Comments for Morfik Builds First iPhone Development Tool

Morfik Builds First iPhone Development Tool

2007-06-27T07:59:40Z

WebOS vendor Morfik has created a platform for developers to build applications for Apple's iPhone, which is being released Friday night. Morfik claims this is the first development tool for the iPhone.

Up till this point, no one had announced a development tool for the iPhone - although there have been suggestions by bloggers that Adobe AIR and Google GWT might become iPhone development platforms. However, it seems Morfik is the first to do it.

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Morfik says that Scriptor, a utility built into their WebOS AppsBuilder platform, enables development of applications for products such as the iPhone. To prove that point, Morfik used Scriptor to develop iChess, a working example of an iPhone application. That link is the iPhone version, but see also http://chess.morfik.com for a browser version. It is a chess app, a favorite prototyping app of Morfik. It is running on EC2 now and can be used by purchasers of the iPhone on Friday. Also developers can download the AppsBuilder with Scriptor now from Morfik's homepage.

There is of course a lot of anticipation around third party iPhone apps - indeed there are dedicated sites for this already. As last100 recently noted, Apple will allow third party apps for iPhone - by giving them access through the web (not the OS).

What Morfik has created is a web development environment for the iPhone. But they also told us that as soon as Apple announces an API for the iPhone, then Morfik will include that into their platform.

Comment from Gary King on 2007-06-27

2007-06-27T08:56:18Z

An API to the iPhone will be released much later, most likely; probably at least 6 months down the road. It's nice to see companies building tools like this; it sure makes life easier for us developers ;)

Comment from Yokathama Verusli on 2007-06-27

2007-06-27T11:32:35Z

Apple‚Äôs iPhone will feature a special YouTube player when it‚Äôs released. (Google Maps is another Google application that‚Äôll receive special treatment
http://www.versuri32.com/versuri/the-beatles/index.php

Comment from Richard Monson-Haefel on 2007-06-28

2007-06-28T22:49:17Z

Backbase, an Ajax vendor, has been offering an iPhone SDK for at least a week already, so Morfik is not the first.

Comment from Andrew Grey on 2007-06-28

2007-06-29T00:23:39Z

I think the headlines from their 26 June press release says "Backbase to Deliver the First AJAX SDK for Apple's iPhone" looks like yet to come and as you see issued only two days ago :-)

Comment from bdj21ya on 2007-06-30

2007-06-30T12:35:23Z

It's too bad the chess app doesn't actually work on the iPhone itself, at least when I tried it this morning. Something to do with the 5 second javascript limitation I'm guessing.

Comment from Fuad Ta'eed on 2007-07-01

2007-07-01T09:24:40Z

iChess works on the iPhone, but iPhone move times are rather long (to put it nicely). Chess is very maths intensive and so the time for the computer's move is very much dependent on CPU.

The time for a computer move on an iPhone is as follows (with comparative times on a MacBook Pro 2.4 GHz with Safari in brackets)
Level 1: 60 sec (less than 1 sec)
Level 2: 215 sec (3 sec)
Level 3: 3000 sec (6 sec)

We did not bother testing above Level 3. We are currently working to see what can be done to optimize iChess for the iPhone.