Businessweek reports that sources familiar with matters involving Apple decisions for iPhone software development will “release a software development kit for the iPhone in early 2008, enabling programmers to create games, business-productivity tools, and countless other applications for the device.” Apple MacWorld Expo in January is the likely scene of the release for the SDK and would fit with the Cupertino company’s typical method of releasing new hardware and software at the Expo.
The release on October 26th of the newest version of OS X named “Leopard” could possibly integrate support for iPhone apps. An expected update to the iPhone software will likely release around the same time as the Leopard unrolling.
Some bloggers and iPhone rumor-mongers are suggesting that Apple will not release a full-blown Software Development Kit (SDK), but rather will take the current web-based development approach and add to it offline storage. It’s not clear to me that this would provide much benefit as AJAX based web apps tend to be small in size and calls to the server from Safari are not typically so expensive in bandwidth that storage space for buffering would really prove that beneficial. There may be usefulness in such a scenario where some web apps could run locally without need to connect to a web server, but it’s difficult to imagine much that would be truly useful when the point
One tool that could make use of this type of bridge solution would be blogging tools. By allowing the phone to store the draft version of blog posts and only connect via wireless web when publishing, there are many bloggers who could use the iPhone as the primary tool for managing their blog. It brings to light the concept of the iPhone as drafting tool.
It is more likely that as other posts here have suggested Apple will release the SDK to a select group of partners, creating a program of Apple certified software for the iPhone. The Apple web applications portal provides a good clue as to what we can expect. [http://www.apple.com/webapps] Apple will likely feature not only the web based AJAX applications, but also those which run natively on the iPhone. They will likely be downloadable via iTunes.
In the end rumors will be confirmed or denied through the actions Apple takes, but the signs are in the wind for a change in the way software is created and delivered for the iPhone. The evolution of this will likely drive the sales of the device going forward because as other manufacturers play catch-up on the hardware design, the software is what will continue to distinguish the iPhone from others.
