The second beta version of the iPhone SDK is now available and includes Interface Builder, a powerful tool that allows you to visually build your interface and makes creating a UI as simple as drag and drop.

We’ve also added new sample code and updated documentation to the rich set of resources available to you in the iPhone Dev Center.
Log in to the iPhone Dev Center today and download the new version of the iPhone SDK.

Mozilla/5.0 (Aspen Simulator; U; Aspen 1_2 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.7 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1 Mobile/5A147p Safari/5525.7

This means if you load up sites that only look right on the iPhone they won’t render correctly on the Aspen Simulator. An example of this is the Yahoo Ajax Flickr website designed specifically for the iPhone. This page renders correctly if you’re on an iPhone, but will show you the basic mobile version if it doesn’t see iPhone in your user-Agent. Next version of Aspen will hopefully have an option to easily edit the user agent string of the Safari browser. For reference the mobile Safari app is located in this folder:

/Developer/Platforms/AspenSimulator.platform/Developer/SDKs/AspenSimulator1.2.sdk/

Let’s take a look at the basics:

70/30 -

• Developer gets:
  • Hosting
  • Credit Card Processing
  • Access to millions of iPhone and iPod touch customers
  • 70% of what they sell online.
  • Paid out monthly
  • The SDK, Tools and Documentation
• Apple gets:
  • Subscription fees of $99 or $299
  • A vast Inventory of Apps
  • 30% of the sales
  • Full Control over what apps are listed in its App Store
  • plus…

What else?

Well if you have an iPod touch, and not iPhone, You need to pay a “nominal” fee to upgrade your device to be able to get the App Store on it.

So why does Apple want to restrict its App sales to the App Store you ask? The reason given is that it is a security risk. People who sign up for a developer account are supposedly safer since Apple has their personal information on file such as credit card numbers and phone and such. So if someone does write some malicious app that gets into 2 million iPhones and causes world hunger, we can all point to the right person and demand justice.

It might be unreasonable to conclude that if Apple is the single point of inspection, that no viruses will get through to its Store. Sure they will do a good job of inspecting all the stuff that comes in, but something somewhere will go wrong. And that is bound to happen.

Up until now Mac software has been distributed and sold by developers themselves. Not many Mac owners complain of a virus infection however. How is it that with a mobile device this changes?

One thing is for certain, Lots and Lots of money will be made on this by both Apple and top notch Cocoa programmers. Another side effect will be new coders coming to Cocoa Apple land and getting a taste of things in Cupertino. Xcode and other iPhone SDK development tools are Mac only tools, which could potentially boost Mac hardware sales as well. Oh and did I mention you need Leopard?

Finally, new apps mean new iPhone and iPod touch customers who up until now have not bothered switching to the land of apps and Apple. And more people hitting up the iTunes store looking for apps means more eyeballs that will most likely browse around the isles for other stuff like movie rentals and music downloads.

So we all are part of a major shift in technology usage and Apple is in the middle of it all as it builds its digital goods empire. This is probably the biggest shift we’ve seen since the personal computer was commercialized.

It makes perfect business sense, and seems like a winning business model for developers and Apple. I leave it up to you to determine how efficient and beneficial it is for consumers. My only question is then why did Apple wait over 9 months to release the SDK, and is waiting another 3 months to release it to the public? And what will Google Gears, Microsoft and Nokia do if anything to steal some of Steve’s spotlight?

A last thought: What happens if I buy an app for my iPhone and want to put it on my iPod touch? Will I have to pay for it again?

The plugin sniffs the client’s user agent and uses its special theme for iPhone visitors. The theme looks similar to the basic WordPress blue theme and contains sections for your categories, trackbacks, permalinks, comments and even a share links section with post links to delicious, digg and technorati.

I have installed this plugin and tested it on this blog from the iPhone. Now this blog loads very fast and is very readable on the iPhone and I don’t have to zoom in to read either. I’m hoping to see an admin theme in the future as well. Read more and download the iWPhone WordPress Plugin and Theme v0.1 here to iPhonify your WordPress blog.

The iGoods

All the graphics and icons on this thing look absolutely amazing, and load super fast.

The Map is terrific, specially when you are using Wi-Fi. The step by step direction view can be a life saver.

The photos the iPhone takes are so darn crisp and sexy.

In iPod you can easily change the volume using drag.

in Safari, there’s an innovative URL history, and even a thumbnail history version that you can drag left and right to browse.

The web browsing capability is really good. Clicking on tiny links on a webpage seem to accurately pick the right one and typing URLs is breeze.

Using the Wi-Fi connection makes surfing even faster. You get an alert about available Wi-Fi networks wherever you go. This can become annoying after a while however.

Setting up a Gmail account was a piece of cake.

The suggestions as you type for spelling are nice. But after a while they started to get on my nerves. I hope I can disable this feature.

the iBads

Setting Ringers from Songs in my library. Why can’t we do this? or is it possible and I’m just missing out on how to do it? I was upset when I found out my Treo can’t do this but iPhone?

VoiceMail innovation – I was expecting some innovative features like that of GrandCentral such as personalizing greetings by caller, and listening to voicemails as they are being recorded.

Adobe Flash plugin for Safari. I can’t view any videos in Safari, only via the You Tube application. Hmmm…

The Bluetooth doesn’t have an automatic sensor, and requires you to turn it on every time you need it. Leaving it on the drains the battery. It would be nice to have a sleep mode.

There is no week view in Calendar. Calendar doesn’t change view as you rotate the iPhone.

The Map is not rotation sensitive.

It appears that I can search for business listings by type, but not by name. A search for Pinkberry returns no results but a search for Yogurt returns 21 Choices, Pinkberry and a slew of other local yogurt shops.

The Calculator is nice but doesn’t support advanced calculations such as financial and statistical functions.

The sync cable doesn’t have a release button so it feels like you are yanking it out of the iPhone.

I have long fingers and keep hitting the wrong letters on the keyboard. I hope this is a short lived problem and one will eventually get used to keying accurately.

Setting up a pop email account is doable, but I can’t seem to figure out how to set advanced settings such as specifying an SMTP port number.

SMS messages don’t render smileys

No MMS picture messaging

No GPS

Can’t buy music or video content from iTunes store

Dude, where are the Games?

No Instant Messaging built in (AIM,Yahoo,Google Talk,Jabber,ICQ)

No Video Recording

No Flash or Zoom in Camera

No Java

No 3G

No Highlight/Copy/Paste functionality

Can’t easily check the weather in other cities using the weather widget

No Ajax support in Safari

Can’t exchange contact information via vCards etc.

Uswappable battery

Bluetooth is not Stereo

Potential Voicemail Security Exploit

Can’t sync via bluetooth.

Can’t sync email.

Can’t install new Apps

Finally, no way to use the 8GB of space as storage for storing files.

Most of these can easily be fixed via software releases, and the others will require hardware changes. I guess that’s why lots of people are waiting for the second revision.