iPhone 2.0 coming in June with SDK and Exchange Support

[Magnus]

At Apple's Special Event tonight, Steve Jobs started by saying that in just eight months, the iPhone has garnered a 28% market share, second only to RIM (Blackberry). He said that iPhone has 71 percent of market share of US Mobile Browser market share. Very impressive.

Then Phil Schiller proclaimed "They want push contacts, global address list, Cisco IPsec VPN, they want authentication and certs, enterprise class WiFi (WPA2 / 802.1x), security policies, enterprise configuration tools, and they want remote wipe." He also said, "MS Exchange right into the iPhone -- we have licensed ActiveSync for the iPhone." And he continued, "The same email app, calendar app, and contact apps that customers really love will get information directly from the Exchange server." So no new apps on the iPhone for using Exchange."

Basically you just add another email account, enter your Exchange details and all the Exchange data (email, calendar, etc) is sent to the iPhone. This should be huge for corporate users. There's also functionality to remotely lock the iPhone and wipe it apparently. That should be welcome news for many corporate network and IT administrators.

Then the Scott Forstall introduced the iPhone SDK.

The iPhone SDK gives developers access to the same APIs (Application Programming Interface, basically a library of code that programmers use to develop applications) that Apple use now for iPhone development. At the heart it's XCode for writing the code, and overall it's borrowed heavily from the Mac OS X we run on our Macs. One main difference is of course input, which is mouse and keyboard on the Mac, but touch on the iPhone. There are also new tools, like the iPhone Simulator, which lets you run your iPhone application on your Mac, simulating actually running it on the mobile device. There's also Interface Builder for in a very easy way to create your iPhone interface.

They demoed some games on the iPhone that took advantage of the iPhone's touch interface and accelerometer to form what seems to be a really cool mobile gaming platform.

Salesforce.com showed a really cool implementation of an iPhone frontend to their sales software, and perhaps the big announcement was that AOL IM now is on iPhone.

Apple will introduce AppStore which will categorize and make available software for the iPhone to every iPhone user with the next release of the software. With AppStore software can be wirelessly downloaded. Developers can submit their software to Apple who will check it. If they approve it, there are no fees for developers and they keep 70% of sales. And developers pick the price.

All this is coming in the iPhone 2.0 update. A beta release is released today and customers will see this in June as a software update. IPod Touch is getting the same update for which Apple will charge a "nominal fee". There is now also an iPhone developer program which you can join for $99.

One more thing was the "iFund". They've put $100 million in a fund for iPhone developers.

Update: In a Q&A session after the main presentation, Apple revealed that they will allow VOIP (Voice Over IP) applications as long as they run over Wi-Fi, not mobile networks. SIM Unlocking will not be allowed, it was also revealed. In terms of security, each iPhone developer will have a digital certificate with which Apple can know who does what and in some ways control what they do. And it was made clear that no app will be able to get on the iPhone without going through the AppStore. Jobs said he didn't know what the "nominal fee" would be for the software update for iPod Touch. On a question about if there would be a WiMax iPhone, Jobs said that they're only talking about software today, not hardware (so no 3G iPhone today then). Schiller said they're working on a model for how companies could distribute internal software to iPhones.

[Appleholic]

Thats a lot of cool stuff, and i cant wait to get it all on my legal iPhone but he always tends to disapoints us by not releasing it TODAY :P whats up with that? it seems like lately nothing is on time with Apple... :P

[Abbas]

Nice- Exchange support will finally hit the iPhone! But June?? I guess I'll store my iPhone back in its box for the next few weeks. *sigh*

-a

[Vinpin]

Did this real happen?
On hardmac blog

To end on a funny note, let’s quote a question by Engadget’s staffer, and Jobs’ answer:
Ryan Block from Engadget: “Will a SIM unlock be considered software that won’t be allowed on the AppStore?”
Jobs: “Yyyyyyes…”

ho,ho,ho