A LOT has been written in the small amout of intervening time since the announcements around the iPhone SDK – some good, and a lot negative (for some strange reason) – so time for my tuppenceworth, as IntoMobile’s resident UK … er …. resident! 😯
It fascinates me the hype that is generated around anything that Apple does – to the point where people are spotting tiny graphical alterations being made in the UI (see Will’s article). Really this is a testament to how Apple have gone about things, but forgetting for a moment all of what is being said, Apple do continue to make great, simple, defined strides in Mobile – something, if you’ll notice, that they happen to do pretty well in computing, and personal audio also!
The SDK only looks to be building on what is, as far as I am aware a pretty solid mobile platform – unfortunately I am not lucky enough to own an iPhone, but have yet to hear mutliple reports about the O/S going over or hanging on simple tasks (something we all have heard too often with other manufacturers). Similarly, first reports I am hearing from people that have downloaded the SDK is that it is also well-designed, and easy to use – hardly surprising…..!
But the devil in the detail is if the SDK will allow developers enough access to do genuinely useful things with the iPhone – and we’ve no reason to assume that it won’t. Despite Stefan’s comment that “run one app at a time” is no good, I’d suggest that if the app is genuinely useful, doesn’t crash, and is easily accessible (the last two of which will be qualified by the iTunes distribution model), then that’s still one more useful app that we had previously.
I am going to be heading out to the US in a couple of weeks, and if I get the opportunity, I may just be tempted to grab myself one o’ them Apple phones (or should they be called multimedia computers? 😉 ), and see what all the fuss is about – perhaps by the time I do finally get my hands on one, we’ll have some details about those genuinely useful new applications from third-parties too 🙂