There’s a theory favored by savvy Apple watchers that the first generation iPhone — greeted with such hoopla last year — was not actually the real thing.

That iPhone – the one that hundreds of thousands of Americans queued up to buy for up to $599 apiece, the one that Time magazine named the Invention of the Year, the one that six million people purchased before Apple finally stopped making them in May – was just a trial balloon floated by Steve Jobs to test the airwaves.

According to this theory, the real iPhone – the one aimed at the broadest possible market here and abroad — would start at $199, the magic price point at which consumer electronics devices seem to take off and become mass market phenomena. It would have built-in GPS location tracking, “push” e-mail, and wireless syncing with corporate enterprise networks. Most important, it would run hundreds of third-party applications available through an online App Store and operate over so-called third generation (3G) cellular networks that are two to five times faster than the one used by that first, prototype iPhone.

If this theory is true, then the real iPhone era begins on Friday, July 11, at 8:00 a.m.

That’s when the iPhone 3G goes on sale at Apple (AAPL) and AT&T (T) outlets in the United States and at the stores of Apple’s cellular partners in some 20 other countries around the world. (Strictly speaking, the era begins early Thursday, when the device goes on sale at 12:01 a.m. New Zealand time. Given how the Earth turns, that corresponds to 8:00 a.m. July 10 at Apple’s New York City flagship store and 5:01 a.m. at its Cupertino headquarters.)

Some things about the new iPhone haven’t changed. Physically, it’s almost identical to the first. Same touch screen, same dimensions — except for the back, which is slightly bulgier and made of black plastic instead of metal.

Conceptually, it’s still one device that combines three of today’s most popular technologies — cellular communications, portable digital music and wireless access to e-mail and the World Wide Web.

And the fundamental breakthrough is the same: unlike most devices that combine several functions and do none of them well, the iPhone puts together three must-have functions and does at least two of them better than they have ever been done before.

Early reviews suggest that the one thing the first iPhone was not particularly good at — telephony — is much improved in the second version, thanks to a redesigned audio system and, perhaps, improvements in AT&T’s network.

There’s still no physical keyboard, so devotees of RIM’s (RIMM) BlackBerry who were turned off by the lack of tactile feedback when dialing or texting on the first iPhone are not likely to be turned on by the second. The battery is still not user-replaceable, a shortcoming that may be even more important this time given the power demands of operating at 3G speeds. (One early reviewer who was getting nine hours of Internet use on the first iPhone clocked less than six hours on the second. See here.)

The built-in camera is the same under-2 megapixel device that can’t do video. There’s still no way to cut and paste text. And you are still married to AT&T’s cellular network for the life of a two-year contract, at least in the United States. In fact, the bonds of that matrimony may be even stronger this time around, given the way AT&T has set up the in-store activation procedure, and will cost U.S. customers at least $10 a month more.

There are many small improvements. You can search address books, delete e-mails en masse, set parental controls and save e-mailed photos. (These improvements will also be available to owners of the original iPhone as part of a free software upgrade.)

Investors will note that Apple has made major changes in its business model. Rather than testing the waters with a handful of exclusive contracts — first with AT&T, then with O2 (TEF) in England, T-Mobile (DT) in Germany and Orange (FTE) in France — Apple has gone global this time, with deals in six of the seven continents and more than 70 countries. To do this, however, it has had to largely abandon the arrangement — unique among cell phone manufacturers — by which carriers sold the iPhone for full price and kicked back a share of their monthly revenue to Apple, which was accounted for in monthly increments over the life of a cell phone contract (usually 24 months).

Steve Jobs was able to dictate these terms — quite advantageous to Apple — because the carriers recognized that being first to sell the iPhone would win them thousands of new customers. In most of the new markets Apple is entering this year, it is acting more like a conventional cellphone manufacturer, taking its (sizeable) profits upfront and letting the carriers subsidize the device with voice and data plans as costly as local market conditions will allow. (See Canada’s Rogers Communications (RCI), here for example, to see what kinds of problems this can lead to.) The price of the iPhone itself also varies widely, from as much as $888 for pre-paid phones in Italy to $75 in Mexico and free with certain data plans in the U.K.

Except for those costs, none of this affects the experience of the users.

