

Where are the 3rd party hardware accessories for the iPhone? - asmithmd1
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/01/wither-the-dongleware

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joezydeco
Okay, here's another question. What happened to the Apple/Kleiner-Perkins
iPhone fund?

There's a blog at <http://ifundvc.com/> but it's been updated once in the last
12 months. They promised $100MM in funds, but it looks like only 5 companies
and $30MM was set up.

Anyone else know anything? Did the App Store just take off faster than
expected and this all became moot?

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Timothee
Excellent question! After the keynote presentation where this was introduced,
I was really looking forward to see what would be invented. I thought it could
open the door to a lot of cool things. An iPhone could basically become the
interface to anything.

I looked at the program to see if I could just kind of play with it and see
what could be done, (maybe not do anything but at least start imagining
projects) but as seiji is saying, it's not as easy as the iPhone SDK where a
free account and a download allow you to give it a try: you need a real
company behind it and hobbyists have no chance.

Does anybody know if anything is possible through the jailbroken community?
Can one do something on their own with the iPod/iPhone adapter?

~~~
olefoo
Although it's very tempting to build highly integrated hardware extensions for
the very sexy devices that apple makes there is a better way to go about
building specialty hardware.

Build for the wireless LAN.

Adding a webserver and wifi interface to even a modestly sized hardware device
is cheap and getting cheaper. Open Protocols win in the long term.

Note that this means you should be able to reach most of the app phones on the
market, and not be stuck with Vendor A's weird policy bugs.

~~~
Timothee
After writing my comment, I thought about it and realized that, yes,
communication through WiFi just makes sense and is probably the easiest. (as
in the given example of the universal remote once setup is done)

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seiji
If you want to make your own iPod/iPhone hardware, apply at
<http://developer.apple.com/ipod/>

Last I check it requires multiple in-company points of contact and legal
contacts before you start.

You are charged a licensing fee for each unit sold and they revoke your access
if you don't renew your contract with them. There are some iPhone in-car
systems that stopped working because the manufacturer didn't continue paying
Apple the appropriate licensing fees (so in the next software update, Apple
disallowed that device from talking to the phone).

~~~
grinich
It's true that the Made for iPhone program has more hoops to jump through than
the software SDK, but it's not really that bad. You apply, they call you and
ask a few questions, and then you're setup to order development parts.

