Steve Jobs just announced that the iPhone Software Development Kit (SDK) will be released in February. This wasn’t a Web2.0 Summit announcement, but may be good news for everybody hoping to bring technology to Apple’s platform.
His announcement provides no details about the SDK itself, and Jobs makes it clear that the platform won’t be completely open. While he says that this is to balance the benefits of an open platform with user security protection, it’s unclear where Apple will draw those lines. Will there be a Skype client? Third-party media apps?
It would have been better if Apple had announced this when it released the iPhone. I’m hopeful that Apple will now embrace the existing iPhone developer community, and won’t use “security” as a way to keep potential competitors off its platform.
(See Marc Hedlund’s earlier post about opening the iPhone platform)
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