As the long-awaited iPhone and iPod Touch SDK launch gets closer, it turns out that some people have had an early Christmas present thanks to Apple prematurely releasing “rough versions” of the development kit necessary to code officially-sanctioned third-party applications.  According to Electronista‘s sources, a handful of companies have had access to the kit for the past two weeks, and are aiming to unveil their products in advance of the rest of the development community who will only receive the SDK in February 2008.

“Although treated as a welcome development, the SDK will not be the same as writing a Mac OS X application and has its clear limits, people familiar with the matter say. These details are unavailable, though the features are broad enough that at least one major social networking site is reportedly interested what the native platform can offer versus existing web code” Electronista

The release comes as news that Apple will be requiring digital signatures for every piece of software produced via its toolkit, enabling users to ascertain whether applications are legitimate as well as assist the company in tracking the source of malicious code.

“That way if there’s something wrong with an application, you have a way to track it back to where it came from.  So one of the things we want to do, again, is create a development environment that is going to maintain the security and reliability of the iPhone yet at the same time offer developers some really cool things that we can do” Greg Joswiak, iPod and iPhone marketing chief, Apple

Despite the signatures, there seems to be no indication of further “checking” of iPhone code as some suspected Apple may insist upon, such as solely distributing third-party software via an official online portal.  As of yet, the distribution method is undisclosed, but given both devices dependence on iTunes it seems a reasonable prediction to see a “software downloads” section added.

[via AppleInsider]