News 

At present, developers in the US can register for the Standard Program for $99 per year, or the Enterprise Program for $299 per year. The Standard Program gives members the final SDK - a set of APIs built around Apple's Xcode development environment - pre-release iPhone software and technical support. This program also allows developers to test on an iPhone, rather than using the free simulator option that's otherwise available on the Mac desktop. The program will be rolled out in other countries in the coming weeks.

Apple clearly hinted at Exchange support when it sent out invitations to the roadmap event. It has licensed ActiveSync from Microsoft, which commented upon this spirit of continued cooperation between the companies, "Microsoft believes in building open and interoperable products, and Microsoft Exchange Server is no exception." Apple will build Exchange support into the iPhone. In the demos, it appeared first in Mail's list of account types.

The beta firmware

ADVERTISEMENT

is already available to select developers. It adds support for reading Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents received as email attachments. Mail also gains the much requested ability to delete and move multiple email messsages at once. Push services will also be delivered at a later date.

Other applications demonstrated at the event included an AOL Instant Messenger client and games from the likes of Electronic Arts (Spore) and Sega (Super Monkey Ball), which already provide games for the iPod nano and iPod classic.

Jobs was also questioned on the possibility of VoiP support. This will not be allowed to run over the telephone network, but it looks like it'll be allowed to run over the iPhone's Wi-Fi connection - for the time being, at least.

These changes also apply to the iPod touch, though users will again have to pay for the firmware update as they did for firmware 1.1.3, which added new features including the Mail application.

Currently, the SDK is available for download from the iPhone Dev Center in beta form. A final version of the SDK along with iPhone firmware 2.0 will be available in June. The firmware deploys the new App Store onto devices; iPhone users won't need to hook up to iTunes to add new applications to their phones. Instead they'll be delivered directly to the handset.

A video of the event is available on Apple's website