Live From Apple's iPhone Event: Applications

Phil Schiller turns the stage over to Apple's Scott Forstall to talk applications. Forstall starts by saying that Apple's initial strategy of enabling iPhone apps through Safari has been a hit. Facebook has a great iPhone Web app, and so does Bank of America.

"But today, what I really want to tell you about is the native iPhone SDK." Starting today, the APIs and tools that Apple uses to build apps will be available to all developers.

"There are a lot of pieces that make up an SDK." The most important are the APIs--the hooks into the OS. He's saying that OS X is the most advanced platform, and is explaining its various layers. Cocoa is the OS X application framework for Mac apps. It's great--but it's designed for keyboard and mouse input. But now Apple has created Cocoa Touch--a version of Cocoa enabled for the iPhone's touch input.

More details on the iPhone platform. It has the OS X Core OS, with the same kernel as on the Mac, but optimized. The iPhone's power management benefits from Apple's long expertise in power management for Macs, but it's even more advanced--it's automatic. "That's just a taste of the Core OS."

The iPhone's Core Services include the Address Book, the SQLite database API, and Core Location, which triangulates cell towersto figure out where the user is.

Media: "The Media layer is everything you'd expect from Apple...the iPhone is a great iPod." Core Audio is the low-level technology Apple uses for everything it does involving sound. OpenAL is an industry-standard audio API that enables three-dimensional sound--great for games. Video playback is built right in. So is Core Animation, which lets developers create layered animations, just as they can in OS X Leopard for the Mac. And OpenGL ES "is an absolute screamer for 3D graphics on the iPhone."

Cocoa Touch is built around touch input--single finger, multi-finger, gestures. It can utilize the iPhone's accelerometer, which is a full three-axis sensor. Web View is the Safari engine, available to other apps. There's an Image Picker, and access to the phone's camera.

"This is the architecture of the iPhone...it's the most advanced platform out there...we think we're years ahead of any other mobile OS."

Now, Forstall is talking about XCode, the environment developers will use to code iPhone apps. It has all the features and conveniences programmers will want, from integrated documentation to a great debugger that lets you plug an iPhone into your Mac and debug remotely.

Interface Builder is the tool for building iPhone user interfaces. "It makes building your interface as simple as drag and drop." You pick the elements you want and drag them onto your canvas. You can localize your app for different languages. "It's a fantastic tool."

Instruments is a suite of performance-analysis tools. "Just likethe debugger, it runs live-connected on your iPhone." You can monitor graphics performance, file system usage, memory leaks, etc., etc. and record them live. You learn from what it tells you, optimize your code, then run it again.

All these tools come from OS X, but have been optimized for the iPhone. And there's a new development tool: The iPhone Simulator. It simulates the entire iPhone API on your Mac, "which gives you an incredible turnaround time for development--it's fantastic."

"We have a fantastic set of tools in addition to this amazing framework that makes up the iPhone OS." Now he's doing a demo, showing how the Simulator is a Mac app that simulates the iPhone perfectly. The photo browser, Safari, and other apps work perfectly, with simulation of the multi-touch interface.

Now he's going to build the standard test program--making the text "Hello World" appear onscreen. He's in XCode, which is connected to the Simulator. He makes the simulated iPhone display "Hello World."

"It's just as easy to build and run it live on an iPhone." An iPhone is connected to his Mac. He tells XCode to build "Hello World" for the iPhone, which compiles it and downloads it to the phone. The real iPhone says "Hello World." He shows how easy it is to change the text color to yellow.

Here's an app that took two days to write--Touch FX. It lets you select a photo on the phone, then do what I still think of as Kai's Power Goo-style distortions, to pinch and stretch a face to make it look cartoony. Want to undo your changes? Jiggle the phone like an Etch-a-Sketch, and they go away. Applause.

Here's an app that took two weeks to write, with under 10,000 lines of code. It's a game, using OpenGL graphics and OpenAL audio--a 3D space shooter. You wiggle the phone around to steer your spaceship. Applause. "It's fantastic--it's two weeks of work, less than ten thousand lines of code." You can hear the audio move around in 3D.

Now he's back on the Mac, using Instruments to measure graphics performance, which it can do while you're playing the game. He's looking at a graph of peaks and valleys for frame-per-second performance. He can use that info to optimize his app.

"I don't want you to just take my word for how good this is." Apple invited developers to spend two weeks developing applications. Here's Travis Boatman, an Electronic Arts developer. Applause.

He thanks Apple and says they wanted to take their two weeks to build something that took advantage of the iPhone. So they built an iPhone version of Spore. You move the phone around to eat anything smaller than you, and avoid anything larger than you. You can use touch to customize your spore's capabilities and looks. If EA had had more than two weeks it could have added even more features.

It took EA about two days to get Cocoa Touch up and running. Once it did, it created eighteen levels of gameplay. Apple employees really like the game.

Here's a bit of iPhone video showing the spore making its way into the world. "And that's Spore." Applause.

Forstall returns: "That was two weeks of development...it's fantastic." He says that the iPhone SDK is also great for vertical apps. "Salesforce.com is an innovator." Here's that company's Chuck Dietrich. He too thanks Apple and says that Salesforce.com is excited. They're going to bring their 63,000 platform apps to the iPhone.

They moved a salesforce automation app to the phone, so salesfolk can stay productive while in a taxi, for instance. They can check out graphs of where they are in relation to their monthly goals. "They'd love if they could shake that graph into the green, but we're not going to let them do it." But you will be able to swipe your way around the application's interface.

Opportunities are "the deals that a salesperson is trying to close." Here's a list of them. Maybe a rep wants to sort by the deals that are most likely to close. It's easy to do that. "The rep knows exactly where to focus."

The Salesforce app ties into native iPhone apps like the phone features and Maps. "It's very cool stuff." All this was done by one developer in less than two weeks. The 70,000 Salesforce.com developers are gonna love this.

Forstall: "It's absolutely amazing." Here's Rizwan Sattar of AOL to talk about building AIM for the iPhone. He too is excited.

He shows off the AIM client, complete with buddy icons and status member. "What's really amazing is that I never developed for the Mac before." They had a live buddy list up and running in five years.

We see a demo of chatting with an AIM buddy. Doing that for the first time "was one of those 'c'mere, Watson' moments." You can switch between active chats by swiping. Applause. You can update your status easily, and choose photos you've taken with the iPhone to use as your avatar. "We're really looking forward to working with Apple to bring AIM to the iPhone."

Forstall returns: "It's amazing the progress we made." The built-in networking helped.

Next: EPocrates, which develops healthcare software. One of its developers comes onstage and praises the iPhone environment compared to other mobile platforms. Cocoa Touch makes it far more powerful. He's showing how you can look up information on drugs on the iPhone. The data is stored in the SQLite database, and the screen's high resolution lets the app show images of pills. The company used Core Animation for MultiCheck, which lets doctors see if taking multiple medications might cause problems. You can zip between screens, with animated transitions. He demos more features. Applause. This'll increase the quality of medical care in this country.

One more third-party developer: Sega's Ethan Einhorn. When Sega and Apple talked about games, Super Monkey Ball was "an obvious choice." We're seeing a demo involving the game's 3D graphics. "Even if you've never played a video game before, you'll know exactly what to do with the iPhone," which lets you jiggle the phone to control your monkey. "This is not a cell phone game--this is a full console game." If anything, Sega underestimated the iPhone's graphics power--it had to fly in an extra artist to improve the graphics. Applause.

Back to Forstall. The third-party developers blew away Apple. Next question: How do you get these apps on your phone? "I'd like to turn you back over to Steve."

And I'll start a new post...