As many of us know, the iPhone and iPod Touch hacking communities have built many apps for the iPhone/iPod Touch, everytime Apple releases an update though, the apps need to be re hacked onto these devices. There has been much skepticism weather Apple would release an official Third Party Application SDK for Developers. Well, Steve Jobs, in his latest open letter, anounced a iPod Touch and iPhone App SDK. Here is the orignal open letter.

Let me just say it: We want native third party applications on the iPhone, and we plan to have an SDK in developers’ hands in February. We are excited about creating a vibrant third party developer community around the iPhone and enabling hundreds of new applications for our users. With our revolutionary multi-touch interface, powerful hardware and advanced software architecture, we believe we have created the best mobile platform ever for developers.

It will take until February to release an SDK because we’re trying to do two diametrically opposed things at once—provide an advanced and open platform to developers while at the same time protect iPhone users from viruses, malware, privacy attacks, etc. This is no easy task. Some claim that viruses and malware are not a problem on mobile phones—this is simply not true. There have been serious viruses on other mobile phones already, including some that silently spread from phone to phone over the cell network. As our phones become more powerful, these malicious programs will become more dangerous. And since the iPhone is the most advanced phone ever, it will be a highly visible target.

Some companies are already taking action. Nokia, for example, is not allowing any applications to be loaded onto some of their newest phones unless they have a digital signature that can be traced back to a known developer. While this makes such a phone less than “totally open,� we believe it is a step in the right direction. We are working on an advanced system which will offer developers broad access to natively program the iPhone’s amazing software platform while at the same time protecting users from malicious programs.

We think a few months of patience now will be rewarded by many years of great third party applications running on safe and reliable iPhones.

Steve

P.S.: The SDK will also allow developers to create applications for iPod touch. [Oct 17, 2007]

Yes, as you all thought, its going to be the 26th! As soon as iAppblog gets a copy you can be sure we’ll review it.

Apple have also updated the Leopard website to detail all the new features of Leopard, you can see that site here: http://www.apple.com/macosx/

Leopard will see the introduction of Time Machine, an app that backs up your Mac and allows you to retrieve files from a previous backup. It also sees the introduction of improvements on the Desktop and Finder, which includes Cover Flow for finder. Two more of the major changes are the introduction of Spaces, which allows you to use multiple desktops on your Mac at one time, and Quick Look, which allows you to view, play and read files without opening them.

Apple has just posted a site with tons of iPod Touch and iPhone compatiable web applications. These are iPhone/iPod Touch style sites that allow you to access some of your favourite content right from the iPhone or iPod Touch web browser, formatted for the 3.5″ screen. Some of my favourites are the Big Bang Sudoko App, the Digg App and the Stop Watch App. We would love to hear about your favourites as well, post a comment and tell us about your favourites.

You can check out the mini site at http://www.apple.com/webapps/ or you can check out the WebApps RSS Feed at http://www.apple.com/webapps/feeds/recent.rss

Being the mac app blog we are, I thought to wish everyone a happy iCal Day! What I mean is that the icon for iCal has July 17 written on it.

I have also found a cute Apple Comic to show everyone.

The iLine

The line was huge, stretching and twisting like a maze through red satin dividers. About 150 people were waiting in line at the Apple Store. The usual Mac geeks were there along with people of many ages (toddlers to 60-year-olds). Whole families were there. A few ?¢‚Ǩ?ìstealth?¢‚Ǩ¬ù security guards milled around with at least ten mall security guards looking for something to do. Apple employees walked in the vicinity of the door. The windows were covered in giant, black iPhone advertisements. Occasionally an Apple employee would walk by, offering us free bottles of water or coffee. Two teenage eBay connoisseurs in front of me were talking about selling their iPhones. Wives were exasperated, husbands were eager. The man in back of me had gone to two AT&T stores and another Apple store who didn’t have enough iPhones. A local reporter interviewed people next to me. A boy around twelve walked near and said ?¢‚Ǩ?ìI’m 24th in line, how much??¢‚Ǩ¬ù. I laughed; the boy was trying to sell his spot.

The iNtensity

The line was shifted. Security guards counted us. We moved against the wall. An Apple employee came by with a counter, asking how many iPhone we were going to buy. Suddenly, the Apple employees lowered the black advertisements. The store’s windows were now visible. Giant iPhone models flashed iPhone videos and a 25 minute countdown. People cheered; a person nearby called Apple a ?¢‚Ǩ?ìHypeWhore?¢‚Ǩ¬ù. We were moved to another satin rope maze. The cutout square of the floor above us was bordered by people gawking at us, taking photos and muttering. The clock ticked down. When less than a minute was left, the Apple employees started clapping rhythmically. When ten seconds was reached, we chanted the countdown to zero. Over the course of the next hour I waited as five people at a time entered the store. Security guards flanked the inner doors and general area. Finally I entered. Half the store was roped off just for iPhone buyers. In the back was an iPhone presentation. The other half consisted of the iPhone demo units. The people using the iPhones were ecstatic. The kid next to me sounded exactly like an ad, ?¢‚Ǩ?ìIt’s just so easy to make calls…?¢‚Ǩ¬ù.

