A couple days ago at Apple’s Worldwide Developer’s Conference, Steve Jobs announced that the iPhone would support third party applications. Sweet, right? After all, the lack of an SDK for the iPhone was a key bone of contention for iPhone critics.

But there’s a catch.

Apple won’t allow developers to create applications to be installed on the iPhone. Instead, as Jobs outlined, the iPhone will support ‘Web 2.0′ applications through its Safari browser.

Jobs was in the all spin zone, saying that developers can “write amazing web 2.0 and Ajax applications that look exactly, and behave exactly, like the applications on the iPhone.” According to Jobs, these applications can “seamlessly access iPhone’s services, including making a phone call, sending an email and displaying a location in Google maps.”

This statement needs a bit of translation:

Steve Jobs is giving developers permission to create websites.

While Web 2.0 and Ajax sound fancy, let’s be honest, these terms mean websites - new and trendy websites, true, but websites nonetheless. Plain as that. The iPhone, as we all know, has a safari browser. Safari, as we all know, can browse websites - even new web 2.0 websites. So, what is the news again?

The fact that Jobs put this into his keynote is insulting. Let me put it this way, if Jobs said nothing, millions of Apple geeks would still immediately start creating websites optimized for the iPhone’s screen on June 29th anyway. To tout this as a feature or as a development is a weak attempt for Jobs to play the media and placate Apple fans.

And the news about making a phone call, or sending an e-mail from these applications? That’s already available now, from distinctly web 1.0 sites. Google’s mobile search site, for example, allows users to place phone calls - and nearly any website can launch a compose e-mail screen.

What the iPhone needs is a SDK that will allow developers to create iPhone applications. Simple as that. How long will it take Apple to learn this lesson?

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