Back at the introduction of the iPhone (was it only just over a year ago? How the time flies) we all cast a jaundiced eye at Apple's "develop for the Web" philosophy for extending the platform, while simultaneously wondering if Apple might provide a true SDK for the device of the future; I seem to recall a conversation back on an early talkcast where a couple of people (yours truly included) stated for the record that a Apple SDK was an inevitability, with the only question being exactly when.

Now, on the cusp of the official App Store and 2.0 firmware launch and ensuing flood of iPhone/iPod touch native applications, we owe a moment of acknowledgment to the folks who refused to take "Safari" for an answer when it came to making iPhone applications: the jailbreakers and community toolchain developers.

Not to take anything away from the diligent work of the Mobile Safari application developers -- many of their results, including TUAW fave Hahlo, stand up well against desktop apps -- but it's hard not to feel some degree of astonishment when a few (sometimes fractious) loosely-affiliated bands of hackers, with some help from our friends, start from the barest hints of access to the iPhone's system and create castles floating on air.

Scores of applications (some great, some not-so) including music, games, dictionaries, utilities and not one but two complete or nearly-so ports of the BSD subsystem, complete with sophisticated software deployment capabilities, are currently available for jailbroken iPhones and iPod touch handhelds. This is a notable body of work, and what makes it more surprising is that it's been done over the course of one year, absent any support from the device manufacturer (to say nothing of active discouragement) and with no particular financial incentive to proceed. This is hacking in the original, non-pejorative sense: diving into the innards of the coolest gadget under the sun to figure out how it works and how far you can take it.

As exciting as the App Store is, there's a bit of wistfullness amidst the hype and enthusiasm; we are replacing the grimy, rough-edged and self-sustaining Times Square of iPhone application development with the sanitized, "Disney/Apple" reworking of the original. Knowing that a substantial fraction of the jailbreak app developers are under 18 and cannot legitimately join the authorized development program until they come of age, we can only hope that the energy and enthusiasm they brought to the iPhone will not be lost to another mobile platform.

Here's to the crazy ones. TUAW reader Tony Walla got to attend the Wisconsin premiere of the new Mac-doc film that's sure to be a crowd pleaser (depending on the crowd), and he sent us this report.

On April 6th, the documentary "Welcome to Macintosh" premiered at the Wisconsin Film Festival in Madison, WI to a packed theater of about 275 festival goers. Josh Rizzo and Rob Baca, who co-directed and produced the film, were in attendance. Before the film began, attendees could be seen checking email on their MacBooks, MacBook Pros, and iPhones. Even a Newton or two was in the crowd. One audience member even used the iSight on his MacBook Pro to snap a picture of the audience. To the attendees, this was not just a documentary, this was an Apple event.

Rizzo and Baca's goal is to tell the story of the Macintosh experience. "In order to do the Mac experience, you've got to put it in context of the Mac history," notes Baca. Rizzo added, "You can't appreciate where it is today without knowing some of the past and the fact that there is a sprit, a personality. There is a flame that lives in Apple, that lives through some of the products that is dispersed though the creativity of the people that make them."