iPhone Developer News

There’s good news and bad news. Good news is… Apple have finally revealed their long-awaited iPhone SDK, presenting it to reporters at the Roadmap event today. Built on the same Xcode source code editor that OS X uses, the company will offer the same API and developing tools that Apple themselves rely on.

Having developed a new touchscreen-friendly version of the Cocoa app framework that is present on OS X, called Cocoa Touch, the rest of the kernel is the same on both platforms. Developers will be able to access a debugger called Instruments, an interface builder that permits drag-and-drop structuring of the GUI and automated power management. There’s also a new iPhone simulator for OS X that lets you built applications, experiment with them running exactly as they would on the handset, and then transfer them directly to the iPhone itself.

Apple have permitted broad access to the iPhone’s functionality, including multitouch, the accelerometer, alerts, a people picker and image picker, as well as the camer. The H.264 video playback codec, OpenGL, 3D sound and hardware acceleration are all present.

Bad news is… The iPhone Developer Program will initially be available to a limited number of developers in the U.S. and will expand to other countries in the coming months.

At least we get to play with the SDK in the meantime.

Links: Apple iPhone Developer Program