Thursday
Mar062008
Apple announces iPhone SDK — with Core Location!
Thursday, March 6, 2008 at 4:10PM 
Apple announced the software development kit (SDK) for the iPhone today. While you won't be able to distribute or run your apps on an iPhone yet (that'll come in June), you can download a beta of the SDK today (if you can get to the site -- it's been a bit busy). The SDK is free to download and develop with, but distributing apps will require a $99 per year fee for Apple to host and market your goods. You decide the price, free or otherwise. The even bigger news for geo-minded people, though, is that Apple is opening up their programmatic interface with the "Locate Me" feature in Maps.app. Called Core Location, developers will be able to use a documented API to develop apps with location awareness.
Reader Comments (4)
[...] phone operator individually. The only way we’ve seen so far to get at this data is via the iPhone SDK Core Location feature. But if the data is being passed backwards and forwards from Google Maps on handsets to a server, [...]
[...] Core Location is the API that allows software developers to access the location-aware features of the iPhone. According to Gruber, Apple has laid out strict policies for accessing the Core Location API over privacy concerns: malicious or sloppy software that gives away the position of your iPhone is not something that would appeal to customers. [...]