For them, what will really distinguish this iPhone from the one that preceded it — and from every other smartphone out there — is the flood of software expected to be unleashed when the App Store opens on Friday. Apple has already demonstrated more than a dozen third-party programs for the iPhone, and over the next few months you can expect to hear about hundreds more: business apps that take advantage of the iPhones ability to “push” data down the network when it’s available (rather than when it’s requested); games that use the device’s accelerometer to navigate virtual space; shopping and social networking programs that use satellite tracking to tell you what shops or restaurants and which of your friends (or enemies) are near the spot where you are, right now.

In the end, every successful computing device is ultimately a software “platform,” a vehicle for the programs that give it its true value. This is where the real iPhone will stand out, and judging from the interest among the 4,000 third-party developers who have already signed up to write for it, it’s got a good headstart.

Three days ago it seemed as though the world had finally opened up for would-be iPhone developers.

After eight months of pent-up demand, the pieces were in place to begin exploiting the new platform in earnest. Getting hold of the free software developers kit (SDK) was as simple as entering your iTunes name and password. The tools were powerful. The support was rich.

The programmers were “excited,” Apple’s PR department assured us more than once. On Wednesday, the company issued a press release to announce that an astonishing 100,000 copies of the SDK had been downloaded in just four days. Said Apple (AAPL) product marketing VP Phil Schiller: “Developer reaction to the iPhone SDK has been incredible.”

Developer reaction today is somewhat more muted. “The twitterati,” writes Erica Sadun at TUAW, “are reporting widespread disappointment and anger,”

It turns out that it may be easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than for a third-party developer to get into Apple’s iPhone Developers Program.

By week’s end, almost everyone who had downloaded the SDK and offered to pay the $99 ($299 for enterprises) to become an official iPhone or iPod touch developer had received Apple’s polite but firm rejection letter:

Dear Registered iPhone Developer, Thank you for expressing interest in the iPhone Developer Program. We have received your enrollment request. As this time, the iPhone Developer Program is available to a limited number of developers and we plan to expand during the beta period. We will contact you again regarding your enrollment status at the appropriate time. Thank you for applying.

What stings for the developers who got what reads like a pink slip is that they know Apple has already let its favorite partners under the tent. In addition to the companies that demoed at the March 6 event (EA, Salesforce, AOL, Epocrates, Sega) Apple quoted a quite a few more the press release (Intuit, Namco, Netsuite, PopCap, Rocket Mobile, Six Apart and THQ Wireless).

“The articles going around saying Apple is ’stalling for time,’ implying that everyone is getting ‘rejection’ letters, are false,” writes David Schroeder, who manages Apple support at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in a MacRumors Forum. “Select developers and enterprise customers are already included in these programs.”

One the bright side, he adds: “When June arrives and iPhone OS 2.0 is final and the App Store is rolled out, everyone will be able to participate in all developer programs. Also, to be clear, NO ONE has to wait to begin developing and testing their iPhone apps today. Anyone can download the iPhone SDK beta for free, and there is nothing stopping you from developing iPhone apps now.”

Well, not quite. Despite Schroeder’s assurances, U.S. developers have no guarantee they’ll ever be accepted into the program (developers outside the U.S. need not apply at this time). Meanwhile, without Apple’s blessings they are reduced to working on an iPhone or iPod touch simulator, unable to test the devices’ touch screen or accelerometer — key features for game developers.

Besides, who wants to be the second — or 100th — developer to introduce a particular kind of app, especially when the first to market has deep pockets and an inside track at Apple.

“In other news,” writes Daniel Jalkut to TUAW’s Sadun, “it looks like the Jailbreak Developer Program still has open slots, and people are getting approved as I type.”

That was quick.

Hours after Apple (AAPL) published firmware update 1.1.2 for the iPhone and the iPod touch — and even before it was officially available for installation through iTunes — rogue programmers had managed to “jailbreak” the iPod touch, once again allowing unauthorized third-party applications to run on the device. See Erica Sadun’s report on TUAW here.

As of this morning, however, the iPhone still hadn’t been re-jailbroken. That means that, as predicted, iPhones updated from 1.1.1 to 1.1.2 won’t run any of the dozens of applications users have been loading on their phones using one-click installation programs like Jailbreakme.

The firmware update appeared on several Apple blogs last evening. News of the first jailbreak was posted shortly after midnight.

