Today is one of those days where it feels really, really good to be a journalist covering the mobile computing market. Today is one of those days, that if things work out the way Mr. Jobs envisions them, which suggests that there can be a future and that science fiction is getting a lot closer to fact. Today’s Town Hall meeting at the Apple campus in Cupertino, CA was more than just a press release for Apple’s software development kit (SDK) for the iPhone and iPod Touch, it was an affirmation of the wakeup call Apple is delivering to the rest of the mobile computing industry on an almost daily basis.

First up, the iPhone now holds a 28% marketshare of the smartphone market. RIM holds the largest segment at 41%. The cost of these devices is what keeps them out of the average user’s hands, though, so the iPhone hasn’t made much headway into the standard handset market. However, Jobs claims that iPhone traffic accounts for a ridiculous 71% of mobile device web usage. Bwah! That’s mind boggling, though I Jobs didn’t mention the metric used to make that determination (though I’m sure it was a market research firm). Read on for a lot more. Believe me, its worth it.

Next up, Phil Shiller hit the stage to talk about Exchange integration. To make it short, Apple licensed Microsoft’s ActiveSync for the iPhone and rolled it into the next version of the firmware. This not only allows push email, calendar, and contacts, but a load more. How about access to the Global Address List (GAL), certificates and indentities, WPA2 and 802.1x for wireless security, enforcable policies and device configuration, Cisco IPsec VPN compliance, and even a remote wipe function. Bwah x2!!

Once they had demonstrated how speedy it was to sync (without revealing what server they were synching to, of course) they moved on to Scott Forstall to cover the SDK itself. All in all, it includes the SDK itself, which is all of the little components of the system software and the Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) which let programs do all kinds of cool stuff, XCode, Instruments, and the new iPhone Emulator. Yeah. Cool. Scott also explained the architecture of the OS on the iPhone.

To make it plainly clear, its Mac OS X with a leaner and meaner re-compiled Kernel at its core. What they didn’t port over was Cocoa. In order to facilitate that Apple developed what they call Cocoa Touch, a new interface core which is optimized for the iPhone. The Core OS, Core Services, and Media layers are all generally intact. Core OS still has BSD Sockets and power management. Core Services still handles file access, collections, and networking. The Media layer handles OpenAL, OpenGL ES, Core Audio, and Core Animation. Man. That’s cool!

Then they busted out the games. Oh yeah! The games!! To illustrate the ease of developing with the SDK they set about to write a program in two weeks. What they came up with in Apple was Touch Fighter. It uses the motion of the phone to fly the ship and you tap the screen to fire. They then trotted out Electronic Arts and Sega. The challenge was to get two coders from each company and give them two weeks with the SDK to come up with whatever they could.

EA ported Spore. Sega ported Super Monkey Ball.

Yeah. Let that sink in a bit. SPORE ISN’T EVEN OUT YET! So, needless to say, this is just ridiculously cool. Salesforce.com showed their stuff, AOL wrote a complete AIM client in that time, and ePocrates developed a complete pill guide down to a pill identification tool. This just plain rawks. I’m not even a developer. I couldn’t code to save my life, but this just has me all pumped up.

Then Steve came back out and introduced the App Store. You can get it on your iPhone or in iTunes, but that’s not the meat. First, developers select their own price. Apple gets 30% of it for management costs. There are no other fees. If you want to put freeware up, no charges at all. Apple then pays you what you earn monthly. When you update an app, the iPhone figures this out and lets you know.

So, in the end, what do we now know? We know that Apple is destined for unparalleled greatness (yes, I’m a fanboy! Deal!!). We also know that the iPhone will literally change how mobility works.  For those of us who choose to go with the iPhone, we will have little extensions of the desktop in our pockets. Not fake shams like PDAs before it, but the real thing. When you want to know something, you just pull out your iPhone. What could be more Star Trek-like, I ask you.

The next version of the iPhone software and the final version of the SDK will be available in Late June. Apple is testing the software with some companies now. The update will be available to both the iPhone and iPod Touch, though iPod Touch owners will again pay a small fee. I’m not sure I understand this fee. Sure, AT&T users are paying monthly fees for service and a portion of that goes to Apple. iPod Touch owners pay no such fees, but still get most of the benefits of the iPhone. Hmm.

Anyway, there’s always One More Thing, as is common at Apple keynotes. Jobs invited John Doerr of from a famous venture capitalist firm whose name I can’t recall right now and can’t look up because the Developer site is mobbed to come out and speak. He praised Jobs and praised the iPhone. He then announced that they’ve created the iFund, a $100 million pot which would be offered to developers of iPhone apps in chunks of $100,000 to $15 million. This just as Apple’s stock had dropped 35%. Wow.

Apple has some real cojones. If you speak Spanish, I apologize for being rude. Oh, and if you were waiting through the entire post for it, CNN Money is reporting that Apple will be releasing a3G version in mid-2008. Hmm. Rumor or fact?

written by Tyler Regas