iPhone SDK confirmed !

[panamajack]

Great news here !
http://www.apple.com/hotnews
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Third Party Applications on the iPhone
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.

It will take until February to release an SDK because we’re trying to do two diametrically opposed things at once—provide an advanced and open platform to developers while at the same time protect iPhone users from viruses, malware, privacy attacks, etc. This is no easy task. Some claim that viruses and malware are not a problem on mobile phones—this is simply not true. There have been serious viruses on other mobile phones already, including some that silently spread from phone to phone over the cell network. As our phones become more powerful, these malicious programs will become more dangerous. And since the iPhone is the most advanced phone ever, it will be a highly visible target.

Some companies are already taking action. Nokia, for example, is not allowing any applications to be loaded onto some of their newest phones unless they have a digital signature that can be traced back to a known developer. While this makes such a phone less than “totally open,” we believe it is a step in the right direction. We are working on an advanced system which will offer developers broad access to natively program the iPhone’s amazing software platform while at the same time protecting users from malicious programs.

We think a few months of patience now will be rewarded by many years of great third party applications running on safe and reliable iPhones.

Steve

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

 

[mikelove]

Well I'm not saying anything remotely committal on this until I actually see the SDK and this application protection system they're talking about, but it certainly does sound promising. And would create a bit of a conundrum as far as which platform we support next; desktop Windows has been and continues to be first on our agenda after 2.0 comes out, but the iPhone versus BlackBerry versus Symbian question is an interesting one - Symbian has the most users overall, BlackBerry has the most business users (and is much bigger than Symbian in the US, still the source of a little over half of our sales), and iPhone has the most mobile/gadget fans but a customer base that's an order of magnitude smaller than the other two.

 

[mikelove]

I should add that there will most certainly not be a Pleco for iPhone release if Apple insists that all iPhone software be sold through iTunes and/or Cingular with a cut of the proceeds going to them. Even ignoring the economic issue, this would be downright creepy of them, and a terrible idea for the software industry in general which needs to be actively discouraged if we want to keep mobile software development from becoming something like videogame console development, confined only to large and well-funded companies.

Same goes with any other system that gives Apple a percentage of sales; a "certified for iPhone" program is fine as long as that involves a one-time testing fee but not if we have to keep paying them just for the privilege of helping them sell iPhones.

But a flat testing fee, or a code signing program that was reasonably priced and not inaccessible to small developers would be fine by us, and that's about as draconian as any smartphone application-locking system we've seen so far.

 

[coljac]

I just read about the SDK and this is the first place I came.

I'd love to ditch my Treo for an iPhone one day, but what would I do without PlecoDict?

I hope that the SDK and Apple's policies make it easy and profitable for you to choose iPhone as a platform. Cocoa development is fun and pretty easy so I don't anticipate the actual coding will be too nasty.

 

[hairyleprechaun]

The announcement by Jobs definitely gives iPhone users, and especially us PlecoDict users, a new glimmer of hope. However, I still can't stand that iPhone doesn't have a stylus.

Personally, if I get the opportunity to combine my phone, calendar and Chinese dictionary software into one device, I am still going to choose a unit that has a stylus for easy character input. As much as I would like to have PlecoDict on my current cell phone (running Symbian) it still seems very important for me in learning Chinese (especially characters) to write characters as often as possible. I can't not even begin to guess how many characters I recognize by sight, but cannot recall off hand how to write. And us Chinese learners aren't the only ones with this problem. I have noticed that many of my Chinese friends who use computers every day and type Chinese using the various imput methods also have said that they have a hard time recalling how to write certain characters because they no longer do it regularly. (Though admitely I would probably end up buying a scaled down, touchscreen-less version anyways just to have the superior dictionaries at my fingertips).

 

[ipsi]

That's looking good. I'm not concerned about an iPhone version though, as it won't be available here in New Zealand for a long time (We have only one GSM operator - Vofafone...). Still, it is interesting. I'm slightly more interested in the fact that it will work with the Touch as well, though I'd hate having to carry another device around. I like that me Treo does it all .

 

[mikelove]

Cocoa development would actually be a bit tricky for us, since Pleco at the moment is decidedly non-object-oriented, but since it's also in C and Objective-C can compile C programs without any changes we should be able to limit the object-oriented aspects of it to the Cocoa-specific UI stuff. The UI redesign would be a bit tricky, though, we'd probably need 3 toolbars to cover everything (2 on top and 1 on the bottom, I guess) since you really can't have more than 5 in a row, and the lack of precision pointing would probably mean the entry list / definition would have to be on separate screens (tap on list to go into definition, tap on definition to go back to list) and of course would make Copy to Input pretty much impossible.

Drawing characters on the iPhone isn't actually that bad, I downloaded a drawing program onto our test unit here and as long as it's full-screen it's pretty accurate; the digitizer driver seems to do a good job of smoothing out lines so your finger movements end up looking almost as accurate as if they were drawn with a pen. But yes, a stylus-driven version would still be superior and there will likely be a number of features that end up only being available on stylus-equipped systems like Palm/PPC/S60 Touch - stroke order testing for example would be an exercise in frustration with fingertip input.

 

[chrislqualls]

after i heard about the SDK this too was the first site that i came to. I LOVE Pleco and I too am a treo user who has been waiting for the report of this SDK in the hopes that Pleco would be available for the iPhone. lets face it. we've been waiting for a multi-gig PDA for a long time. and as the iPhone moves forward we will see larger and larger internal storage, faster data, and well EVERYTHING most users want. that is, as long as we can get the programs on it that we want. Apple just does things well, which makes me really excited about most of their products in general. This program (Pleco) however is a determining factor for me. As a Chinese student Pleco has become a necessity for me. Please, Please, Please, Please, make the Apple lovers, the faithful followers of 苹果电脑 happy. GIVE US PLECO!!!!!!

sincerely,

a pleco and apple 迷

 

[venture160]

I too agree, I just ditched my palm and in no way will go to a windows mobile platform. It's either Apple or Symbian for me.