As WWDC comes to a close we went ahead and asked Brent Simmons, creator of NetNewsWire, about his opinions in regards to the iPhone and his reaction to Steve Jobs’ controversial 3rd party application announcement.

Brent’s NetNewsWire was one of the first desktop RSS readers for OS X when it was released in 2002. In 2005 NewsGator acquired the outstanding application and Brent joined their team as a product architect. Over the last couple of years, Brent has become one of the most accomplished and respected OS X developers in the country.

A few days ago Brent and his team released NetNewsWire 3, featuring performance enhancements, increased desktop integration and user interface updates. With the imminent release of Apple’s iPhone we were wondering what Brent would be able to do with that exciting new platform if he would only be allowed to do so.

Philipp: First of all, we’d like to congratulate you to NetNewsWire 3.0. We really love the changes you’ve made.

Brent: Thank you very much.

P: I really enjoy how you’ve changed the look of NetNewsWire 3; adopted some of the new iTunes styles. Is that something you were doing to prepare the software for Leopard’s new look and feel?

I’m indeed looking forward to Leopard and thinking about those changes, yes.

P: Now, let’s move on to the iPhone. I’m addicted to news. In fact, your newsreader is running on my desktop 24/7. So, when Apple announced the iPhone, one of the first thoughts that crossed my mind was if NewsGator would port the application to the iPhone. Were you thinking the same?

Oh yeah. The first time I heard about the iPhone the first thing I wanted to do is write a version of NetNewsWire for the iPhone. In fact, I was thinking about that long before they even announced the device. I was thinking: “Hey, some day Apple is gonna do some kind of hand held device and boy, do I really want to develop some software for it.”

P: Because it makes sense, right? You got the iPhone with you, you’re always connected to the Internet, so with NetNewsWire you could be up to date at all times.

Exactly.

P: Now, did you follow the WWDC keynote? Were you in the audience by any chance?

Yes.

P: So you were one of the developers that didn’t cheer, when Steve Jobs announced the iPhone “SDK”?

Yeah… I didn’t exactly cheer, no.

P: Was the eerie silence after the announcement really as awkward as it seemed over the video stream? It was very uncomfortable to watch.

Yeah… I think it was a little uncomfortable. It was probably as bad as you thought it was…

P: What were your thoughts when Steve Jobs announced Web 2.0 and Ajax as a mean to develop applications for the iPhone?

Well, it’s what I expected him to say. I didn’t expect to get anything more at this point. I think it’s important to remember that, at this point, the iPhone is really a 1.0 product. There’s a lot complexity and if they’re going to make it so that people like me can develop apps for the iPhone they need to take incremental steps to get there.

The first obvious thing is to make web code available since they have Safari build in. They can do that right away. That doesn’t mean that they’ll never open it up, I think there is a decent chance that they will, but you have to go step by step. And of course they never tell us anything about the future, so they aren’t going tell us anything right now.

P: Now, I am not a developer, but in all honesty, I would have felt rather patronized if Steve Jobs would have sold me Safari as a “sweet” solution to develop iPhone applications. Wasn’t the announcement a touch insulting to the developer community?

I think the way he put it was not that great. I mean, I wouldn’t know if I would go so far as insulting, but patronizing… yeah… I agree with that.

Maybe he should have run that bit of his speech by some other people before delivering it. I don’t know…

Steve: As a developer of desktop applications, how familiar are you with Ajax and the other Web 2.0 technologies that Steve talked about in the keynote? Is that something that would be easy for you to port your applications to or is this going to require a whole new set of skills for you and developers such as yourself?

Well, I’ve actually spent most of my career as a web developer. I did that for about seven years and I’ve been in desktop for about five. Now, of course the web has progressed since then but I’ve kept in fairly close touch with what’s going on. I wouldn’t say I’m an experienced Ajax developer, but I can pick it up and get back into it if that was something I’d want to do.

S: So, in a technical sense, you would need to start from scratch to build an application for the iPhone. It’s not really a port.

Yeah, that’s right. Since it’s a web app, it wouldn’t share any of the same code. It would be completely different.

P: That’s of course assuming, that your company is willing to develop for the iPhone, now that you’re limited to these web technologies. Won’t it be tough to make any money with the software, for example, since it is completely hosted on the Internet?

Well, NewsGator, the company I work for, does already have online RSS readers. They do sell them and do well at that. So it’s not impossible to do and NewsGator already has experience with that.

If we did something for the iPhone, and I can’t say if we will or if we won’t, we might want do something iPhone specific and it would look and feel like an iPhone app. The big bonus would be that it would sync with NetNewsWire.

