OMG SDK!

The other night Sir Ariel and I went down to Figaro (for the wifi) from the office to install some apps on his iPod Touch. I't's unbelievable to see the progress the iPhone / iPod Touch hackers has made in taking advantage of the Apple super-device as a development platform. But a day before that, we first had "jailbreak" the Touch before we were able to install the apps.

Come next year though, the jailbreak part will be unnecessary. Steve Jobs just announced that Apple will be releasing the iPhone / iPod Touch SDK in February.

Also, check out the updated Leopard page in Apple.com they put in a lot of cool stuff, and the 300+ new Leopard features is a good place to mine information about the upcoming OS X release.

On the other news, I almost wet my pants.

OMG. iPhone Unlocked

[Updated]
Engadget reports that a team called iPhonesimfree has finally unlocked iPhone for use in any network inside and outside of the US. The hack is pure-software, so it's the iPhone dream that everyone was really looking for. Although iphonesimfree is not yet releasing the software, I believe the Engadget guys (that's saying a lot about Engadget, coming from me) when they say that this is the real thing.

Okay, so just in case this hasn't sinked in yet, this means that the "jesusphone" is coming to the philippines earlier than everyone was expecting.

I probably won't join the bandwagon just yet though. I will just wait for the official release here in the Phil, but that's mainly because i can't afford to buy one yet. Also, I'm still waiting for Apple to add some hardware features and software apps to the iPhone (MMS, Video-camera, Todo list app, etc.), and here's hoping that those upgrades will grace the offical Asian release next year.

For those who are ready to take the jump, this is the good news that you've all been waiting for. :) I couldn't be any happier for you.

(image taken without permission from Engadget.com)

Update:

• An earlier hack has been published by another team, but this involves both software and hardware hacks, so it's not really for the faint of heart.
• A third team, one owned by the owner of uniquephones said that they will be selling software for unlocking an iPhone in iphoneunlocking.com

iPhone New York

I've been enjoying watching this for a few days now and I thought I'd share it here.
A cool unofficial 60 second ad for iPhone.

A Very Sweet Solution

As some of you probably know by now, iPhone will not be having support for native 3rd party iphone apps. This has bothered a lot of geeks and developers as well as key apple watchers because Apple is (again) leaving developers in the dust. Hopefully things will change later down the road, but it's still hard to ignore the discontent of the developers. Though for some would-be-iPhone-users this is a non-issue. For some, the lack of capability to load potentially kick-ass iPhone apps from great Mac developers is a glaring limitation of the iPhone.

As if things are not bad enough for the developers, Steve Jobs during his WWDC 2007 keynote struck a lot of developer nerves (to an extent that some say as an insult) when he announced "third party applications" for the iPhone:

We've come up with a very sweet solution.…We've got an innovative new way to create applications for mobile devices. Really innovative.…

I've yet to find a reaction that will top Michael Tsai's. It's the best hit so far. :D