iPhone SDK today and an upcoming competitor

So, I’ve been reading the latest rumors regardng the upcoming (today) iPhone SDK. Yes, I know it’s pitiful that I can’t just wait 5 hours to hear the official news

So, there is of course an abundance of whining and FUD going around as many people who need not be involved in development are interested in the SDK’s likely output of new hotness for iPhone apps. Interesting, in a sad sort of soap opera-ish kind of way, but not very useful.

I do want to know Apple’s plan as I do still want an iPhone and hope to do some development for it…

However, a few people spoke up talking about how much better the product below is. I’ll admit it looks interesting, but I wouldn’t put my eggs in the Garmin basket for the following reasons:

• Unlikely to properly support the mac
• Doubt this would EVER have a thriving community the way the iPhone/iPods do
• Doubt Garmin can push this to be the hit the iPhone has become, and as such it might not last
• Not sure I want to own a product that has an umlaut in it (don’t get me wrong, I love my German language classes, but having to go in to type a “special” character (for US computers) each time I blogged about it would get annoying. Notice how I avoided typing the product name here

Still, there are many remaining problems with the iPhone, but once the SDK is out (hopefully) most of my concerns go away. What I think I will have left are:

• No tethering support
• No copy/paste (assume this will be fixed)
• No MMS (may be fixed)
• No Bluetooth profiles for stereo or sending files (may be fixed)

I think that’s it, but I bet I could live with that for now… The remaining lack of 3G is something I still debate about…