P: How about Steve Jobs’ claim that 3rd part applications could take down AT&T’s west coast network. Could NetNewsWire for the iPhone really take down the network?

No, I don’t think so. He also talked about having your phone crash, but you have to remember that it’s build on OS X. If an app crashes it doesn’t take down the whole thing, or at least that’s extremely rare.

So, some of the technical stuff he comes out with I’m not sure if I really buy it. It’s kind of rationalizations. But I think it’s rationalizations for something that is hard for him to say, which is that we have to take this on step at a time and we don’t know how it is going to turn out.

P: Some phones such as the Sony Ericsson ones, for example, already feature a build in RSS reader. Do you think Apple will have RSS built into the iPhone?

It could be, I don’t know. It’s quite possible that there will be more applications that ship with it than we know about.

P: Let’s assume for a moment that Apple would release an SDK for the iPhone. How would you imagine a port of NetNewsWire to work? Would you, for example, need to come up with a brand new layout and break away from the three-part window design to fit the device?

That’s right. The interface would have to be quite different. Yeah, you’re absolutely correct. That would probably be the first step in doing that.

P: Of course you can’t go into detail here, but in the back of your head, have you already begun to strategize how you could deliver the NetNewsWire experience, we’ve come to expect on the desktop, to the iPhone?

I started thinking about it years ago…

P: So you’re ready if only Apple would be?

Yes, exactly!

S: As a developer when you look at a brand new way to interact with a device such as the touch-screen on the iPhone, is that something that intimidates you or do you welcome the challenges to try something completely different?

I definitely welcome the challenge. It makes my heart beat faster and everything. I get all excited. It’s a new frontier right? It’s like a whole new realm, a whole new place to play. I mean, there’s all kinds of room for cool stuff that we haven’t even discovered yet. So, yeah definitely exciting.

P: There’s some rumors on the Internet that Apple will have an SDK ready for the iPhone, but might handpick the developers that would be allowed to write applications for it. Do you think that could be true?

That’s possible. Yes. You can see how that would be a reasonable next step right? Instead of opening it up all the way, work with a few select app developers. Yeah, I could see that happen.

P: Would you support that decision?

Well, ideally, they would bring out an SDK and open it up to everybody. That’s what I’d love to see. But, if they start working with a few developers first…well, I’d understand that.

This stuff is just fantastically complicated and if they come out with an SDK that’s not really ready, that hasn’t been tested pretty heavily, then it could be a real maintenance nightmare for them in the future. It’s a lot of code and a lot of stuff to get right and you kinda got to get most of it right the first time.

Anyone who says an SDK is almost ready is, in my opinion, fooling themselves. It takes so much for them [Apple] just to be able to ship the iPhone that having an SDK ready at the same time… I just don’t believe that.

P: I’m speculating now, but do you think it’s more AT&T or Apple being careful about the SDK right now? Because I could also see why AT&T wouldn’t want an SDK. I can’t imagine that they’d want Skype running on the iPhone, for example.

Right. But I mean in the end, I still think it’s probably Apple being careful, because it’s the reputation of the iPhone that they consider to be at stake. It’s a brand new thing and it could be a huge hit, or it could be a huge flop, which would hurt the company tremendously. So, they’re walking a tight road and they have to be very careful. I understand that.

P: Personally, are you planning on purchasing the iPhone?

I’m gonna get one as soon as I possibly can. Yeah.

P: Which applications, besides NetNewsWire of course, would you like to run on your iPhone?

Well, I’d like to see a Weblog editor. I want to be able to take a picture and shoot it up to my Weblog or shoot it up to flickr or something like that.

I’d love to see a twitter client like twitterrific… that’d be really cool.

Let’s see…. I wouldn’t mind having terminal… [laughs]. Also, an app I use all the time is VoodooPad by Gus Mueller; I’d love to be able to even have a light version of that on my phone.

P: Terminal? You truly are a developer… Anyways, last question:

Now that it’s all the rage, can we expect Cover Flow in NetNewsWire 4.0? Seems to be the next cool thing for Leopard…

Yeah… Cover Flow. [laughs] Well, I haven’t decided whether to use it or not, but almost everybody I come up to would tell me:

“Dude, you need this… you need to use it in NetNewsWire.”

So if I would just build based on feature requests… I can’t see how I could avoid it. [laughs]

P: We can’t wait to see what you come up with. Thank you very much for your time.

Sure, you’re welcome.

We would like to thank Brent for his time and interesting answers. We’d also like to thank Zoe for setting up the interview. If you haven’t tried the new NetNewsWire 3 yet, you can download a 30-day trial right here.

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