The Cynical Side of The iPhone SDK Announcement
John Gruber has written an excellent article on the iPhone SDK announcement and what it might mean. I too had wondered whether Apple would try to position Dashboard widgets as the application model for the iPhone, and I’m not yet convinced that this isn’t what they will do. John points out that JavaScript is too slow on the iPhone to make it an adequate substitute for Cocoa. What he didn’t consider is that Dashboard widgets in Mac OS X can contain native code, and in fact many of the Apple supplied widgets do exactly that. They could do the same thing on the iPhone.
I have to say I’m terribly, terribly hurt that I didn’t get any linkage on the whole ‘iPhone runs as root’ thing. I was way ahead of the curve on that one, and I wasn’t even “hysterical” about it… [this is a joke, for those not attuned to such things]
One other cynical point for you, which I didn’t blog about. Why did Jobs put out that letter now, 5-6 months before it will be released? I saw someone arguing on their blog (sorry, can’t remember where) that it was because Apple has realized there are limits to secrecy. Yea, right. I personally think they did it because they see the iPhone hacking culture getting a little too vibrant for comfort, and they wanted to take some wind out of its sails. Why spend your nights and weekends hacking on something when Apple will make it all easy in a few months? Plus there is no longer the thrill of doing something Apple doesn’t want you to do. Will it work? Doubtful.
As a side note, Robert Cringely has written an interesting take on the purported Apple/Google partnership. I agree completely that Apple would never allow a deal where Google got brand supremacy.
Shebanator 