Way to soon to say. The scuttlebutt -- apparently confirmed, but just apparently -- is that Apple created an embedded (i.e. streamlined) version of OS X for this, and has slick developer tools for folks to port apps over, so I wouldn't expect it to take long for the announcements to start rolling in.
Dashboard widgets will work from jump, assuming they fit n the screen, no recoding required.
In particular, I'm interested in finding out whether Palm software and FileMaker Pro would work with it. IOW, I would be interested in it if it would duplicate what I do now on my Palm PDA as well as provide phone/internet/e-mail.
FileMaker -- an Apple product -- will almost certainly have an iPhone version. At worst, it has WiFi, so you can administer databases if there's a Mac in the room. Palm OS apps, I would imagine not, though I would guess that a lot of developers will port their apps over. I suspect that this little gizmo will blow the PDA/smartphone market wide open the way the iPod did the MP3 player market.
I like my Treo -- I liked it better before I saw this -- and I'd like some sort of emulation layer that would let me run my Palm OS apps, at least until they're ported over or someone writes an equivalent. But then, I also want a pony.
Thing is, we're still six months away from the iPhone being in most folks' hands. That's a lot of time for developers to port their apps over, and any PDA developer who didn't put that at the top if his to-do list today is insane and not to be trusted.
"Anyone know where to find what 3rd party applications would work with the iPhone?"
This is a very interesting question. It's a mobile version of the MacOSX, which uses PDF as a native file format, so expect a PDF reader/thin version of Acrobat for sure. Possibly photo-editing apps from Adobe, but it uses Core Graphics, so anyone can write to that AP.
The next World Wide Developer Conference Apple holds will probably have a lot of content for developers for this phone, even though it's after the release of the product (August). Might be interesting to find out how to develop for it now - one could jump ahead of the market and have apps ready by release, there's going to be a big, new market waiting! Like Jobs said, if they get 1% of the phone market, that's 10,000,000 phones - and a LOT of potential customers for software.
Here's some things I expect, eventually:
iChat/Aim clients
VIOP clients using the wifi (both lines on one phone...cool...)
Voice recognition
Some way to connect this to a MacBook or MacbookPro and let the laptop use it's internet connection. No more paying for wifi in airports.
Some form of Ink, the handwriting technology, for finger gesture capture
Thin versions of Office, not from Microsoft tho. Google apps for it? Bet on it, and they have an Office suite already.
Anything Palm has, developers can make for this. Productivity (Quicken for iPhone? Sold!), communications, reference, games, the GPS in it opens up lots of possibilities...
The only thing it can't do that I can even think of right now is function as the Uber Remote Control of all Time using IR to talk to iPods, Macs, and the new Apple TV... but who knows?
I use a PsP to watch movies on planes. This will replace it. In fact, I don't see any reason to take my laptop on a lot of trips, if I have this.
I'm hesitant about Cingular too, my Verizon contract is up in April, and I love Verizon, but hate the phones they have right now. I hope and pray they allow it to be used with Verizon! But this thing fits so many of my needs (truly private e-mail at work that never hits the corporate server, websites that are'nt filtered by the corporate firewall, internet everywhere, GPS and driving instructions from Google in the car...) I could see bumping down to the lowest Verizon service plan, and still getting one of these through Cingular, and just have my away message say to call the iPhone. :)
They're going to sell a lot of these. I'm sold already, the GPS feature in the Keynote sold me. The potential of this device is huge, what we know so far just scratches the surface! I was disinterested in the iPhone rumors up until today, but this went so far beyond my expectations...Apple did it again.