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But back when I was still pecking out the occasional text on my Motorola RAZR, many large news and entertainment companies were anticipating and developing apps for the iPhone OS. I realize TidBITS tends to focus more on small developers, so why should we care about what these corporate behemoths are doing? Apart from the sheer reach of these companies, they have a very different mindset from the small developer. With that in mind, I spoke to a number of executives at large content companies to find out what they thought about the iPhone.

What I found interesting – even surprising – about these companies is that they typically aren’t interested in devices or platforms per se, but in getting their content out to as many people as possible and making a profit in a quick yet sustainable fashion. If their market research departments were to provide statistics that, say, Windows Mobile 6.5 would provide them the best traction in the mobile space, you would see a plethora of apps for that operating system. They care about content, not technology.

That said, while many of the people I spoke with said they are selling and developing apps for other mobile platforms like Android and BlackBerry OS, all seemed to view iPhone OS apps as a crucial part of their mobile strategies. And they consider debates over open versus closed environments as mostly minutiae.

Complete article: Talking with Giants in the iPhone App Space

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I’m glad I waited both for the iPhone 3GS and the iPhone OS 3.0. I won’t bore you with the many reasons why I’m thrilled with the former (passable camera, video capabilities, and GPS are among them), but I needed copy and paste for my iPhone to be more than an expensive toy. So thank you Apple, for making this available across multiple apps.

However, the iPhone OS still lacks text expansion capabilities, something that is almost as important as copy and paste in my work as a freelance technology reporter and writer. On my Mac I use a combination of Rainmaker’s Spell Catcher for short expansions like “ffct” for “functionality” and SmileOnMyMac’s TextExpander for boilerplates, signatures and HTML tags. As a freelance writer who writes primarily about data centers (or “dctr”) and other IT (or “iit” so that I don’t need to use the Shift key) topics, text expansion has reduced my RSI symptoms and saved my sanity, especially when transcribing interviews.

When SmileOnMyMac released the iPhone version of TextExpander in August 2009 at the sale price of $1.99 (vs. $4.99), I bought it immediately even though initially you could access its capabilities only by typing your text in a composer window and then by copying and pasting the text into your notes, text, or tweet. SmileOnMyMac had released the SDK of its app at around the same time, so I was optimistic that other developers would eventually integrate TextExpander’s iPhone SDK into their apps, and I would experience even greater joy with this pocket-sized computer that also happened to make phone calls.

You can find the complete article here: Third-Party SDKs: The Future of iPhone Apps