Above screenshot taken from http://developer.apple.com/
The iPhone SDK was released today as predicted. Either there were errors in Apple’s push of the site updates or, more likely, developers are so hungry for this SDK that developer.apple.com is down.
I’ve been hammering on ‘Refresh’ for an hour. Could everyone please stop so I can get started on some code!?
The iPhone SDK has been a long time coming. Apple has been working on it since before last June’s WWDC ‘07, despite pushing the “You can build amazing web applications” message. The reason for pushing the only-web-apps decree was because the API, tool-chains, development environment, etc, weren’t ready.
Back at WWDC ‘07 the development community felt slammed by the news that we couldn’t build native applications or otherwise access the great hardware features of the device. We grumbled and asked questions, and were told it was a marketing/branding/positioning decision.
Back then there was a feeling of something amiss. The voice of the engineers at Apple seemed to speak, “one more thing.” Every time an attendee took the mic and posed a question about iPhone access (there were a lot of these questions) the engineers responded with wobbly words about web apps while exuding a sigh of, “it’s coming…”
It just flat-out felt like Apple had to make their June 29th release date for the device and they couldn’t get the SDK complete. Standard feature-drop. The typically well groomed Apple machine was recovering from an all-nighter just to get the iPhone itself released.
At the time I wasn’t certain of an SDK in the works. As most developers returning from WWDC I was dejected – they have to have an API, they just have to! I even agreed to a bet in early July ‘07 with my company president: Apple releases an SDK within one year of the iPhone release.
I’m looking forward to March 6th for more than winning a bet. On Thursday I find out if my prediction was correct and if I read the Apple folks. If we get a healthy suite of tools I’ll have validated my assumption that Apple had an SDK under way prior to WWDC.
UPDATE: Cartwright Reed reminded me the bet was an official iPhone SDK from Apple that iofy could use. This is important since I (and all developers looking forward to the SDK) could still lose if the SDK is only accessible to companies blessed by Apple. So far this seems unlikely.
I’ve been reminded today about how easy life is when we use the right tools. My wife and I were out skiing and watching Spring Mountain‘s Big Air Jam. I took pics with an iPhone and Canon SD-1000 and was blasting them straight to Flickr/Twitter. I was also taking video…
At lunch I pulled out the MacBook Pro and iMovie. In fifteen minutes I’d imported and edited the videos, laid a techno track, and exported. Sure the videos could have been uploaded raw, but a highlight reel is better edited, cleaned, and combined. Check it out after the jump.
For those that enjoyed the photostream today, I’m pleased and hope you’ll spread the word.
I like Robert Scoble’s preference of broadcasting live (I was doing this in 2001).
A historical note: I used to broadcast live. I was the General Manager at LIvVE.com, from 2001 to 2004. We would do live remote broadcasts with nothing more than a Sony GT1 and a high (cough, cough (28.8k)) speed cellular connection. Back then we risked a punch in the nose when going about an interview with an UMPC device shoved in someone’s face.
The highlight live broadcast was on the 4th of July in 2001 at the New York Trade Towers. A guard offered to let us film from the top of a tower if we slid him a fifty.
iofy has a subscription to the O’Reilly Safari. It allows complete online access to O’Reilly’s entire line of books, as well as books they still have in the works. As a tech company, we thrive on this.
Lately I’ve hooked up bookmarks on my iPhone to titles I like. At any time, a single click lands me in the book I left off on. It’s far more convenient to have books in a pocket, on a device one already keeps on hand, than to carry around a Kindle or hardback.
Continue for full-size screenshots…
I’ve finally made the leap away from being a directory-o-holic and landed in iPhoto from iLife 08. It does the organization automatically (“Browse Package Contents” in Finder.)
is working well as a good photo stream and album holder (using the Sets feature.) It works as a free backup service too ($25 per year for photo hosting is close enough to free.)
Both apps accentuate mobile blogging and connecting to people. I’ve been using the iPhone to take pics on the go, dropping them in to Flickr on the fly via Flickr’s email service (iFlickr on jailbroken iPhones is fantastic too), and then Twittering the links.
Which leads to tying together Twitter and Flickr. Twitxr ties Twitter and Facebook together, but isn’t really that impressive since it only runs on hacked iPhones and hits those two services. I’d really love to find an app and/or service that hooks Twitter and Flickr together. Both have APIs. This seems natural, no?