After announcing the iPhone, His Highness( Steve Jobs ) once said
"You don’t want your phone to be an open platform....You need it to work when you need it to work. Cingular doesn't want to see their West Coast network go down because some application messed up."
With comments like these, it was a bit hard to fathom what we witnessed from the launching of the iPhone SDK on March 6th. Talk about a 360 degree change in policy from a company known for being hardheaded and standing it’s ground.
At first glance, am very impressed with the SDK, but then am probably still stuck in the Mr. Jobs’s reality distortion field and once our developers fully dive into the SDK will we know just how legit this all is. Regardless, March 6th for the mobile developer community was probably one of the most important days in history. For one, it marked the culmination of the efforts of a never say die developer community that did whatever it took to get apps on the iPhone despite Apple not wanting us too. Once Apple realized it could not prevent the avalanche of 3rd Party apps, it was forced to release a public SDK. I have had many discussions with many of the iPhone Jailbreakers and hackers form the 13 year olds to Mr. ziphone and believe me, what all these folks have accomplished is a large reason why you saw what you saw on March 6th.
The launching of the SDK also marked a new sign of hope for developers. With the Palm OS dying anyway and nothing exciting on other Platforms, things are looking bleak. This new iPhone platform provides a viable avenue for 3rd party developers like us to make good money while developing some of the most amazing apps you will ever see.
So what does this mean for us here at Gx5/Efiko Software?
Well, we have had a great run developing Palm OS apps. We were fortunate to have best sellers that include UltimatePhone, TreoMemo and TreoWeather. Until the rebirth of the Palm OS, we have stopped new development for Palm devices and pretty much now have our sites set on the iPhone( and android by the way). Unlike the limitations of the Palm OS, the iPhone provides us a free canvas( knock on wood) to do some of the most creative things we could ever have imagined and we can’t wait to get started. Actually, we have already started, we are now just doing it the official way.
just a quick note, a 360 degree change would mean that it is still the same direction. a 180 degree change would be towards the opposite direction.
Posted by: Spencer Harris | April 08, 2008 at 08:14 PM