iPhone SDK in February 2008

Today Steve Jobs announced that there will be an SDK (software developer kit) available for the iPhone and iPod touch sometime in February 2008. He mentions that it’ll take that long because they’re trying to do 2 completely different things; keeping the iPhone secure while still providing the ability for developers to create applications that will run on the iPhone.

He also says that Nokia is starting to work on this and that they’ve definitely taken a step in the right direction. Apple just needs to keep working on it and eventually they’ll be able to provide a secure way to get third party applications on the iPhone.

I think this is absolutely great and I can’t wait to see the types of applications that come out for the iPhone. There are already a few decent web applications but being able to use the actual device instead of the web to make an application is going to make for much more powerful and useful applications.

I am hoping that before or during the time of the release of Leopard or this SDK Apple will let you sync your notes and to-dos to your iPhone. I was really surprised to find out your couldn’t sync your to-dos to your iPhone at it’s launch in June.

I would love it if Apple or a third party developed a Terminal application. Then I could login to my servers should any be going wrong with them. I would also love to see an RSS reader (if it’s not built-in to Mail by then), games, a Twitter client, iChat, a Skitch-like application, a Cha-Ching-like application and maybe a standalone eBook/PDF reader.

How about you, what third party applications would you like to see come to the iPhone/iPod touch?

Read the news announcement from Steve Jobs.