Instead of trying to convince people next Wednesday that I was expecting whatever Apple’s announced the day before, I figured I’d blab my theories this Wednesday. Sure, it was, in fact, very early Thursday when I finally started typing this, but hey — I came up with this whole idea before midnight, and it’s the thought that counts, right?

Let me say up front, I don’t know anyone at Apple, and I don’t have the inside track on anything. I read whatever NetNewsWire finds for me and decide what I think is bull, just like everyone else. I’m also ignoring the backpedalling on whether this will still happen in February, since I really have no guess whether it’s actually delayed or not.

All that being said, here’s my thoughts on what we’ll hear about an iPhone SDK next week:

Code Signing

Everyone thinks there will be some kind of code signing. I think that you’ll need a real code-signing certificate from a recognized, trusted root to distribute your stuff through iTunes, and distribution through means other than iTunes will be “unsupported”.

Student / Hobbyist Developers

You’ll be able to develop applications with an Online membership to the developer program and without paying a tithe to Verisign for the previously mentioned certificate. Anyone who predicts you’ll be able to run your own code on your own device with Xcode and the cable you already have is right. See above for my guess about distributing your application once you’re done developing it.

Paid and Displayed

Professional developers (i.e., those who have paid ADC memberships) will get something extra. There are a lot of possibilities here, none of which I particularly like, but I think there will be something.

Xcode

There will be some new tools (i.e., the much-rumored simulator), and some existing ones will get new tricks. Some of the existing tools will not get any new tricks, and a large number of people will think everyone at Apple has their heads up their asses for for not including one of those tools in the iPhone toolkit.

Mind you, there’s more to developing good applications than being able to locate the “Build and Run” menu item on short notice. Especially on a mobile device, you have to live with your app to figure out if your interface blows, and that includes trying to use it and trying to not get hit by a bus at the same time. The bus service in my office sucks, no matter how wide I leave the door open. I would expect Apple to know this,1 but I’m not counting on them doing anything about it.

Casualties

Several Cocoa developers will be attacked in the coming weeks and sustain minor injuries. The weapons involved in these otherwise unrelated cases will include assorted handheld electronic devices, a stapler (used as a blunt object), three books, and an extremely unfortunate Carbon developer who was at the wrong place at the wrong time.

After an intense investigation, the police will break the case when they reexamine the evidence and realize that the handheld electronic devices consist almost entirely of Palm m505s, Tungsten|C’s, and a variety of Treo devices from different carriers. The assailants will all turn out to be former members of the Palm developer program who were driven over the edge by offhanded remarks about how much harder it is to develop without “using something called ‘Interface Builder’”.

I probably had a couple more items in mind when I started this, but that’s all I can remember. Hopefully the others weren’t the really insightful ones. Now comes the highly suspenseful waiting to find out just how ludicrously off-base I am.

  1. and no, I don’t mean that I can’t catch a bus in my office [↩]

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