The iPhone

Of course, the iPhone was is amazing. The actual device is tiny. You just can’t grasp how slick it is until you use it. The keyboard works way better than a Palm device’s writing. Still, not as good as a physical keyboard, but this way you get a bigger screen. The camera is OK. The apps are awesome though. Mail, Calling, and the other apps worked great (except the YouTube app couldn’t connect to YouTube). The iPod functions were virtually perfect. Turning the device 90 degrees notified an internal accelerometer that the unit was sideways. The screen’s view flipped along with it. The sensor had a little trouble detecting this when the iPhone was flat against the table though. The very best thing about the iPhone was Safari. The web browser was just like a desktop. To zoom in, I just spread two fingers apart. Logging in worked perfectly. Any other mobile web browsing cannot compare to the iPhone.

Four and a half hours waiting for four and a half inches of pure joy, it was worth it.

At this years World Wide Developers Conference Keynote, the attendees were presented with 10 out of the over 300 new innovations. These innovations include Time Machine, a new Finder with Cover Flow, Spaces and Quick Look. Developers who visited WWDC 2007 also received the Leopard Beta to create and port their new and existing applications too. Unfortunately, iAppblog was not able to visit the World Wide Developers Conference 2007, but we do have some amazing photos of the event.

WWDC Registration
Taken by Sophia Teutschler

“This June the center of the Mac universe will be at Moscone West in downtown San Francisco as developers and IT professionals from around the globe come together for the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference. Don’t miss this opportunity to connect with Apple engineers, get a firsthand look at the latest technologies, and spend a week getting the kind of inspiration you won’t find anywhere else.”

WWDC is held yearly between June and late August in San Francisco, United States. This year there are over 5000 attendees, and 1200 Apple Software Engineers on site.

WWDC 2007
Taken by Christoph Dernbach

You can watch the full keynote by clicking here, then clicking on ‘Watch the Keynote Address’

Steve Jobs at WWDC 2007
Taken by Christoph Dernbach

All photos in this post have been used with the permission of their owner. Thanks to Christoph Dernbach and Sophia Teutschler for their great photos!

I was looking around Apple?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s New American site, and found something that I had not heard of before, Xray. It looks like it is to visualize application?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s performance. It?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s interface is very similar to iTunes and GarageBand.

?¢‚Ǩ?ìWhen you need help debugging, Xcode 3.0 offers an extraordinary new program: Xray. Taking interface cues from timeline editors such as GarageBand, Xray lets you visualize application performance like never before.?¢‚Ǩ¬ù?Ǭ†?Ǭ†?Ǭ†

Tracks that track.?¢‚Ǩ¬® Now you can visually compare many analysis instruments side by side over time. That?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢s because Xray creates a time-based record of your entire application run, storing information such as CPU load, network and file activity, and memory allocations as separate ?¢‚Ǩ?ìtracks?¢‚Ǩ¬ù of data. These tracks are displayed synchronized over time, allowing you to quickly identify application events ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äù

?Ǭ†?Ǭ†?Ǭ†?Ǭ†?Ǭ†like what was happening with the disk just before the CPU usage spiked. Xray gives you a complete picture of your application, so you can better understand cause-and-effect relationships and make changes to improve performance.

Record, replay, repeat. ?¢‚Ǩ¬®Xray works with new Universal Access features in Leopard to record a user-interactive run of your application, making it easy to replay the same behavior over and over. That way, you can create ad hoc application tests anytime you like. Record the application?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢

?Ǭ†?Ǭ†?Ǭ†?Ǭ†s behavior in Xray, change your code, and rerun the tests to see the effect of your changes. Run your application in a template and Xray visually compares the runs side by side, making it clear where your code changes affect performance or memory consumption.

DTrace instruments.?¢‚Ǩ¬® DTrace, the systemwide analysis tool in Leopard, provides full access to system activity ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äù

?Ǭ†?Ǭ†?Ǭ†?Ǭ†?Ǭ†from high-level application behavior to the operating system kernel. Many Xray instruments are implemented using DTrace, and Xray provides you with the same power: Using Instrument Builder, you can create your own powerful, custom analysis instruments.

