Critics of the iPhone have been screaming about the lack of MAPI support (as if that really mattered) whereas the biggest noise I’ve heard from developers regarding the iPhone is the lack of an official SDK.
Of course, the most obvious reason for no SDK is simply that It ain’t ready yet. iPhone obviously runs a subset of the Mac OS X 10.5 “Leopard” operating system due to it’s use of CoreAnimation and there’s currently no iteration of that operating system which could be considered “release-worthy”. so it’ll be a while before we get a release SDK and therefore a longer while before we can develop proper applications. Another minor thing to consider is that Apple wants to make sure there’s enough of a user base to support application development. That’s something not to be sniffed at and I’m 100% sure they’re working on some of the bugs that people have raised.
But then it’s not just the software ecosystem which is important, there’s also an important hardware ecosystem to consider.
Walk into any electronics store and you’ll be inundated with products for your iPod. Chargers for the car. Transmitters for FM radio. Microphones.
Back in the late 90s I used a Newton. I had the keyboard, I had modems and memory expansion cards for it. I had an ethernet card and much later a wireless card. Web browsing was possible but hardly a pleasure (heck, the machine has 4 MB of DRAM). Terminal usage was only enjoyable with the keyboard plugged in. The handwriting recognition wasn’t a heap of fun to be honest. I would place the Newt before me, in landscape mode and the keyboard behind it, using the display edges of the Newt as wrist rests. It meant for some very comfortable working while on planes and the Newton as it was developing quickly made my DELL Latitude completely redundant (and even my Powerbook began to get lonely).
The hardware ecosystem I can see for the iPhone will include hardware keyboards. It will include both a portable version and a docking version. Sure – you can’t hook up a phone like a flash drive and edit files on it (damn shame!) but that might change in the future.
There’s a few months before it’s released here in the UK and let it be said, I’ll be ditching my current carrier, Orange, in preference for whomever carries the iPhone – no qualms or romance about it. I’ve been with Orange for more than 7 years….and BOOM, like a rat out of an aquaduct.