I was totally blown away by last week’s iPhone SDK announcement. I wasn’t surprised about the SDK or even the coming of Exchange with ActiveSync. I was impressed with the repercussions of the SDK and the iPhone platform.

The iPhone, as far as I can tell, is the future of mobile computing. The new industry standard is that you carry a mobile computer in your pocket, and it does essentially everything a computer does: allow you to communicate (phone, IM, text, email, messaging, video chat), let you work (email, attachments, internet, mini apps), and entertain you (music, videos, and podcasts). This proposition puts tremendous pressure on phone manufacturers and PDA manufacturers. Apple is running way ahead of the competition here, and that’s only going to become more obvious as killer apps start making their way on to this platform.

That said, I’m very interested in the prospect of developing apps for the iPhone. I did a lot of microcontroller programming in C back in college, but all-in-all I’m pretty darn rusty. With the slick tools the SDK includes (particularly the Interface Builder and the iPhone Simulator), and the surprising amount of help documentation available, I’m thinking it’s worth dusting off my brain and giving it a whirl. Unfortunately I’m primarily concerned with the platform and the development environment, and I’m not spurred to action by a particular software need, but hey, that’s just a detail, right? I’ll report later on whether or not I’m getting somewhere with this. I’d be curious to hear of the experiences of other people who aren’t hard core developers and also want to give this a try. There’s something alluring about trying to pull off development when Apple (the user experience geniuses) has your back. I guess there’s only one way to find out.