March 2008 Archives

Last night's Mobile Monday Boston iPhone SDK party was a big success -- I'd guess there were at least 150 people packed into the Apple store, and many of those folks made it over to the party afterwards at Dante. The excitement around the iPhone as an application platform is incredible. Also, it was fun to meet some other folks in the industry, as well as catch up with a few co-workers from a previous job.

iPhone developer Jonathan Zdziarski presented, and gave a brief history of the iPhone Open Source Tool Chain. I found his comparison to the official Apple SDK interesting -- he positioned the Open Source Tool Chain as the platform of choice for people who want to develop free and open source iPhone applications (of course), and the Apple SDK as being for "enterprise developers."

While I agree that the Apple SDK will be used by enterprise developers, I think that a lot of non-enterprise developers will find it attractive as well. Anyone who wants to take advantage of the iTunes store distribution channel, as well as possibly charge some money for their application will want to opt for the official SDK. I also wonder how many mainstream iPhone users will really be willing to jailbreak their iPhones in order to run applications, once the iTunes store is up and running with lots of applications.

At any rate, it is great to see Jonathan and the open source community making so much progress on the iPhone platform. Regardless of whether you choose to install applications developed from the Open Source Tool Chain, I think it will only serve to put pressure on Apple to make the official SDK even better, and I hope, to open up access to more capabilities. It is great to have a choice between two SDK platforms.

Thanks to the Mobile Monday folks for putting on a great event.

Update: other blog posts here, here, and here.

Order an iPhone from the Apple Online Store, and you may find that it's being shipped to you directly from the manufacturing plant in China.

My iPhone was picked up by FedEx in Shenzhen, China, followed by a short hop over to Lantau Island, Hong Kong. From there, a long flight to Anchorage, Alaska, another flight to Newark, New Jersey, and then to Wilmington, Massachusetts. Finally, it's a short delivery truck drive to my office in Bedford, Massachusetts.

It's very impressive that through this combination of Apple's order fulfillment capabilities and FedEx's worldwide delivery system, this little box makes it from a factory in China to my hands in only three days (one of which was a Sunday). I think that this is the first order I've ever placed from Apple's web store, but I can't imagine that this is the most cost-effective way for Apple to fulfill all U.S. orders. I imagine that ideally, Apple bulk ships stock from China to warehouses in the United States, and then ships to individual customers from there. Surely direct shipment from China to a U.S. customer is reserved for situations where the U.S. warehouses can't keep up with demand.