October 18, 2007 11:26 AM
Apple to Finally Open Up the iPhone to 3rd Party Developers
We all knew this was going to happen, that the all so exclusive iPhone would soon be open for third party developers. No other than Apple's top honcho Steve jobs announced the Apple will be releasing an SDK for the iPhone system sometime in February. Jobs and the rest of the Apple guys believe that they have developed that despite developing the most powerful handheld device, the iPhone still needs third party applications to enhance its capabilities.
Ironically, the announcement had to come out a few weeks after Apple angered a lot of iPhone users when the company released an iPhone software upgrade that rendered those iPhone units which have unofficial software installed, useless.
The iPhone SDK will have to wait until February as Apple wants to do two diametrically opposed things at the same time. These are to give developers an advanced and open platform and to protect the iPhone from viruses, malware, privacy attacks and other malicious codes that would cause Apple's most precious device dysfunctional. As Apple claims that there were existing viruses and malwares already in the iPhone caused by phone to phone communication through the network provider. It is but a known fact that the iPhone is most targeted prey of the most intelligent and smart malware and virus propagators on mobile communication networks.
As Jobs said, a few months of waiting would certainly bring a better iPhone experience for existing owners rather than giving them a half-baked SDK that would be vulnerable to various attacks. In other words, Apple is not yet ready to fully open the iPhone's doors to third party infiltration.
But then again, this is good news for other countries which are slated to have the "official" iPhone in their mobile market sometime next year. By the time the iPhone becomes available to these countries, there would already be a lot of third party applications available for them to install in their iPhone units.
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