Apple will allow third party apps on the iPhone

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Contrary to previous messages from Apple, the company's soon to launch iPod phone, the iPhone, will run third party applications despite concerns about third party software affecting reliability of the device.

Apple boss Steve Jobs told developers in San Francisco that the iPhone team had thought long and hard about how to enable developers to create software that would compromise neither the phone's performance or security. The answer was not to write a new software development kit (SDK) or to shoehorn in an alternative such as Java, but to rely on proven technologies already on the device: web standards.

Developers can create web-based applications which look and behave just like the applications built into iPhone, but run within Safari. These applications can access iPhone's services, including making a phone call, sending an email and displaying a location in Google Maps.

"Developers and users alike are going to be very surprised and pleased at how great these applications look and work on iPhone," said Jobs. "Our innovative approach, using Web 2.0-based standards, lets developers create amazing new applications while keeping the iPhone secure and reliable."

Scott Forstall, Apple's vice president of iPhone software, demonstrated an application that Apple had built that enables iPhones to access the company's LDAP server, and as Jobs said, integration with the iPhone interface was transparent. Contact details appeared just as they would if they were stored in the phone's own address book.

The decision to open up the iPhone may also have been behind the even more surprising release of Safari for Windows. Developers working on PCs can test their web applications in the same browser on both platforms.

John Gruber reports that the announcement went down like a 'lead balloon' with developers watching the announcement.

"It's insulting, because it's not a way to write iPhone apps, and you can't bullshit developers,' he said. It's a matter of spin."

There are many ideas that cannot be implemented in this way, he said.

'Telling developers that web apps are iPhone apps just doesn't fly. Think about it this way: If web apps - which are only accessible over a network; which don't get app icons in the iPhone home screen; which don't have any local data storage - are such a great way to write software for iPhone, then why isn't Apple using this technique for any of their own iPhone apps?'

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