So because I’m so increasingly sad about my Treo 650 I spend no few brain cells thinking about phones, and if you’re thinking about phones you may as well be thinking about the iPhone, right? So that’s what I do. In particular I’m thinking about the situation with it’s developer relations - what with Jobs telling us all that we’re so lucky to have such an awesome thing like AJAX on the iPhone we don’t need real apps. Everyone knows that that’s a load of horse nuggets - it isn’t a replacement for real apps, it’s just something different. So I was thinking about why they’ve done it, starting with the premise that Apple isn’t stupid. I came up with three possible reasons.

The first possibility, and one that I think is the least likely, is that Apple is thinking that apps are going to be a big money maker for them and they want to maintain tight control over who gets blessed with the SDK. This would extend the iPod model where select few get to add games or what not into the iTunes store - I’m sure soon enough there’ll be another tab in the store for iPhone apps. I don’t necessarily buy that this will be their long term strategy because they can probably make more money opening things up and simply blessing the best of the best into the iTunes store. Development would surge and there’d be a heck of a lot more interesting work to choose from. Nevertheless, I could see it happening. Long term, if this is the reason, it means only a select few get the SDK.

The second possibility is that the SDK and the phone simply are not ready for mass consumption. This is what I’m hoping the problem is. That is, there was such a rush to get the iPhone ready that there simply wasn’t enough time to make sure everything was looking good on the SDK front and that it was shrink wrapped and ready to go. Once the iPhone is out they’ll be able to focus on tightening up the SDK, workout any subtle kinks in the iPhone and when a true second generation handset hits the scene they can launch it to great fanfare with the SDK. Be a nice second wind for the phone. My fingers are crossed.

The third and to me most frightening possibility (frightening? You know what I mean, I’m not shivering alone sitting in my tub or anything, but you know…) is that they are genuinely worried about the stability of the phone. They are worried that app developers will push out second rate (or outright malicious) apps that unsuspecting consumers will load onto their phones making things unstable or actively destructive. I’m not sure how real this threat is, there’s lots of phones and lots of apps out there and so far so good - perhaps because the OS is so full featured they are worried about the iPhone getting the first major mobile virus. Who knows, I hope it isn’t this, but it is definitely a real possibility. My own opinion is that buyer beware - if you load something up on your phone you gotta know what it is you’re doing, but I can see how that doesn’t help Apple when the customers start running to their local Genius Bars with busted phones.

Those are the three notions I had about why Apple’s not handing out SDK’s like candy. Maybe I’m right, maybe I’m wrong, El Jobso is ever inscrutable. I mean look at the palm, they haven’t done a thing in years and are riding on the strength of the insane amount of apps out for the platform. It’d seem to me that iPhone could capitalize on the hype and get no few developers trying to make the next big mobile app. What do you think?

← newer Chaser’s 9/11 Quiz…  ↑  Breakfast Links: By Sea, By Land & By Space older →

TwitterCounter for @nybble73
Jun 14th, 2007 · Comments RSS · · · · · Tags: apple · iphone