but I’d find it useful about twice a week. It might even be easier to do as a web app, but I will endeavor to continue my Obj-C edumacation.

And have I missed something or is the Interface Builder half of this iPhone SDK still “Coming Soon”?

This is regarding Apple Computers, iPhone.
Follow responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.