iPhone SDK - Initial Impressions
I actually like the Brew-like ecosystem where Apple take care of the discovery, payment and delivery. In this respect, Apple will leap-frog Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Microsoft who have tended to outsource (read lose control of) their download stores to partners who want to make a great profit - and consequently compromise this important aspect of the mobile ecosystem.
What’s more, it’s great they will be taking free applications. However, it’s not yet clear what the position will be with free applications that require some kind of paid service or subscription. I suspect that Apple won’t mind as they have already said they aim to make no money from distributing the applications - the 30% commission is just used to run the application store.
I battled with the Apple web server this evening (it’s so busy) to try to get the SDK only to learn…
and…
US only developers and the requirement to develop on the Mac will put the iPhone SDK out of reach of many developers - at least in the short term.
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