<div><span class="gmail_quote">On 3/12/08, <b class="gmail_sendername">Nathan Smith</b> <<a href="mailto:nathan.smith@ipmvs.com">nathan.smith@ipmvs.com</a>> wrote:</span></div>
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<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid"><br><a href="http://www.brighthand.com/default.asp?newsID=13866">http://www.brighthand.com/default.asp?newsID=13866</a><br>
<br>I thought this was interesting. Maybe somebody who knows embedded systems could speculatively comment: Is this because the threading or memory management that would be required for the applications to run simultaneously is too hard to do or would "break" the phone in other respects - such as diminishing responsiveness for phone calls or wrecking responsive user interfaces like precious coverflow?</blockquote>
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<div>As I understand it, it's because (a) Apple is worried about a third party app interfering with responsiveness for phone calls (a VERY valid worry, let's face it - this IS a phone first and foremost!) and perhaps (b) because they just didn't have time to allow that in the first release of the SDK. They also make sure each app runs in it's own "sandbox" and can't affect other apps on the phone, apparently for the same sort of reason. You talk to other apps like the address book, web browser, etc, through code frameworks. Not sure if 3rd party apps can expose a framework for others to access or not; haven't read much of the SDK yet.</div>
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<div>They originally were NOT going to allow third party development on the iPhone at all except as web apps, but their developer community screamed bloody murder and the hackers figured out how to do it anyway in just a few weeks...so they gave in. (When will corporations learn? Never, apparently.)</div>
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<div>The 100,000 developers who have downloaded the SDK in the last week are NOT happy about this some of the restrictions in the SDK (including multitasking) , and the petitions have started already.</div>
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<div>Thwap Apple upside the head enough, and they eventually get the message, though. I don't expect this to stand, though we may have to wait until OS 3.0 ;-)</div> </div>
<div>Also, it really doesn't matter...the iPhone hackers have already hacked ("Jailbroken") the 2.0 OS while it's still in beta, and unlike the official apps, the apps written with the hacker's SDK in the 1.x and 2.x OS _do_ allow multitasking and they've long since had their own very nice over-the-air installer and repository ("Store"). Someone wrote a "LoJack" app that runs in the background, I've heard, so you can wipe your phone if it gets lost or stolen. And the hacker's SDK has access to the whole file system and stuff. Plus apparently it will have access to all the "offical" OS 2.0 goodness too. If you're brave enough to install the hacker stuff, that is. I'm not sure it's worth it for most folks, but at least the option is there. There's even a book from O'Reilly (I think) on iPhone Open Software Development methods coming out. So far, they've been able to find a way around Apple's security fixes that they're hacking in through...several times even before Apple officially released an OS update! And they usually have several backup hacks, just in case, that they dont' tell Apple about. </div>
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<div>Now if they didn't have to use Objective-C for their development. I dislike that dialect. I find the code very hard to read. But it's the same language used for Mac OS X development (and perhaps you can use other languages as well, eventually....certainly you seem to be able to do so with the hacker's SDK...you can install pretty much any Unixy app, especially command line ones.)</div>
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<div>References:</div>
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<div><a href="http://developer.apple.com/iphone/">http://developer.apple.com/iphone/</a></div>
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<div><a href="http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2008/03/iphone_toolkits_complementary.html">http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2008/03/iphone_toolkits_complementary.html</a></div>
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<div><a href="http://code.google.com/p/independence/">http://code.google.com/p/independence/</a></div>
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<div>and lots of iPhone projects on Google Code:</div>
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<div><a href="http://code.google.com/hosting/search?q=iphone">http://code.google.com/hosting/search?q=iphone</a></div>
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<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid">-- <br>Bill Davis<br>5214 Meredith Dr.<br>Des Moines, IA 50310-2956<br>(515) 270-6729 home<br>(515) 360-0445 mobile<br>
(515) 281-7302 work<br>(515) 249-3432 work mobile<br><a href="mailto:bill.davis@gmail.com">bill.davis@gmail.com</a> home<br><a href="mailto:bill.davis@iowa.gov">bill.davis@iowa.gov</a> work </blockquote></div>