This weekend in San Francisco, the second annual iPhoneDevCamp 2 is underway. Whereas the first confab focused primarily on Web applications, this one has a definite native application flavor, thanks in large part to the fact that the iPhone software development kit (SDK) is out of beta and now available for developers.

When the iPhone was released in June, many developers were disappointed by the absence of an SDK for writing third-party applications on day one.

At D5, Steve Jobs explained to Walt Mossberg that Apple (AAPL) first needed to iron out some security issues before they would open up the device to outside developers:

We would like to solve this problem and if you could just be a little more patient with us, we’ll do it.”

–Steve Jobs at D5 on the availability of an iPhone SDK

Fast-forward to the first quarter of 2008, when Apple made good on its promise by releasing an early version of the iPhone SDK. The fruits of the patient developers’ labor was evident at the launch of the iTunes App Store, where 500 free or commercial applications were available to download onto the new iPhone 3G or the original iPhones running iPhone OS 2.0.

No longer were iPhone users confined to using Web applications running in Mobile Safari or resorting to jailbreaking their devices to use third-party programs.

The App Store made it dead simple for every iPhone user to duel their friends with PhoneSaber or satisfy their Dance Dance Revolution/Guitar Hero/Rock Band craving with Tap Tap Revenge, a game which recently celebrated its one millionth download.

At iPhoneDevCamp this year, there’s a greater and more palpable sense of excitement in the air than last year, and it’s reminding me of the time when I was writing applications for another Apple handheld product: the Newton.

While the green device from Apple was not a commercial success–it was surpassed in sales and popularity by the less-capable, yet smaller and more convenient Palm Pilot–the Newton nevertheless pioneered many features we now see perfected in the iPhone.

Fourteen years ago, the Newton could fax, send email and receive pages; the iPhone is a communications powerhouse with 3G/EDGE/Wi-Fi/Bluetooth.

Newton’s handwriting recognition was dramatically improved with Newton OS 2.0 in 1995; the iPhone has fantastic Chinese and Japanese character recognition.

Finally, the Newton promised a day when users everywhere had their own personal digital assistants in their pockets; today, millions of people have chosen their phone to be an iPhone.

Despite leading the Newton protest at Apple Computer in 1998, I admit that Jobs was right to cancel the Newton. He made the correct decision to focus the company’s efforts on Mac OS, and it’s paid off.

The iPhone, after all, is running a version of the same operating system powering today’s Macs. The release of the initial iPhone raised the bar significantly for mobile users tired of using the same-old devices from Palm, Microsoft, and Symbian.

At iPhoneDevCamp 2, the bar is rising even higher for native third-party applications. If you were excited about the first 1,000 apps, wait till you see what comes out this weekend!

Below are photos from Friday’s welcome reception at iPhoneDevCamp 2. For more information, visit the iPhoneDevCamp 2 web site.

iPhoneDevCamp2 Friday Night Photos

Order these photos from SmugMug

A year ago, we said that no iPhone SDK meant no killer apps. It came, and the apps are here in staggering numbers. But many of the amazing apps and concepts we grew to love as unofficial apps aren’t here, and only about 100 of the 500+ apps at launch in the official store are really useful or desirable—the rest are dupes or just bad. There are no less than five apps to turn my iPhone into a flashlight, yet I can’t turn it into a 3G-powered Wi-Fi hotspot. Why?

Read the rest of this post

Monday’s message is pretty simple: Apple is going for iPhone market share in a big, big way. The iPhone 3G seemingly only has two major hardware additions: 3G networking and GPS. The battery, I suspect, might be stronger (and, given the shape of the back of the iPhone 3G, perhaps a stronger but bigger battery. No front-facing camera. No video from the rear camera. Instead of building a better $400 iPhone, they worked on halving the price of last year’s phone.

Read the rest of this post

Don’t think for a minute that Microsoft is ignoring the iPhone. In fact, the software giant is probing the gadget for profit opportunities. For a little more than a week, a team of the company’s Silicon Valley software engineers has been examining the iPhone software development kit (SDK for short), a set of tools Apple released this month that let outsiders build software for the iPhone and the iPod touch. Microsoft executives aren’t sure yet whether they’ll find worthwhile opportunities to sell iPhone software–but they seem eager to find out.

Read the rest of this post

It’s not often I write something completely positive about Apple … but there are exceptions to every rule, as I’m about to prove. As Thursday’s iPhone special event approached, I was looking forward to it, but with some trepidation. As a user who has had third-party applications on his iPhone almost since such a thing was first possible, I had concerns that Apple wouldn’t quite understand how well this system had been working. But now, having read the coverage of Apple’s briefing, I am happy to admit I was completely off-base with my concerns. I think Apple has hit a proverbial home run here, with everything from the enterprise support to the actual SDK to the approach it plans to take for distribution. Here’s why I think Apple did everything right…

Read the rest of this post

The invite to the media event next week suggests that Apple has figured out how it wants to tap demand from all those corporate types that wish their employer would support the iPhone as well as other devices such as the BlackBerry. Evidently, since the event is also about the launch of the much-awaited iPhone software developers kit, Apple is banking that third-party software (and possibly the ability to update it–the map image shown on the invite includes a place called “Software Update”) is how it will differentiate the iPhone from the BlackBerry. Makes sense: the iPhone–essentially a Mac in a tiny, keyboard-less package–is more of a general purpose computer than is the BlackBerry. Who knows what new apps corporate programmers will come up with to exploit the iPhone’s many talents?

Read the rest of this post