RSSSDK released - Python in iPhone?
Posted on March 7, 2008 by Mikko Ohtamaa
Filed Under iphone, mobile, python
I just read waffle’s blog entry about iPhone SDK release. Looks like Objective C is the only supported language by default (I am just downloading SDK).The comments speculated that embedding Python is not possible due to size constraints. Bollocks I say =) Python for Series 60 phones is 500 kb download without trimming. It’s less than the size of HTML page you are viewing now - RAM footprint is even smaller) If Series 60 phones, which have much more modest hardware specifications, can run Python it shouldn’t be a problem for iPhones either.
Why Apple didn’t add additional language support by default? Well they seem to have their hands full to get SDK out at all (delays) so we shouldn’t expect to have perfect set in 1.0 release.
Now, who wants start a porting project with me? 
Share This
Other posts by Mikko Ohtamaa
Hi, I may not be able to help you porting Python to the iPhone but I would like to see Python running on this device soon
I think this would be a great thing to quickly prototype new applications for the iPhone. But as far as I understood the SDK you have to write a Python app, publish it on the AppStore and then set the Python programs on top of this application. Maybe therefore the dirtribution of Python apps could become difficult or restricted by Apple AppStore.
Python would be embedded in Object-C application. You can even statically compile it if you wish. The application user has no means whatsoever to know whether the app runs Python, Ruby, .NET or younameit internally. You won’t have a chance to distribute iPython (what a cool name I invented
separately, except for development purposes.
same here, helping in a port wouldnt be a option for me, but using Python to write apps for the iPhone 2.0 would be a damn sexy concept.
Something along the lines of ‘from iphone2 import X’ would be damn neat.
theyv already released it on iphone but I can’t download it for some reason
Damn gay ass Objective C, I want to start pwning in python for the iPhone, not learning all the stupid Objective C crap.
I think the lack of Python support on the iPhone is intentional. This forces anyone wishing to develop for the iPhone to purchase mac hardware and prevents simple porting of Python apps from platform to platform.
A good insight, i think. it does look to be intentional. I don’t know if it is good or bad. May be we should thank Apple for preventing a torrent of low quality apps. Mine included
Nah, it is bound to happen one way or anther, the only question is when.
It seems that you have no helpers. I’m a s/w engineer (UNIX, c, c++, python, others) between jobs and perhaps I could help you. I found your site because I searched for “python iphone” hoping to find already started work. I’ll be travelling for next 6 weeks but should be emailable and on low priority for this during that time. Talk to me, but someone above on June 15th says it’s already with us??? So what’s that about?
It would seem that i’m not alone in wishing there was some real python support for iphone, i don’t think developing on a ‘Jailbroken’ would do me any favours :/ .
“You can even statically compile it if you wish.” - this is interesting. I understand this but would something like PyObjC be that easy to statically compile? Footprint?
My own reasoning for using Python would be to use it develop an AI component in a game. This game is to be run online in a flash enviroment and naturally i would rather only develop the AI once…. but at what cost :(. I’m fully open to suggestions…
Please see recent discussion
http://www.telesphoreo.org/pipermail/iphone-python/2008-November/000244.html
It is possible and we are almost there
Mikko Ohtamaa ,
the name ipython is kind of already in use
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPython