SlashGear

Apple starts by rehashing all the tools available for developing iPhone web apps. All the APIs and the thousands of websites that now have iPhone web apps. Only, starting today, all the same API’s Apple uses will be available for developing apps to go directly on the iPhone.

You get access to the BSD TCP/IP sockets, the Core OS, Cocoa Touch, OpenAL, OpenGL, all sorts of things. There are a few basic areas that all of this fits under, Core Services, Media, Cocoa, and Core OS.

Programming will be done in Xcode. But it won’t only handle coding, it also has project management, localization, debugging, code connections, a drag and drop coding for the UI, analysis tools. It’s the same thing you are used to using on the Mac, just expanded to work with the iPhone too.

There is an iPhone simulator, so you don’t have to run v. 1.0 of your new app on your actual iPhone. Then there is a remote debugger so you can actually run it on your iPhone, test it out, and see what, if anything, goes wrong.

They are even showing off a new native game called Touch Fighter, its like a Star Wars game, except you use the 3 axis of the accelerometer to steer and tap to shoot. It looks great and they say it only took two weeks to write, so development should be quick.

EA was able to develop a new game for the iPhone within 2 weeks, and they’d never seen the SDK prior to that. They took and old classic “Spore” and put it on the iPhone. The new apps will come to the iPhone by way of the App Store, written by Apple, it will be in the next iPhone update and will allow you to download Apps directly to your phone, or through iTunes if you prefer. You’ll even get automatic updates when one becomes available. Apple will of course be the exclusive distributor of these apps, but the developers get to pic, the prices with a 70/30 split with Apple taking the smaller portion and the devs will get paid monthly. But if you charge nothing for your app, it will be offered for free and Apple will pick up the tab for hosting it. There are limitations though, no porn or illegal software.

It will be software update 2 and will be available for free, for the iPhone, in June. It will also be available for the iPod Touch, but will cost money for Touch owners. However the SDK is being released in about an hour and you can become a developer by going and downloading it for free and paying $100 to become a developer. That only gets you into the iPhone developer program, but gets you the simulator to run on your mac and probably the one for your iPhone as well. The SDK download is free, it costs a $99 dev fee to publish programs though, no word on whether that’s one time or for each app, I’d assume one time though.