Cupertino, California-based hardware giant, Apple Inc., introduced a special software development kit for its iPhone mobile communications device late last week, allowing programmers to create third-party applications for the popular handset.
“Starting today, we’re opening up the same APIs and tools that we use internally,” said Apple’s Scott Forstall at a recent company event, noting that existing iPhone web applications had met with great success.
Apple engineers based the new framework for application development on the Cocoa environment of Mac OS X, giving it a similar look and feel to OS X, but with additional memory optimization and power management features, as well as built-in support for touch-based controls in place of a mouse and keyboard.
The software development kit supports a range of new Apple services including Core Audio and Core Location – a location system based on mobile signals, allowing iPhone users to pinpoint their exact location.
The development kit can be used to create applications that mesh with users’ address books, location information, audio and video capabilities, 3D effects, and certain databases, as well as an embedded version of OpenGL. Access to the phone’s 3D motion sensors open up some exciting development opportunities for game programmers.
“We think we’re years ahead of any other platform for a mobile device,” Forstall said.
The iPhone development kit is being deployed through Apple’s existing Xcode environment, and comes equipped with an interface builder, iPhone simulator, and various facilities to check memory usage and performance, as well as a feature to send new software directly to an iPhone for testing.
Telecommunications Industry News
