So the current set of rumors (I never thought I’d sink this low… it won’t happen again) is that the iPhone SDK will be tightly controlled (Bad) and that a 3G revision is due sometime this summer. Ugh.
First of all, the fact that the iPhone didn’t ship with a native SDK (or that Steve Jobs thought Safari web-applications were good enough) is incredibly stupid. On so many levels… I can’t even begin to express my frustration. Here you have a revolutionary computing platform and you lock everyone out of it. The development community was tripping over themselves (and some still are now) to embrace this platform, and Apple killed it.
Yes, the BB only supports J2ME, but at least its an open platform, and therefore has a chance to become viral. Even though Palm from a hardware perspective couldn’t innovate out of a paper bag until they bought Handspring (and even then couldn’t do much better) from a hardware perspective, you had an open platform that encouraged everyone to develop for it. That is why the Windows Mobile platform sucks in comparison, even though their OS is more polished – its a closed silo that will be obsolete once Microsoft moves on. I could dig out my Handspring Edge and while I can’t upgrade the OS (unfortunately) I can still use it as a useful device because there is an entire ecosystem of software out there for Palm (yes it wouldn’t have wifi or music or graphics, but it would still be functional as a PDA).
I just don’t understand why Apple doesn’t get this. If their SDK is as tightly controlled as some are speculating… “Cupertino, we have a problem”