Filed under: iPod Family, Bad Apple, iPhone
Greg Joswiak on iPhone applications
Fortune's Big Tech blog has posted an interview with Greg Joswiak, the head of iPod and iPhone marketing. In the interview, Joswiak talks about the evolution of new iPod features and how Apple has taken the device beyond just a simple music player.
Of particular interest (at least to me) is Joswiak's mention of iPhone application development and sales. He talks about his excitement in bringing "legitimate" developers into the iPhone application space (heh) and promises digital application signatures. Although he spins this as a way to ensure the application on your iPhone is the correct application that the developers intended to ship, it's also pretty obviously a way to ensure that the application on your iPhone has been vetted by Apple. The apps will conform to a development environment that maintains "security and reliability" while offering "some really cool things", i.e. no unlocks and a possibly limited subset of the development space.
One thing the article makes clear is that the SDK will not be invitation only. Joswiak says the SDK will bring in grassroots small developers as well as "legitimate" developers, a move he sees as "awesome".
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
sam said 1:31PM on 11-27-2007
Is Joswiak a real name or just a play on "Jobs" and "Wosniak"?
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moo083 said 1:44PM on 11-27-2007
sam, I have thought about that one for a while. I think we need a comment on this from FSJ.
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caleb said 1:52PM on 11-27-2007
Isn't he the same guy that said, "Oh no. We have nothing against people developing third party software for the iPhone, and won't do anything to intentionally break the 3rd party software you have installed" right before they released a service pack that obliterated 3rd party software(at the time)? also, his RDF is obviously not up to par with Jobs'. I somehow don't feel as "awesome" as he does about developers having less access than they do now.
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oddEvan said 2:02PM on 11-27-2007
caleb: Having less access than they do now? That's debatable. Sure, developers have a lot of access to the iPhone's inner workings, but all of it is completely unsupported and subject to be broken with the next update. Right now, any support from Apple, even if it's limited to facebook-style applications, is arguably more access than they have now.
I'm not saying Apple's in the right or the wrong here; I'm just playing devil's advocate. Honestly, I won't care a whole lot about this issue until I actually *have* an iPhone. :)
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Joseph said 2:07PM on 11-27-2007
So.. web app developers are "legitimate?"
Nice.
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Joseph said 2:07PM on 11-27-2007
err.. *aren't
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punkassjim said 2:16PM on 11-27-2007
Yeah, usage of the word "legitimate" is a very difficult art to master without insulting someone. I'm surprised he wasn't better-rehearsed.
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Brady J. Frey said 2:17PM on 11-27-2007
May I submit this article to:
http://quotation-marks.blogspot.com/
for you?
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Victor Agreda Jr said 2:30PM on 11-27-2007
Too legit to quit... was an "awesome" song by MC Hammer.
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Hawke said 2:37PM on 11-27-2007
I honestly don't think February will bring anything exciting. We'll look at apps from a limited set of developers that we'll have to pay for. Apple will praise itself for being so nice to us and anybody that has/had a jailbroken phone will scratch their heads and wonder why we're paying for applications that come close to 15% of the total app functionality available today.
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Sean said 2:58PM on 11-27-2007
Yeah.. I'm sure I'm not a "legitimate" developer only having writing an app every day for all of November so far... See: http://www.iappaday.com/ :)
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Brian said 3:11PM on 11-27-2007
I develop therefore I am....
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starkruzr said 5:12PM on 11-27-2007
Sean, I need to tell you something. Your Air Hockey game makes all my female friends squeal with glee whenever they see it.
That said, is there any way to make it less buggy? It seems to have a lot of random trouble picking up touches.
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Michael Rose said 5:12PM on 11-27-2007
I'm trying to reconcile the possibility of Apple reviewing (or, at a minimum, 'approving for distribution') iPhone apps with 'grassroots' developer access to the iPhone SDK. Where are the resources and expertise going to come from to do code review on thousands of grassroots iPhone apps? Will developers pay to get a "works with iPhone" badge?
My (admittedly uninformed) guess is that developers will be able to register for a signing certificate when they download the SDK. Any app that runs on the iPhone will need to be signed, and traceable back to the SDK licensee who published it. Otherwise, Apple's hands are off -- it would be hellaciously expensive to code-audit all those iPhone apps.
Now, as to the capabilities of the SDK to dive into the saucy bits of the phone... well, probably not.
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jjc said 3:32AM on 11-29-2007
Anyone notice how the public posting of iPhone code and tips has completely dried up??? Actually, complete source code was practically nonexistent in the first place -- for all the hooey about open source and freedom of this and that, most of the 3rd party apps released have just been binaries, very little source released to any of it.
Seems a wee bit hypocritical of this community.
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Anthony said 3:37PM on 12-01-2007
Yes yes Apple, but will Truphone be allowed to be one of your "legitimate" iPhone apps? If so I'll buy one of your iPhones.
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