path: root/wired/old/published/newipods.txt

But there is some division in the developer community about which development platform is the best route -- the official Apple sanctioned option of web-based apps or the unofficial, but so far stable hacks that enable third party apps to run directly on the device.


Joe Hewitt, 



Joe Hewitt (iUI)

Hi Scott,

I just got back from Moscone, as Apple was nice enough to invite me to see my Facebook site used in the iPod demo.  As a developer, I'm just over the moon about the price drop and the iPod web browser.  Obviously that means a huge number of new users for mobile touch screen apps, like the Facebook iPhone site (which is now in need of a new name).  I think this move really justifies the investment many of us have made in developing for this new web form factor.

I remain fairly indiffeerent about Apple opening up the iPhone/iPod to OS X development.  The web is where it's at, as far as I'm concerned, and I am much more interested in seeing Apple expose new web-based APIs that allow us to exploit the touch screen, camera, accelerometer, and local storage.  This would cause a much more significant revolution, in my opinion, than allowing developers to install native apps written in Objective C or whatever.

- Joe 

-----------------------------------


Scott - first off, I love wired magazine and am a bit awestruck right
now, but I'll try and save the adoration for later.  It has been
something of a fantasy to make it into the magazine, and so by all
means in the future feel free to contact me.

As for thoughts, the second I saw on the apple-news sites this morning
that Apple was releasing an iPhone without the phone I got into our
code and started making the EDGE components optional for the build.
The hacking community as a whole is thrilled at this development - and
we're all getting ready to buy one the second it comes out in order to
get our app working for it.

The real question thought is whether or not Apple will ever open the
iPhone platform - and as a developer, I would love to see that happen,
but I don't think it will.  Looking at the internals of the iPhone
it's pretty clear that Apple never intended for the "hackers" to break
in and poke around as they have.  We've discovered the lack of GDB
support in the debugger, found "todo's" occasionally, etc etc.  What
we've really done is something remarkable - Nightwatch and crew over
at http://iphone.fiveforty.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page have created a
working SDK for a platform that wasn't intended to have one - and
we've taken that and we've run with it.

This much larger platform excites the hell out of us - we're looking
at a PDA that's missing critical PDA functionality.  For example - who
builds a mobile platform without Instant Messaging support?  Well,
Apple did, and looking immediately at the screenshots available with
the iPod touch, it looks like it's running the very same OS.  Of
corse, we'll have to see how long it will take the dev teams to break
it open, but the code for Apollo and things like Installer.app will
without a doubt have versions out that same day ready for it.

Personally, I think iPhone optimized sites are a complete waste of
time.  Safari is a great browser, but by in large, Web 2.0 doesn't yet
provide the same functionality as a real program written in a real
programming language.  Nobody wants to use Beejive, but they're forced
to - and we're happy to be working on support for libPurple in
ApolloIM so that we can have the exact same versatility as programs
like Adium and iChat.  The thing with the iPhone-sites that makes them
so useless is the very existance of this amazing OS they've built and
the devotion of hackers like ourselves and others to the Unix
landscape.  They're dumbing down functionality, and well, we're not
going to stand for it.

My theory is that the current methods for Jailbreak will work on the
iPod touch.  The bugs exploitable in the iPhone are done so at the
"Recovery Mode" level - so if Apple is going to release an iPod with
that recovery mode, we're going to get in.  I'd wager the same day
it's released it'll be hacked and ready for us to get inside.  While
Steve Jobs didn't say anything about it using the iPhone's same OS -
the functionality looks exactly like that of the iPhone and it
personally wouldn't make any sense to build a new "iTunes Wifi Store"
for two platforms when they can have one single version working on
their entire mobile platform.

The development of Apollo shifts drastically - with our latest release
we got Edge keep alive support working great (so you can basically go
around all day with an IM app on using your iPhone's wireless
internet), but now we're looking into better ways to keep Wifi alive
when the phone enters sleep.  It doesn't change much beyond that point
- we're gunning for Gtalk, Jabber, MSN, yahoo, et al. and with that
kind of support yields such bigger options.  Behind the scenes we've
been eagerly playing with Celestial (the iPhone media framework) and
see just how feasible sending voice from it over the internet is - and
the phone is more than powerful to do so.

