TRANSLATION: We are unable to satisfy the functionality needs of the marketplace with our internal software team and therefore bow to the overwhelming complaints of our user base (and hopefully potential users) by letting others program for the iPhone. Maybe now, with our own developers freed up, we'll be able to get Leopard out...someday. :thumbsup:
"someday" = about 9 days from now?
I am pretty positive that Jobs had this planned all along. He's not lying that it takes time to get it right (although I don't necessarily agree with his definition of "right"), and if he had announced "it will be ready in february" back in july, he would have had two problems:
1) us suckers wouldn't have written very many webapps. Webapps serve 2 purposes for apple. First, it gets the safari browser platform much more support. Second, it sells at least a few phones; for some people being able to run at least certain types of apps through the browser is "good enough."
2) the people that are saying "i can't believe i have to wait 4 months" would be saying "i can't believe i have to wait 9 months."
Add in the fact that parts of the actual iPhone OS are identical (or will soon be identical) to leopard, and that the SDK/development environment may depend on leopard's xcode.
In the mean time, Apple has lost a little good will among the geekiest 10% of the population (not a good idea) but has had no difficulty (it seems) selling all the iPhones it can manufacture.
I expect that there are already multiple commercial developers working with Apple on software that will be announced around the same time as the SDK.