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So for the past few weeks, I’ve been hard at work on yet another software product of mine. It’s called Mobility, and it’s going to shake things up big time in the iPhone market, if I have my way.

How It Works

At the beginning of this month, Apple announced their “revolutionary” new model for software distribution on the iPhone: Web 2.0 applications. “OK, it’s kinda’ cool,” the world thought, “but it’s also pretty darn weak.” The lack of a native SDK on the iPhone is very limiting to software developers, opening up absolutely none of the iPhone’s amazing features — the most you can do is create a link to make a phone call or send an email. Whooo. We’re living now.

When I heard this announcement, my dreams for my new application — TuneConnect Mobile, an extension of TuneConnect that would allow you to control iTunes from your iPhone — were dashed. No SDK meant no networking, and no networking meant no iTunes control. Needless to say, I wasn’t too happy. But then I got to thinking.

One of the nice things about the Mac is that it’s based on UNIX, so you’ve got access to a bunch of handy UNIX-y things. One of those handy UNIX-y things is a built-in web server. The iPhone uses applications through the web browser, right? Hmmm…

A few hacks and a couple hundred lines of code later, my web browser and my iMac were talking, in a big way. Another hundred lines of code, and I had a functional (if rough) web-based controller for iTunes, powered by PHP and some Ajax scripting. I picked up my iPhone yesterday, browsed to the right URL, and with a bit of tweaking, was soon controlling iTunes via my iPhone. But then I thought, that wasn’t enough.

As of today, I have rewritten a small part of the system, and added a lot. The application is called Mobility, and is now plugin-based. Tonight, I’ve successfully controlled both iTunes and Keynote from my iPhone, with an absolutely gorgeous interface (if I do say so myself — at least it’s better than my first drafts).

Why It Matters

This application is not just cool — it actually is revolutionary. With the system I’m working on right now, people can actually drag-and-drop install an application that, while running, operates a lightweight and completely transparent web server (lighttpd, for the curious), which serves up a plugin-based control interface. It’s cool, and it’s here. And it opens up tons of new possibilities.

Mobility in itself is great, because it’s plugin-based, and thus, everyone can get a little piece of the iPhone remote control experience as easily as ever. What makes it special, however, is that it’s a new way of approaching the iPhone’s limitations, and will likely inspire other developers to do some amazing things in a similar fashion that I can’t even begin to dream about.

Conclusion

My goal when all is said and done: produce an amazing app, that’s not only useful, but that starts a whole new wave of powerful iPhone development. Keep your fingers crossed everybody, this is going to be a big one!

This entry was posted on Saturday, June 30th, 2007 at 11:19pm by Matt Pat and is filed under Technology, Apple. You can follow any responses to this entry through the Atom feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.