In the near future, the iPhone is going to have VOIP clients, and that
will be it's next big revolution. Until then, we're working on the
little things.  One of the big drawbacks of an undocumented API on a
closed platform is the fact we're winging it - but that's half the fun
of getting into a new platform anyhow.

The iPhone represents this new Apple that's a little more cautious
than it's predecessors - the Newton in particular. We're looking at
the dawn of a cheap mobile appliance ($300-$400) that breaks the
borders of what people think is possible to do with data - and
everyone knows it.  Google's jumping on that bandwagon, and the same
community breaking into this new iPod and iPhone will be there as
well- legally or illegally- as the circumstances dictate.  The impact
these devices make isn't like that of previous endeavors into breaking
into the earlier iPods or writing neat little toys for your new Razr,
it's that of improving the quality and expediency of your life.  Look
at MobileMoney (mobilemoney.googlecode.com) - this is more or less a
Quicken in the palm of your hand.

We're improving the quality of life and expanding our ability to keep
information at our fingertips, and well, I've never been more excited
to write code in my life.  If I could only get hired to do this kind
of stuff - well - then I'm afraid I'd never look back.

Scott, if there's any more questions about the iPhone hacking
community or anything about our application at all, my number is
720-346-4431, and don't hesitate to call.  It's a real honor.

--Alex C. Schaefer

-----------------

PodWorks


> Do you see Apple ever opening up the iPhone?


I personally think it'll be difficult for them to ignore the overwhelming
demand, both from developers and from users, for a proper iPhone SDK.  I
mean, the fact that hackers have so thoroughly and quickly
reverse-engineered the current closed platform suggests that developers are
extremely motivated to produce third party iPhone apps.  And since
installing these apps is now very easy, even for non-technical end users, I
think users are going to get more and more attached to them and annoyed that
Apple doesn't provide proper support for them.

That said, my personal theory is that Apple has always intended to open it
up eventually, but were planning on taking their time to do so.  Even though
the iPhone is based on OS X, it is still essentially a brand new platform,
and I think they probably are waiting until they can devote the time to
really designing the public APIs and infrastructure necessary for full-blown
third party support.  I'm sure they had their hands full just getting the
thing out the door, let alone worrying about how people are going to develop
for it.



What does it mean for you as a developer to have a much bigger platform
potential to play with (are you personally interested in application
hacks that leverage to new possibilities in the iPod Touch?)


I have been thinking about that literally since the moment the iPhone was
officially announced.  As someone who develops a application (PodWorks) that
is tied to the iPod, I can speak to what a large and fanatical market that
device has.  But, as much success as I owe to the iPod bandwagon, the
opportunities to develop for it have, till now, been very limited.  The idea
of being able to develop applications that actually run on an iPod, and to
be able to leverage my existing Mac programming expertise to do so, is
incredibly enticing.  You can bet that, Apple SDK or no, I will be working
on apps for the iPhone in the coming months.

Also do you think this will give iPhone optimized sites a bigger push?


I think so--there is a staggering number of iPods out there, and the iPhone
platform is definitely the future of the iPod.  I could even imagine the
ubiquity of the iPod turning the iPhone-optimized site into a sort of
industry standard for mobile browsing.

It certainly looks like the new iPod Touch is running OS X (though I
don't believe Jobs said one way or the other), Do you think it will make
it easier for outside apps to hack their way in? Does this have any
impact on the development of podWorks?


When you have a device running something like OS X, instead of some arcane
embedded software like Pixo-based iPods of yore, the hacking opportunities
open up tremendously.  Having access to a UNIX-based system is a lot like
Archimedes' lever: give a geek a terminal and he'll move the world :-).

It probably won't affect the development of PodWorks so much (most of the
hacking for that takes place on the Mac side of things, not the iPhone/iPod
side), but it definitely opens up the possibilities for lots of interesting
new applications that would never have been possible on traditional iPods.

Hope that helps!