Today has been pretty hectic… My back has been killing me all day and Apple released the iPhone SDK which caused a huge stir around the web!

As to my back, I don’t know what’s going on, but I do know I’ve a small cyst right next to my spine, mid-back, for a while. Never felt it… until the last few days! And I can’t even blame the pain on the AWESOME chair I have at work… I’ll probably go to the chiropractor soon, but I’ll need to see a doctor eventually.

On to the news of the day: Apple (finally) released the SDK for the iPhone! It was a very exciting keynote, with Steve Jobs only introducing other people and not taking much part on it until the press Q&A at the end (could this be the start of a slow “backing off” by Jobs preparing his succession?). Among the great news and technical details about the SDK and upcoming apps for the iPhone, we were introduced to Apple’s “AppStore“. Basically this is no more than a mix between the iTunes Store but for applications with the current Installer.app for jailbroken phones. One of the things that got me excited were the apparent 3D capabilities of the iPhone, showcased with a few games (including a demo of the upcoming Spore) and the information that EA is already working on developing games for the iPhone (FIFA 08 with multi-touch+accelerometer ?? wow). And no, no jailbreaking/unlocking apps… or porn! ;)

Then came the part most techies & developers have been speculating lately: the distribution model and its price. I think Apple is keen on creating the best development platform in the world. OSX has been proven to be just that and a lot of developers have invested time and resources into developing excellent apps for that platform. Apple is trying to do the same with iPhone and the latest rumours before today already pointed towards that, which got confirmed today during the SDK presentation when Scott Forstall, Apple’s VP for iPhone Software talked about how “Apple is a platform company” (something some of us already thought of but was never mentioned this clearly).

Considering this, developers wanting to sell/distribute their apps through AppStore (the only possible way anyway) will have to enter the iPhone Developer Program and paying for that $99. This price covers everything. I think the price is appropriate considering Apple is not charging hosting, distribution, etc… They only charge 30% of whatever you charge your customers. If you choose to freely distribute your app, Apple gets… yes, $0! Considering this, I think $99 is a fair fee to have access to Apple and having them check your app, host it, publicize it, etc…

But now comes something I only discovered in the midst of a Twitter discussion with Luis Rei and David Rodrigues. While I don’t agree with calling the $99 an “Apple Tax” I agree with the fact that it’s pretty bad that Apple doesn’t allow you to install your own personal, experimental apps on your OWN iPhone! While I understand the reason to do it (as it would open the way to code being shared and compiled with the freely available SDK, which would bypass Apple’s check and system!), I don’t like it! I was getting really motivated to learn Cocoa and Objective-C and start messing around with small apps and utilities but not having a way to test them on my own phone is sad.

But all said and done, the customer won’t mind any of this! As (free) apps will be available even through wi-fi and even EDGE, as a customer, I couldn’t be more delighted… Well, maybe I could… June??? Can I haz it now??? =)