Finally, the cat and mouse game Apple has been playing with the developer community has stopped. Steve "The Man" Jobs has finally announced the inevitable: The Release of iPhone/iPOD Touch SDK.
When the safari-based SDK was announced back then, it didn't really capture me. Sure, the future of application should sit in the web, however, given the infrastructure limitation facing a lot of developing (and some developed countries) countries, that is not going to happen anytime soon. Google Gears seems to agree with that with their concept of "offline" online applications.
As a MAC nut, my ultimate interest still lies in being able to write software for the platform itself. This involves having access to OS level (like the MAC OS X SDK in Xcode) specific APIs.
The iPhone/iPod Touch, equipped with WIFI capability, is also a device for running Web 2.0 based applications (the vision is to run it through Safari). The SDK, in my opinion, should allow developer to build iPhone/iPod Touch specific widgets/softwares that can leverage the web at the same time. (e.t.c Native mini-OS X Calendar program that automatically syncs with a central server for meeting appointments and etc....)
All that said, I think it's high time this programmer starts honing some Objective-C and Xcode skills !!!!!
Li saluto, Steve Jobs, for the annoucement!!!
