iPhone News

Watching the iPhone software roadmap that was announced yesterday, I'm excited by a couple of points.

1. Exchange integration will be baked into the next version of the iPhone software.  Apple is doing this right by taking advantage of what Microsoft offers directly with Exchange and not forcing you (ala RIM) to buy server products to sit in between Exchange and your devices.

This not only means your email, calendar events, and to-do items, can be pushed to your iPhone from Exchange, but you also get all of the security administration features that Exchange provides, like the ability to remotely secure devices, require pin numbers, and wipe them.

2. Native SDK.  There seems to have been a bit of hype around the web lately that Apple was about announce an iPhone SDK that let you build Widgets, but not "real" applications.  Nope, they're releasing a real SDK that allows for the building of custom applications.  They reveal that the iPhone (and iPod Touch) are the same architecture stack as OS X with the notable exception that they've built a new presentation layer tailored to non-mouse/keyboard driven devices called Cocoa Touch.  Didn't quite get if it is really "net new" or if it is an enhancement/rebuilding of what exists in Cocoa.

Not even half way through the video yet, so I might post more when I get a chance to see the rest.