Hype, 2.0, WWDC's, July 11th and complex NDA’s aside, there is still a lot of stuff out there people!
An awful lot of developer’s time and effort has been thrown in to the iPhone, and there are only supposed to be 4,000 people “sanctioned” to develop... What on earth am I talking about? Well, it is my all time fave web address for keeping "hot" with iPhone development action:
http://code.google.com/hosting/search?q=iphone&projectsearch=Search+Projects
ca. 363+ results in “Search Projects”
Phew, that’s a whole lot of stuff! I wonder how Android is doing… surely it must be right up there?
http://code.google.com/hosting/search?q=android&projectsearch=Search+Projects
272… well I guess they are slowly catching up :-)
Remember, the iPhone (until July 11th 2008) is supposed to be a closed platform… how can it possibly compete with an open source platform… Interesting huh? Let’s take a quick look see at what our future may hold.
Let us fast forward to June 2009 and the impending v3.5 firmware for the iPhone… You will have to imagine the black polo neck, boat loads of sweaty, hungry press hounds, the heavy air of anticipation and the fancy keynote presentation to make this all complete, get it right and you will almost feel the reality distortion effect kicking right in…
“And now, ladies and gentlemen! By the power of corporate collaboration with our friends at AMAZON.com! You can have DRM books downloaded directly to your iPhone… all at the amazing price of 99 cents!” The crowd goes wild, cheers and hoots!
“Go, go iSteve! Ye! ha! super wicked awesome!”
Oh wait a minute… For some reason I’m being yanked out of the distortion field and reminded of that classic South Park episode:
Here we are back in reality, today and still pre D-DAY (July 11th):
http://code.google.com/p/iphonetextreader/
D’oh!
Just incase you think I am exaggerating; I also seem to remember some similar hype recently about a “new” cool v2.0 feature for a “new scientific calculator”. A few clicks through the 360+ projects quickly reveals an old time favorite of ours: http://code.google.com/p/hpcalc-iphone/ Nice job 3rd party devs!
Double D’oh!
Here is when it starts to get really interesting, remember Chris’ post from the other day about web apps? Oh yeah!
More searches in our vast google code repository also shows iPhone web apps are still 100% viable, and rather useful to boot:
http://code.google.com/p/mythtv-for-iphone/
Go go gadget open source baby! We love mythtv!
Hang on though, I seem to remember that Apple also sells a set-top video device, I think it was called the Apple TV… they also sell a portable device that can play videos called the iPhone… Oh wait, never mind that would not be a good product idea at all. Silly old me. Nothing to see here, move along...
Well so if all that was not enough, remember folks - you can always install icountdown so you can watch the clock tick down to complete July 11th enlightenment!
Don't worry, it’s all going to be super awesome! I think… I hope… Yeah it will be fine, I mean what is the worst that could happen...
Until then go grab yourself a toolchain take a look around the SVN repositories at code.google.com and most of all - happy 3rd partying!
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"there are only supposed to be 4,000 people “sanctioned” to develop... What on earth am I talking about?"
Good question. Apparently, you're talking about the number of developers participating in the Beta test program, and trying to mislead people into thinking no one else is "sanctioned" to develop iPhone software.
That is complete FUD. Anyone can download the legitimate, legal SDK from Apple and begin developing iPhone applications RIGHT NOW.
There is no need to wait until July 11 or to rely on an unsupported hacker toolchain.
O'Reilly should be ashamed of itself for the way it has jumped into bed with hackers and software pirates just to make a quick buck.
Since you gleefully encourage people to violate Apple copyrights and steal Apple's intellectual property, can you please tell me where I can download a great "toolchain" to copy your books and ripoff your property? Fair is fair, right?
I love anonymous comments... "hackers and software pirates" eh? I never exactly thought of them as synonymous, actually they aren't idiot, there's nothing illegal about hacking as long as you're not hacking someone else's property, of which case there's nothing wrong with hacking your own damn iPhone that you bought and paid for.
T_T;
Sebastian
"there's nothing illegal about hacking as long as you're not hacking someone else's property, of which case there's nothing wrong with hacking your own damn iPhone that you bought and paid for."
By that same logic, there's nothing illegal about copying and distributing an O'Reilly book. It's "your own damn book" because you "bought and paid for it," so you should be able to do anything you want with it, right? The author and publisher have no rights because you paid our 30 bucks, right?
Owning *an* iPhone does not mean you own the iPhone *platform*, just as owning a copy of an O'Reilly book does not mean you own all rights to the book.
The rights you get when you purchase an iPhone are defined in the software license you accept when you purchase an iPhone. They do not include the right to hack the phone to run on other networks, to reverse engineer the software, or to steal revenues from Apple or AT&T.
If you aren't satisfied with what Apple offers you, then you shouldn't purchase an iPhone. Accepting an agreement then breaking it is dishonest, dishonorable, and illegal. It is a breach of contract.
If you don't understand that, then try hacking some of O'Reilly's DRM digital books and see how O'Reilly reacts to that. I'll bet they *don't* give you a contact to write "O'Reilly DRM Open Application Development."