Editorial note: This is a guest blog post, written by my friend Thomas Hall, regarding his thoughts on what the iPhone SDK means for him. He and I have been Windows Mobile and Palm enthusiasts for a long time, but now we both are thinking we could migrate to iPhone-only. Anyway, I don’t want to steal Thomas’ thunder, but just wanted to take a moment to thank him for writing this and to encourage you to chime in with your thoughts in the comments. Note that SDK = Software Development Kit, API = Application Programming Interface.
I am excited about the iPhone SDK announcement. The iPhone SDK makes it relatively easy to make feature-rich programs for a mobile platform. Other development platforms do not make it as easy to create the UI or the programming language or APIs were too restrictive. But, that’s not why I’m excited.
Being a Palm user since the Pilot 5000, I went to a Treo and then Windows Mobile, Symbian (S60 and UIQ), and then the BlackBerry, trying to find the “perfect” platform. The iPhone was interesting to me, but not as a primary device, as it lacked support for third-party applications. That had always been the great allure of the Palm. There were so many apps on it that you could find almost anything.
Currently, I use a combination of a BlackBerry and a Windows Mobile device because there just aren’t enough of my favorite applications on the BlackBerry yet. The tipping point in my move from Palm to the Windows Mobile/BlackBerry combination was that enough of my favorite software had been ported over to Windows Mobile or I found decent equivalents.
So the iPhone is now a possibility for me as my only mobile device. Why? Because the SDK means that developers will port some of the third-party applications that I have been a loyal user of over the years. Here are some examples of items I’ve used on the Palm and Windows Mobile:
- Astraware games (Sudoku, Bejeweled)
- Chess Genius or PocketChess
- eReader
- eWallet
- ListPro
- Mobipocket Reader
- PhatNotes
- SplashID
- SplashShopper
- Secret!
So, that’s not a long list, but the other apps are minor or are replaced by features native to the device itself, or that have some different equivalent that is platform-specific (a great example of this is PhatNotes). Generally, you can categorize the list above into the following main categories: Games, Productivity, eBook Readers, and Security.
Looking at that list above, I decided to go see what has been said now that the iPhone SDK has been released, and I am VERY pleased with what I see:
- Astraware, Nothing on their blog yet, but their forums indicate they are looking into iPhone support
- Mobipocket, mobi_cs1 indicates they have been waiting for the iPhone SDK to come out (near the bottom of the forum page)
- Iliumsoft indicated that they definitely plan to support the iPhone (this is major!)
- SplashData states they plan to launch an iPhone beta before year end.
So, that really makes me happy! The developers not only see how nice the SDK is and what they can do with it, but customers are asking for these programs and they’re listening. And since the SDK will allow you to run these applications natively and supported (instead of on a jailbroken device), there are going to be some amazing things released.
I’m curious as to what you think the significance of not being able to run apps concurrently is?
I recall that for a long time many people argued that WM was superior to the Palm OS mainly because WM could run multiple apps at the same time.
Good question, John. I’ll chime in with my view that it won’t really make any difference to me … I used Palms for a long time before using Windows Mobile devices, and got a long just fine. Running apps concurrently is nice, but I personally can live without it.
great article! I love my Tilt with all my apps on it…but I also am enjoying my ipod touch!
@John – One of my annoyances with PalmOS was the lack of true multitasking, but I think it mainly had to do with the stability of the network stack and browser. If the applications worked “properly”, they could maintain state and bring you back to where you left off. However, due to the memory management and general browser support, it wasn’t doing a good job of being the all-in-one PDA I wanted.
Windows Mobile, by contrast, allows multitasking (though the UI is pretty poor to switch between applications – some Spb Software House products help there on my TyTN II (aka Tilt)), but I try to only run a few things simultaneously to prevent it from slowing down and saving on the battery life. Running several things and running low on memory is why I don’t use my Windows Mobile device as my phone, but as an Internet-connected PDA. I use my BlackBerry as a phone because it handles memory better and is more stable for me. Others may have their own thoughts on that, but that’s how my usage scenario works.
In reality, if the ability to suspend an application and bring it back in its original state existed, I think I would be okay without having multitasking for most situations. So, the iPhone would work out for me in this case if the applications are coded appropriately. Having things like IM clients running in the background would be nice, though.
In reality, since the built-in iPhone applications maintain state and run in the background (mail, PIM, phone, browser), that’s what I would want to multitask on most of the time, so I don’t see as much of an issue with it.
@Susan – Thanks! I love my Tilt (HTC TyTN II) as well. It’s by far the most stable and useful Windows Mobile PDA/Phone I’ve had! Glad to hear you like the Touch as well. I’m hoping to see more developers plan to port their applications. We live in exciting times in the mobile world!
@Thomas, Thank you again for the excellent post! Also, thank you for the insights you shared with us all in your reply to John’s question.
@John, even now the Safari browser on my Touch saves its state, so I can switch back to it from another app and pick right back up where I left off with it. I expect we will see most apps preserving their state, so the multi-tasking consideration shouldn’t be much of an issue, as Thomas indicated. The only thing lacking that I see right now is a good way to copy and paste between applications. Yet, there is already a utility one can install for Safari that will enable copying and pasting within it. So, that gives me hope that we will copy and paste support amongst many applications. It may even be built into the SDK (and I presume it is).
Tom and Bruce, thanks for the insights.