Instruments of change.?¢‚Ǩ¬®

?Ǭ†?Ǭ†?Ǭ†?Ǭ†?Ǭ†Xray includes analysis instruments in six main categories:

User events. Tracks the exact time of user interactions, such as mouse clicks.?¢‚Ǩ¬® CPU and processes. Monitors activity, sampling, load graphs, and threads.?¢‚Ǩ¬®Memory. Tracks garbage collection, object allocations, and leaks.?¢‚Ǩ¬®File activity. Monitors disk activity, reads and writes, and file locks.?¢‚Ǩ¬® Network activity. Measures and records network traffic.?¢‚Ǩ¬®

?Ǭ†?Ǭ†?Ǭ†?Ǭ†Graphics. Interprets the inner workings of the OpenGL driver.

Xray looks like it will be a very good developer tool, and I look forward to its release. All information was found here: http://www.apple.com/macosx/leopard/developer/xray.html

Apple has released a public beta of Safari 3. The biggest part of Safari 3 is that you can run it on a Windows XP or Vista computer.

?¢‚Ǩ?ìSafari is the fastest and easiest-to-use web browser for Mac and PC. Safari 3 Beta introduces new features to help you find your way and enjoy your time on the web.

Arrange your tabbed windows with just a drag and drop. Instantly and graphically locate any text on the current web page with the new find command.

Safari is also now available for Windows so you can continue to use your favorite browser even when you?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢re not using your Mac.?¢‚Ǩ¬ù

The public beta is available for free download for mac or pc at http://apple.com/safari/.

iAppblog will have a full review of it in the near future.

Rating: 4/5

I happened upon Hallon while doing a search for applications that could handle bookmarks. Hallon, however is a completely different tool than the apps meant to manage ever burgeoning browser bookmarks. It more accurately falls into a slim version of GTD (Get Things Done) app as it allows you to bookmark things in apps that you normally wouldn’t be able to tag this way and then allows you to set due dates for for given bookmarked items.

I’m finding this is a really useful utility ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äù and I’m getting to really like having that red raspberry icon in my menu bar. From the developer’s web: ?¢‚Ǩ?ìThe name? I think Hallon is a nice word (and it makes it easier to come up with an icon as it is the Swedish word for raspberry).?¢‚Ǩ¬ù (-;

I do volunteer work and though I’m using MailTags, which I’ll review soon, Hallon is becoming useful to me for bookmarking things other than email that I need to act on. The basic applications directly supported by Hallon are Address Book, iPhoto 5, iTunes, Mail, Safari and Terminal in the default install. However, you can bookmark from other apps but they will labeled as ?¢‚Ǩ?ìGeneral?¢‚Ǩ¬ù in the application column of the Hallon organizer (organiser, as the developer spells it with British spelling).

As the developer chose to make this app available through SourceForge, additional applications are being added to extend the functionality for bookmarking. So far they include, Firefox, Entourage, Camino, BibDesk, Shiira, NetNewsWire & Path Finder. The developer is open to adding other applications but states that ?¢‚Ǩ?ìThe application for which you want to add support needs to have fairly good AppleScript support (it needs to be able to return a reference for the selected item and then be able to open that item by sending it the reference).?¢‚Ǩ¬ù

The only downsides I’ve encountered are, when it hits a snag ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äù like I don’t actually have anything hightlighted/chosen when I tell it to add to the bookmark database ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äù my MacBook Pro tends to rev like a jet engine for a few moments until I clear the error dialogue box and move on to a doable action. If you need to keep track of a variety of data that have deadlines, want to set reminders you might find this a useful organizational tool.

This app is by the same developer, Peter Borg, who did Smultron, a free text editor for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger.

Price: Donationware

Site: http://hallon.sourceforge.net/index.html

Screenshot

I know this is iAppblog, but this is too good of a story to pass on. Today during Steve Job’s conversation with Walt Mossburg, Steve Jobs announced that Apple will be selling a 160GB model of the Apple TV, for $399 USD. It will be available tomorrow. This model does not replace the current 40GB Apple TV, it just adds to the line. Perviously, people have cracked open their Apple TVs to insert a 160, or even 200 GB hard drives.

The Apple TV, which was previewed during Apples “It’s Showtime” event in September 2006, with the code name iTV, was heavily spoken about at MacWorld 2007, in January. After MacWorld, the Apple TV was available for pre-order, and said by Apple to ship in February, did not ship till late March. There have been many hacks since the Apple TV has been shipping, including running OS X Tiger on it, and running the Apple TV interface on an Mac with an intel processor.

Apple also anounced today during the conversation with Walt Mossburg that they will have a Apple TV plugin for youTube available in Software Update in mid June.