iPhone SDK event – first reactions

Our Company / March 6, 2008 / Alykhan Jetha

Whoa! I totally didn’t expect the level of Exchange and enterprise integration Apple is going to provide. I may have to scale back my anti-enterprise rhetoric.

I also didn’t expect them to license or get ActiveSync. I would have for sure thought that Microsoft would have said “no, we don’t want you to kill our Windows Mobile platform”. Microsoft must have come to the realization that Windows Mobile is dead and took this opportunity to inflict some harm to RIM at the same time. If the iPhone is going to do push email, push calendar and push contacts and have an SDK, who the heck is going to buy a Windows Mobile phone??

The SDK looks to be phenomenal! I mean wow! I knew it would be Xcode based with the API and docs, but what I did not expect was Interface Builder support and a real iPhone Simulator (there is no need for our beloved iPhoney anymore. It served its purpose and helped get all those web apps ready for the iPhone). There are going to be a lot of cool new apps by the end of this year and I’m excited to see what those are.

The App Store and the distribution model is really cool, but I would have liked a slightly lower cost of sale fee. I think something along the lines of 20 or 22% would have been more to my liking. If we look at our credit card and hosting fees for Daylite and Billings, we are nowhere near that, I mean nowhere near (thanks to volume). After a while, there will be so many apps up there that, we developers, will have to spend a lot more marketing dollars to stand out amongst the crowd and that will add up.

The other fascinating this is iFund by venture capitalists KPCB. We’ve always wondered why Apple didn’t a venture capital arm that helped Mac developers. Well now we have a fund specifically targeted towards the iPhone. It says a lot about the iPhone’s (and iPod Touch’s) potential. It’s going to make the “classic” iPod look like pocket change.

Things are getting interesting…

Until next time…
AJ

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