In other words, the SDK presented a while ago can be used now as a complete development environment. Not a full development environment, because I think a full featured IDE is a must when we’re talking about IDE’s, and Corona still misses that.

From the documentation, it seems that adding a new app in a previously provisioned device is not very difficult. Didn’t tested it yet, but I plan to give it a try pretty soon.

From what I know, this is the first third party IDE which allows creating iPhone apps in another language than Objective C AND publish them on the actual device.

More info here.

Browsing the net the other day I stumbled accross this new SDK called Corona, at anscamobile.com. It’s basically a superset of functions and libraries which allows you to (allegedly) speed up your development process for the iPhone. So far, it seems to be an SDK geared towards game developing on the iPhone.

I downloaded the package and installed it without problems. Corona comes with a built in iPhone simulator which allows you to test at least the apps shipped in the tutorial. One of the most interesting things about this library is its language: lua. I know Objective C can be a little strange, but pushing lua as a programming language for the iPhone is quite a bold move. I don’t really know hoe many people know lua, and I also don’t know the size of the lua communities on the web, but compared with other alternatives, I suppose lua has quite a limited set of adopters. I never tried lua before, so there might be some advantages in using it, such a simplicity in deploying and / or maintenance.

It seems that the library is already used by a number of developers, some apps are already on the APP Store (Fishies, the app featured in the Corona Simulator picture below, is one of them).

There a lot of things missing from this SDK, such as how you can test your apps on the iPhone simulator, how you can deploy them using iTunes Connect and so on, but as a phenomenon, I do find this pretty interesting. I didn’t play with it extensively, other than testing the examples, and this is manily because my lua knowledge is pretty limited at the moment, but it does look as an interesting thing.

After the initial hype of the new iPhone 3GS launch, it’s time to assess the reasons to upgrade in silence. As we already know the iPhone 3GS would be available starting with 19th June in several countries. followed by several other launched up until 9th July. So, why should I upgrade to the new device?

iPhone 3GS Hardware Features

The most important feature in the new iPhone 3GS seems to be the digital compass. Android has one, iPhone must have one to. For the iPhone developers this was something really natural, since the iPhone SDK already have some functions for determining not only the orientation, but the speed too. So, it was something expected.

The second most important feature, at least for me, it’s the speed. According to various sources, the iPhone 3GS processor is running now at 600 Mhz, which is around 25% faster than the actual iPhone 3G. To be honest, I like my iPhone 3G speed. I don’t do things extremely processor intensive, I don’t try to calculate PI in less than a second or stuff like that. I’m just using my iPhone to make phone calls, keep in touch with my tasks, watch movies and check twitter and email from time to time. For what I do, the processor it’s fine. Really.

iPhone 3GS Software Features

Apple has seeded the iPhone 3.0 OS GM release to the developers, which seems to be the final release before the launch. I already tested iPhone 3.0 on one of my iPhones and it’s great. It really is. I mean search “a la Spotlight” over the entire iPhone, cut, copy and paste between applications to name only the things I was able to test immediately, are great. There are also tons of goodies available to developers in the iPhone SDK 3.0, like Peer to Peer connectivity, In App Payment or In App Mail. Some of them I was able to test while I was prototyping my iPhone apps, and I’m telling you these are revolutionary stuff.

But, what I forgot to tell you is that I was able to install iPhone OS 3.0 on my iPhone 2G device without too much hassle. Yes, I know Apple says you can’t, but you can. Anyway, I did it for testing purposes only. The main point is that iPhone OS 3.0 doesn’t have a lot to do with iPhone 3GS. It would be available to owners of iPhone 3G also, starting with June 17th. So, why should I bother?

Is It Really Worth To Buy An iPhone 3GS Now?

The answer is: I don’t know. From a very narrow standpoint, I will say “no”, definitely. I can do my stuff with iPhone 3G just fine, without a digital compass and a 600Mhz processor (which may have some heating problems, I suppose). Since iPhone OS 3.0 would be available to all iPhone users there won’t be any issues.

From an iPhone developer standpoint, I will say “maybe yes” and that would be for testing purposes. It is important to see how an app is working on a genuine device, so a 3GS would be a must have.

Will see about that.

It’s already there for beta testers and, as one of them, I can tell you that this new 3.0 SDK is something really, really interesting. From the ability to send email from within your application, up to the new Store Kit API, there are tons of improvments and new features. In the following article I will outline the goodies that attracted me the most.

In App Payment

With this feature you can set a selling object in your application and allow the user to buy it. The pruchase is made through App Store, and the buyer will use the same credentials as for his iTunes account. The selling object can be anything: a game level, an unlocked feature, anything. I really think this will open a whole new stream of revenue both for Apple and for iPhone developers.

Push

The long awaited feature is here: now your application can have PUSH notifications via a programable API. What does this mean: you can set up a web server, link it with your iPhone app and then send from that server to your iPhone app various notifications, without the need for your app to be running. The service is using a special layer in the iPhone architecture that allows for unlimited listening capabilities. You can put whatever events you want in your PUSH container from email notifications to various reminders.

Peer To Peer

I think this will really transform the world of gaming. Using this API you can create a peer to peer connection via Bluetooth (or any other protocol, if you want to) and ask for an available peer to join you. He can join in a game, in a collaborative app, in whatever you dare to think and invent. The API is looking clean enough and easy to use. That’s a huge breaktrough.

If you put together In App Payment, Push and Peer To Peer, you can tell already that the next generation iPhone apps will surely be interesting, To say the least.

There are several others novelties, like copy and paste API, but these are really just natural improvements. Specifically for copy and paste, this functionality was already implemented by several respected apps in App Store. Also, one thing that will remind you about Spotlight (yes, this is for you, Mac users) is the ability to search the entire iPhone from within a single point.

All in all, iPhone SDK 3.0, even still in beta, is filled with jewels.