According to the AP (via Excite), Apple that it is opening the iPhone platform to 3rd party developers and applications. Now their applications will be able to run directly on the iphone.
Apple infuriated developers and some iPhone users when it issued a software update September 27 that disabled unofficial programs installed on the handsets.
Until Wednesday, Apple had tried to control which applications consumers had on their iPhones.
Now, Jobs said the company intends to release a software development kit in February that will let coders create applications to work directly on the iPhone and the iPod Touch. The Touch is the new iPod portable player that resembles the iPhone but lacks the function of a cell phone.
Steve: it's called building a distributed ecosystem. Among the reasons why ecosystems tend to win is that the number of stakeholders tends to increase non-linearly.
