John Gruber on iPhone Development

Friday, June 1st, 2007

Long-term, within the next two years, if not far sooner, I feel certain there will be various ways for developers to write iPhone software. (In fact, in Gizmodo’s transcript of the same Q&A session with Jobs from the D conference, they quote Jobs’s response to the question of third-party iPhone development as follows (emphasis added): “This is a very important trade-off between security and openness. We want both. We’ve got good ideas, and sometime later this year, we can open it up to third-party apps, and keep security.”)

I’m looking forward to seeing what sort of options start to spring up once the iPhone is officially released. I had a few neat ideas for possible applications back when it was first announced, and I’d still like to pursue those.

There are 3 comments in this article:

7/06/2007Kevin D said:

Btw, anyone thought about how they intend to develop and test iPhone apps without a Cingular account and/or iPhone in hand?

Simulator? Dummy non-phone device?

Also, you should really get a touchscreen monitor for development.
7/06/2007Marc Charbonneau said:

When you’re writing an application for Windows Mobile, you typically use an emulator to test and debug development builds. In my experience though, that’s still no alternative to running the application directly on the device itself. Even if Apple does release some sort of testing platform integrated with Xcode, you’re still going to need to find the money to buy your own device.
14/06/2007Kevin D said:

Yes, of course, but I was thinking of all the programmers not in the US.

This applies even with the use of Safari, though not so much I guess. I’d miss the WM development SMS, phone, etc simulation though. Have to think about that part some more.

Regards.