Early users are still trying to pinpoint the advantages of performing the upgrade. The chief improvements seem to be the ability to add events to the calendar and easier access to languages other than English. There are reports of bug fixes and performance improvements, but they haven’t been documented.

Firmware update 1.1.2 comes preinstalled on the new iPhones that go on sale in Europe today. If you already own an iPhone, you can download the update here. And although iTunes doesn’t recognize its existence yet, the iPhone can be forced to install the update. Here’s how: After downloading 1.1.2, connect your iPhone to your computer, find your iPhone in iTunes, hold down the option key (on the Mac; Windows instructions may differ), click on Check for Update, and open the downloaded file.

The update takes about five minutes to install, after which any apps you have added will have disappeared — for now, anyway.

[Image courtesy of Engadget.]

Here we go again.

British reviewers who have tested the Apple (AAPL) iPhone that goes on sale in the U.K. Friday report that it comes pre-installed with a software update — 1.1.2 — that disables third-party applications.

According to the British gadget website T3, the update closes the so-called TIFF exploit — the software loophole used by hackers to “jailbreak” version 1.1.1. This loophole allowed iPhone owners to install dozens of third-party apps, including such popular add-ons as Navizon (a location finder), Voice Notes (a voice recorder) and instant-messaging programs like Apollo and Mobile Chat.

Thanks to one-click installations scripts like AppSnapp, these unauthorized iPhone add-ons have become almost mainstream. AppSnapp’s developers report that their software was downloaded 144,000 times in its first three days — which suggests that as many as 1 in 10 iPhone owners could be in for a rude surprise when they upgrade their software next weekend.

Some Apple bloggers — led by Quincy Pince-Nez at 9to5 Mac — advocate holding-off any iTunes and iPhone updates until programmers can find another way to install their apps. Apple would undoubtedly prefer that everybody wait until it releases its official iPhone software developers kit (SDK) in February, and Apple-sanctioned apps start to flow in.

The update is also likely to disable — and perhaps re-brick — iPhones unlocked to work with cellular providers other than Apple’s official carriers (AT&T in the U.S., O2 in the U.K., T-Mobile in Germany and Orange in France).

[Photo courtesy of T3]

Four months after he tried to persuade Apple (AAPL) software developers to use Safari to write their iPhone applications, and after weeks of playing cat and mouse with programmers who risked bricking and wrote native apps anyway, Steve Jobs today changed his tune.

In a signed message posted on Apple.com’s start page, Jobs wrote:

Third Party Applications on the iPhone

Let me just say it: We want native third party applications on the iPhone, and we plan to have an SDK [software developer's kit] in developers’ hands in February. We are excited about creating a vibrant third party developer community around the iPhone and enabling hundreds of new applications for our users. With our revolutionary multi-touch interface, powerful hardware and advanced software architecture, we believe we have created the best mobile platform ever for developers.

It will take until February to release an SDK because we’re trying to do two diametrically opposed things at once–provide an advanced and open platform to developers while at the same time protect iPhone users from viruses, malware, privacy attacks, etc. This is no easy task. Some claim that viruses and malware are not a problem on mobile phones–this is simply not true. There have been serious viruses on other mobile phones already, including some that silently spread from phone to phone over the cell network. As our phones become more powerful, these malicious programs will become more dangerous. And since the iPhone is the most advanced phone ever, it will be a highly visible target.

Some companies are already taking action. Nokia, for example, is not allowing any applications to be loaded onto some of their newest phones unless they have a digital signature that can be traced back to a known developer. While this makes such a phone less than “totally open,” we believe it is a step in the right direction. We are working on an advanced system which will offer developers broad access to natively program the iPhone’s amazing software platform while at the same time protecting users from malicious programs.

We think a few months of patience now will be rewarded by many years of great third party applications running on safe and reliable iPhones.

Steve

P.S.: The SDK will also allow developers to create applications for iPod touch.

Jobs’ reversal is a tacit admission on his part that Apple’s programmers can’t do it all. It could also a long way to repairing relations with the software developers the company alienated when its most recent software update wiped out the entire first generation of native iPhone 3rd-party apps.

For background, see Apple Set to Open iPhone (Within Limits) and Steve Jobs’ Keynote: Long on Flash, Short on News.