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WWDC: iPhone App Store and 2.0 Software
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Eric Dahl
InsideTech General Manager, Eric Dahl has followed technology since his dad brought home a 28 lb. Compaq luggable in 1983. He started his first website in 1995 back when “tables” were a hot new thing and the preferred web design atrocity was the blink tag.
Before joining Affinity Labs, Eric spent eight years covering the technology industry at PC World. As a Senior Editor, he wrote columns on digital music and future technology and edited award-winning feature stories on tech tips, electronic voting, and more. In 2006 he edited a November special issue on the future of technology that won PC World a Maggie Award as the Best Computer Technology, Consumer magazine.
Having grown up in suburban Chicago, Eric was cursed with Cubs fandom at an early age. The exorcism is yet to be performed. Eric holds a BA in Journalism and Mass Communications from Drake University. He now lives in San Francisco’s Noe Valley.
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Eric Dahl / InsideTech
June 09, 2008
Steve Jobs kicked off his talk this morning with lots of information about “iPhone 2.0.” Clearly he’s excited about the iPhone SDK and what developers will be able to do with it. The iPhone 2.0 software and the App Store won’t be ready until early July, and they’ll cost $9.95 for iPod Touch owners once they’re available.
Developers will set the prices for their apps, with 70% of the revenue going back to them. Apps under 10MB will be downloadable over the iPhone’s cell connection. Anything larger than that requires Wi-Fi or a download and sync through iTunes.
App developers will also be able to dsitribute code on an ad-hoc basis to up to 100 iPhones. Look for this to be used both as a teaching tool and a distribution method for iPhone app betas.
Enterprise Support and SDK
While many of the SDK updates were covered during Apple’s SDK event three months ago, it’s worth recapping what the SDK and iPhone 2.0 bring to the table:
iPhone 2.0 includes support for Microsoft Exchange with push e-mail contacts, and calendar. iPhones can auto-discover Exhange servers as well. Business users will also be excited about VPN support from Cisco. There’s also a remote-wipe feature as part of the Exchange support. According to Jobs, 35% of the Fortune 500 companies participated in the beta program for iPhone 2.0’s enterprise support.
Developers will have access to the same APIs and tools Apple used to build the apps shipping with the iPhone. Scott Forestall used the SDK to build a quick iPhone app right on stage, pulling contacts from the iPhone’s address book and using location awaremess to figure out which of your friends were nearby – in this case, within 10 miles of your location.
A September update will also add a remote notification service, which allows apps such as IM clients to receive push notifications from remote servers. This service can then kick off those apps when they’re needed, rtather than requiring them to run constantly in the background.
Lots of Games
Sega demoed the first native game for the iPhone, a version of Super Monkey Ball (a game I’ve always loved… come on, it’s super, it contains monkeys, and the monkeys are in balls – how can you argue with that). In just a couple months, they apparently built some pretty amazing graphics, designed over 100 stages of the game, and included a tilt control interface that makes use of the iPhone’s accelerometer. The price: $10 once the App Store launches.
Longtime Mac game developer Pangea also showed a couple games. Enigmo, a touch-based game with some interesting physics puzzles looked cool. Plus, they had a little racing game called Cro-Mag Rally.
Finally, Digital Legends Entertainment showed off a God-of-War-like game called Krull that should be released in September. This last game really showed the graphics potential of the iPhone, delivering visuals that rivaled portable game systems like the DS and PSP.
