Apple Confirms iPhone and iPod Touch SDK for Feb. 2008

Posted by: Arik Hesseldahl on October 17, 2007

Steve Jobs is today personally confirming what we reported yesterday that Apple has plans to release a software development kit of the iPhone early in 2008. “We want native third party applications on the iPhone, and we plan to have an SDK in developers’ hands in February,” he says.

But its going to take time, he says because of security concerns. As much as people tend to dismiss this concerns, given what I know so far, I’m inclined to agree with how Jobs is characterizing the nature of the problem. Clearly Apple has a roadmap to open up the iPhone to development while at the same time ensuring that malicious programmers can’t do bad things. I think there will likely be some criticism and balking at some of his claims, but given what I know, his concerns are legitimate. Phones are more like computers than any before, and will in time be shown to be subject to similar security vulnerabilities.

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