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Thursday, 08 May 2008 iPhone Doom developers sing SDK praises

Developers are beginning to explain the trials and tribulations of the iPhone SDK

Jonny Evans

Apple’s iPhone SDK may not offer developers everything they need for creating software for the device, with certain API’s forbidden for use.

The developers behind the project to port Doom to the iPhone made these claims, but remain firmly optimistic as to the simplicity and ease of use of the device.

The developers also revealed that the first version of the Doom to iPhone port was put together in less than a week, observing that building applications for the device is a “doddle” for any developer skilled in OS X application building.

It’s the iPhone’s Mac OS X support that facilitates this, they explained to 9 to 5 Mac: “The iPhone runs OS X. It's a full UNIX system in your pocket, with brilliant Objective-C frameworks that make coding beautiful and powerful applications a dawdle,” developer Psychochromatic explained.

The developers also observed that the interest in iPhone development has spurred many Windows developers to begin to learn some of the skills they need to develop for the device - a move which also means they’ll face much less challenge developing full-scale OS X applications for the Mac in future.

But Apple’s decision to forbid developers from harnessing some of the deeper elements of the iPhone OS may preclude the debut of some applications, they said. “some applications need more direct access to the underlying iPhone OS,” they explained.

Despite these handicaps, iPhone’s future appears bright, they observed: Apple has combined its brand power and user interface development skills with an advanced mobile OS to create a product that speaks for itself.

“Everyone who plays with one wants one, and that alone puts it far ahead of any of the Windows Mobile devices or Nokia smartphones on the market,” they explained.

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