iPhone SDK and Developing for the iPhone

The iPhone is an amazing piece of work. Apple spent years developing it, and has not stopped, even 8 months after its release. A few weeks ago, Apple held a keynote to discuss the software roadmap of the iPhone. At this keynote, Apple announced its enterprise enhancements which will allow the phone to be used throughout large corporations. With push email, push contacts, and push calendars, along with integration with Microsoft Exchange, and many other enhancements, the iPhone is ready to make this jump.

This started the keynote on a positive note. I was excited to see how far the iPhone has come in such a short period of time. The second aspect discussed in the keynote was the SDK (software development kit). This has been in the works for quite some time. Apple spiced things up a bit by showing what they had created using the SDK in just two days. They then pushed themselves to 2 weeks. After half a month of coding and 10,000 lines of code, the Apple development team had created an amazing 3D game with amazing graphics, sound, and functionality.

Slamming the idea home, Apple brought up 5 companies who have had a 2 week trial period with the SDK. All 5 companies (with just one or two developers) created amazing utilities and games for the iPhone. This simple test shows how powerful the SDK really is.

There are many other aspects of the development kit that make it the most advanced development kit for mobile devises. This really excites me. It excites me to the point that I have thought about becoming an iPhone Developer. I have several ideas for applications and think that it would be an amazing thing to learn.

Two small problems. First, I don't have an iPhone to test on. Although this is not completely necessary in order to develop (due to the iPhone emulators, it still would be really nice to be able to test exactly how one's application would function). The second major problem is that the development kit only runs on a Mac. I have been watching the prices of Macbooks recently trying to decide what I want to do. I can guarantee you one thing, as soon as I get a mac, the SDK will be the first thing downloaded. I am excited to being learning this advancing field and developing applications.