Opinion: Another iPhone shift

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Apple CEO Steve Jobs today declared his love of 3rd party applications for the iPhone, just a few weeks after Apple issued a software update for the iPhone that killed off all the 3rd party apps (and, in more than a few cases, killed the phone, too). The company plans to issue a software development kit for the iPhone early next year, giving developers an authorized route onto the phone’s OS X-based operating system. That’s bound to be easier than ‘jailbreaking’ the phone in order to load a custom app.

It would be nice to think that Jobs changed course after reading our editorial on this issue, but that would be wrong. The best guess, judging by the hints made by Apple executives, was that Apple has long planned to develop an SDK for the iPhone. I makes no sense to do otherwise, especially when there are far more 3rd party developers coming up with novel mobile software than there are Apple employees. The only question was when to bring an SDK to market. According to Jobs’ blog post, the main reason for the delay is the work required to protect iPhone users against malware. Of course, Apple could have designed the iPhone OS from the beginning to be a secure platform for 3rd party apps, as rival Symbian has tried to do with its operating systems (although not with complete success). Given the determination of the malware community, a more open iPhone presents some risk for Apple and its customers. But I suspect most consumers will gladly take that risk in exchange for a bounty of useful new apps.