iPhone 2.0 - and we're still waiting for the first one
From TechCrunch the news that Apple is making a number of announcements today for the iPhone. Support for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync is a big one on its own. I can just imagine the groans from IT/finance departments in organisations around the world (not here in Australia yet as we don't have the iPhone - but that's another story) who now have to deal with requests for iPhones in their companies. The other big news is Apple opening up its internal APIs and tools to 3rd party developers. A software developers kit (SDK) is available for writing apps on both the iPhone and iTouch (at least we have those here) at a price of US$99. The TechCrunch article describes some interesting application demos that are worth checking out. Applications that are developed will only be distributed through iTunes and while I am a fan of their technologies, I can't really say the same about some of their business models. So - what does this mean for those of us in the (Australian) education space.... Well we don't have iPhones yet which kind of takes the shine off any such announcements but as developers of niche services in a niche market, we really have to ask ourselves whether this mobile platform is one that we can afford to develop in or should we concentrate on more open and widely adopted mobile technologies (no matter how cool the iPhone looks). It is interesting to see this announcement in the same week that Google announced Google Gears for Mobile though. What was interesting for me about that announcement was that it will initially be available for Internet Explorer Mobile on Windows Mobile devices.
technorati tags: iPhone, Google Gears
