I came down with a nasty cold last week and this weekend, so I’m a bit behind on some of the stories that made the rounds last week. In other words, forgive the tardiness here.
Whether you’re a developer who’s working on mobile apps, or just someone enjoying the millions of apps available for your phone, today is a very special day. It’s the ten year anniversary of the original iPhone SDK.
I don’t think it’s an understatement to say that this release changed a lot of people’s lives. I know it changed mine and had a fundamental impact on this company’s business. So let’s take a moment and look back on what happened a decade ago.
The smartphone revolution – caused by the iPhone – came in two big waves, in my view; the iPhone itself, and, followed a year or so later, by the release of the iPhone SDK. It’s easy to forget just how limited the original iPhone really was in terms of software, and I honestly doubt it would’ve been as big of a hit had it not been for the SDK.
Iphone without SDK, was a really good UI’d feature phone, with slow connectivity and terrible battery life.
With the SDK and 3G, it was the best phone available, albeit at a super premium price.
It should be taught to everyone in IT that the phone that really started the store/apps-ecosystem came without a store and was meant to run everything on the web.
The iPhone SDK is one of the best lessons in making a 180 degree turn very quickly and greatly benefiting from it.
The actual revolution came with Android though because before then it wasn’t affordable for most people in the world to have a smartphone.