Thursday, January 11, 2007

BASIC and iPhone

Well, my post the other day about the iPhone wasn't about BASIC programming, but now that I've had a chance to think about it this new device does have some implications. One interesting thing about iPhone's introduction is that nothing was mentioned about development tools. This is a little bit of a contradiction since the iPhone runs Apple's OS X, a full blown Unix operating system. Since this new device is more computer than phone you would expect there to be some way to at least customize it by installing software, or perhaps by scripting. This would also make it easier to justify spending $500. On the other hand you must be a Cingular customer. Hmmm. :-/

It would be great if Apple decides to support this. Imagine Liberty BASIC on the iPhone! If software installation isn't a feature of the iPhone at least you will be able to run our web BASIC on it using the Safari web browser since you'll have an always-on internet connection. :-)