Apple iPhone SDK - The Hype
Just watched the iPhone SDK event. Looks really nice, but the parts where Scott Forstall (VP iPhone) talked about the development experience cranked me silly. Here are some quotes:
We started with Xcode, and then we enhanced it to support the iphone. […] the great thing is that Xcode knows all about the iPhone SDK […] so when you are writing applications, it will code complete to the APIs in the SDK.
Oh my God!. Apple, I am humbled by your radical and amazing approach to IDEs.
Project Management [..] it deals with all your files for you. Your source file, header files, … . It also integrates with your source control management system. So be it subversion, perforce, CVS, it integrates directly […]. You can check files in and out, you can merge files, … .
Mmm, how I wish I had this features in my crappy development environment. Apple sure as hell push the limit.
And there are so many more wonderful tidbits like this. “It integrates with the iPhone documentation”, “has a debugger”. The debugger part is amazing, the way it is presented (hard to put in into words) goes like this: It has a debugger. But [wait for it] it has a great remote debugger. Amazing. The limits that Apple are pushing the development experience.
Apple are doing amazing things. But come on, are you joking?
March 11th, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Yeah, you’ve got a bit of a point - there’s nothing revolutionary about the IDE/SDK compared to other existing desktop dev environs, and to even mention some of these things as advents should really be embarrassing. EXCEPT…we’re not talking about a desktop dev set, we’re talking a mobile dev set and the tools for those have lagged behind in the relative stone age. I guess I gave Apple the benefit of the doubt and assumed that they’re intended audience was mobile devs to whom they were saying: “look, you get to use your full compliment of desktop tools again.”
March 12th, 2008 at 2:34 am
Not amazing, but important for Apple to point out. Good IDE support is not yet taken for granted when developing for Mobile Devices. Great support even less so.
If they had presented a SDK for desktop, or server development then it would have been rediculous, but as a developer targetting mobile devices, Apple’s comments are reassuring.
July 19th, 2008 at 8:09 am
Nice blog, i have added it to my favourites, greetings