Town Hall Analysis: Some Thoughts

by Eric March on March 6, 2008 at 11:59 pm

I must admit, I was very impressed with today’s event. There was a lot more meat to it than I thought there was going to be; the enterprise features are very welcome and much needed, and the SDK demonstrations were truly impressive to a degree that I was not expecting. Even better were the terms of the SDK. I was much more impressed with how Apple is handling this than I thought I was going to be. With all of the dire predictions of Steve wrapping an iron fist around development regulations, high fees to acquire digital signatures, the lack of free apps as a result, and everything else, it was truly refreshing to see that the reality bore absolutely no resemblance to the FUD being spread around, and in fact painted a picture that was not only impressive, but well and truly exciting.

Whatberry?
Steve wants an iPhone in the hands of every human being. If he had his way, birth certificates would be delivered to newborns wrapped around one. I’m sure that’s the dream of every maker of every product, but the iPhone’s exceptional popularity worldwide is proving that it’s got the chutzpah to get it at least into more hands than any other single mobile device — even the Crackberry.

One of the major things holding it back though is strong enterprise-level features, which include robust networking options and high-level security. Steve’s announcements of support for WiFi Protected Access v2 (WPA2), IPsec cryptographic protocols, and support for RADIANS authentication servers through the 802.1x protocol, should be enough to satisfy the security concerns of even the most paranoid CEO. Furthermore, push technologies spanning E-Mail, contacts, and calendar events through Exchange server should leave jet-setting executives in need of a clean pair of Fruit-of-the-Looms. Heck, it’s got me excited, and I don’t have much use for any of it. But that may just be Steve’s distortion field at work.

In any event, what this all boils down to is that the iPhone will now have in place just about every conceivable thing an enterprise user could possibly want, and it even stands a good chance of usurping the Blackberry as the preferred technological drug of discerning corporate climbers.

The SDK
This was perhaps the most surprising aspect of the entire event. Apple is releasing the SDK free. They are charging an absurdly cheap $99 to join the developer network. From that point on, the developer chooses their own pricing structure, which could be free or cost eleventy billion dollars; Apple doesn’t care, they just take their 30% cut and drop it back into the App Store. While there are limitations, the freedom developers appear to have with the SDK is quite broad, with the only limitations to freedom being ones you’d pretty much expect: No porn, nothing illegal, no cellular bandwidth hogs, nothing that could potentially violate user security or privacy, and of course, no malicious apps.

The app store. We all expected this, of course, but it is still a stroke of genius. You see, the thing that pretty much killed off mobile development for all but the biggest development houses was the method of distribution. There are only a few but fractured distribution channels with paltry returns for the developers, which forced many developers to strike out on their own, which meant they reached limited audiences, which restricted their reach and limited their income in its own right. The iTunes App Store changes the whole paradigm by putting apps into the hands of everyone who owns an iPhone or iPod Touch. One location, with access to it on your computer or wirelessly through your device. Additionally, developers get to keep 70% of the revenue right off the top. You may not realize it, but that’s absolutely huge, and every commercial Windows Mobile or Palm developer will tell you the same.

High returns and literally universal reach are an irresistible proposition to any developer looking for a platform to earn a living from. Even independent developers looking to distribute free apps can benefit at an absurdly low one-time cost of a hundred bucks. This is a total win/win on both sides of the fence. It’s even got me to take a closer look at jumping back into the development field.

The future’s so bright, I gotta wear shades
If the game and application demonstrations this afternoon are indicative of the simplest sort of things that can be done with the SDK, then I suspect we are going to be in for some real treats come late July. Sega’s Ethan Einhorn made a point of saying that these were not cell phone games, they’re console games. The power and capability of the iPhone exceeded even Sega’s experienced engineers, who had to fly out another engineer just to scale the Super Monkey Ball demo up to meet the device’s capabilities. That kind of sums up just about everything we need to know: The iPhone and iPod Touch are formidable devices with the ability to deliver console-quality games on a par with, and possibly even exceeding the likes of the PSP and GBA-SP, while delivering unique experiences through the touch interface and accelerometer capabilities.

But it’s more than just games; although few if any of us will ever have need of SalesForce or Epocrates, it speaks to the kind of professional apps we can expect to see this summer. Multi-messengers, word processors, spreadsheets, presentation managers, robust VPN and VNC clients, advanced calendaring, launchers, video players with additional codec support — heck, even alternative browsers are possible and well within reach. (Firefox, anybody?) There is always the question of whether or not Apple will approve some of these, but I am inclined to think that both their customers and the SEC would take a dim view of Apple denying publication of Firefox, just to use it as an example. While Apple is all about Safari, it would be rather anticompetitive of them to block other browsers, or other video players.

To jailbreak, or not to jailbreak…
Ah, now we get to the question that has been on many people’s minds for weeks now: Will the SDK render jailbreaking obsolete? Yesterday, my answer would have been a flat and resounding no. Today, I’m not so sure. The SDK is free. Joining the developer network (which is requisite to publishing anything) is remarkably cheap, and there is no requirement that developers charge for their applications, because distribution of free apps doesn’t cost anything beyond the one-time $99 fee.

Outside of publishing applications that Apple may not be willing to publish because they fall under one of their verboten restrictions, there really aren’t a whole lot of reasons for developers to stick with the toolchain. The limitations of the SDK seem to be remarkably slight, as do the limitations on publication; very little seems to be restricted. If they can pony up a Benjamin, they can release apps to their heart’s content — free or for-profit, however they like.

Certainly there are still going to be apps you simply won’t be able to get any other way; I doubt Apple will allow publication of emulators, for example; they may not be illegal, but there’s no way they’d host ROMs for them, so the only way to load up on some vintage gaming will be to jailbreak and SSH them over, as always, unless someone comes up with an SDK method to copy ROMs over natively, which may indeed be possible. Unlocking the iPhone, too, will stay well within the domain of the hacker, as will a handful of other things.

To be fair, I don’t think jailbreaking will disappear just yet, but I do believe now that its usefulness will be diminished significantly once Firmware 2.0 is released and the application floodgates are flung wide. It remains to be seen just how far developers can take the SDK with regards to opening it up to many if not most of the same things we have become accustomed to on our jailbroken devices. Will we see the likes of Summerboard turn up SDK-side? How about Customize? Categories? Are they even possible? We don’t know yet — but I think we are going to find out soon enough, and this will be a significant determiner for the continued relevance of jailbreaking.

The Bottom Line
Today’s event really painted a rosy future for the iPhone and iPod Touch as whole-package platforms, not just closed devices. It is an irresistibly attractive business model for developers, the cost of entry is paltry, the reach is broad, and the possibilities are almost endless. I can’t help but think that we are on the cusp of witnessing something quite remarkable. The opening of these devices up as a complete platform coupled with a highly attractive business model is likely to attract many developers, which in turn will sell more devices, which will just make the platform even more attractive to develop for. Apple’s really got an amazingly good thing going here, and so far they’re making all the right moves to invent a future unlike anything we’ve seen before. You might want to fasten your seatbelts.

Posted in Apple Event, SDK