Today Apple announced the beta release of the iPhone SDK download as well as what is going to come in the iPhone 2.0 software update in June. For those who didn’t attend the event (like myself and Polyvector) you can watch Steve Jobs head up the even in Cupertino with the QuickTime stream on Apple’s website. And if you don’t feel like watching the video or would just like a quick run down of what was announced I am going to go ahead and give you a quick list

Enterprise Features

• Push Email
• Push Calendar
• Push Contacts
• Global Address List
• Cisco IPsec VPN
• Certificates and Identities
• WPA2 / 802.11x
• Enforced Security Policies
• Device Configuration
• Remote Wipe

And of course Microsoft Exchange support.

The enterprise features were a big one considering the iPhone’s leading competitor right now is RIM (Blackberry etc) and in order for Apple to make it, these features had to be implemented. Kudos for Apple on getting it done despite how irrelevant this is to me.

SDK

• Cocoa Touch
• iPhone Simulator
• App Store

These things have got to be the most important regarding development for the iPhone. Since the iPhone is running Mac OS X, development is naturally in Objective C and using Cocoa. There is one catch, Cocoa is made for a mouse and keyboard, thus “Cocoa Touch.” You will be able to develop your iPhone apps using Xcode 3, Interface Builder, Instruments, and now the iPhone Simulator. You can download the SDK beta at ADC now using a free membership or a paid one.

As for distributing your applications, that is left up to Apple and the “App Store.” All apps will be exclusively distributed through the App Store on the iPhone (or through the iTunes Store on your Mac). You can distribute free applications, but it does come at a price. In order to test your applications on the iPhone you need to purchase a membership to the Standard iPhone Developer Program for $99USD.

There are still a lot of questions that need to be answered regarding the SDK and distributing apps. I can only say to keep an eye on Apple.com and the ADC iPhone Dev Center.

The firmware update for the iPhone will be free, but iPod Touch users will have to pay a small price (I am guessing $20USD). it will be available in June.

We’ve been having wave of pretty big thunder storms lately, and every time one rolls over our side of town we have to shutdown all the computers. This puts a huge strain on our abilities to work. And I know what you are thinking….shutting down during the storm seems a little much. Well, we have rather old power lines and wiring in this building are a little off. While we have everything on surge protectors we just can’t have the risk of a computer frying or losing any important data while working. So if you have been wondering where we are, now you know. Working as fast as we can, when we can before the storm hits again. Oh, today is looking rather nice in case you wanted to know.

Crazy how much we can get done when we lock ourselves away for a good amount of time. I suppose having our hours completely backwards so we have no contact with any human being also helps. What I mean is we actually got through all our goals for the month. UberIcon 1.0.4 was released, RocketDock 1.3.3 was successfully finished (after the 1.3.2 fiasco). So where does that leave us? After some talking we decided to put any other projects we wanted to get started on hold to do the Punk Software re-branding. We are hoping to start sometime today preparing the new PunkLabs site for the move. As we progress we might have some news and screenshots as it builds.