Apple hires author of the unofficial iPhone SDK

Although we're hearing that Apple isn't anywhere close to nailing down specifics for its official iPhone software development kit, due in February 2008, the company has begun recruiting some to-notch talent from the unofficial iPhone application development realm: Lucas Newman of Delicious Monster has been hired by Apple as an "iPhone engineer" according to a post from "Chief Monster" Wil Shipley.

Newman is the author of an avid iPhone developer who worked on the first native iPhone game, Lights Off and helped develop iPhone Atlas develop our initial 5-step native application install guide back in August. He also wrote an unofficial SDK for the iPhone, consisting of the following components:

• An 18-page PDF instructional guide with steps for downloading and installing the development toolchain.
• An Xcode template
• A set of sample iPhone applications

In October, when Apple announced the official SDK, Newman told us:

"I think it is great news, of course. They are going to have some amazing third party developers spring to life. I think we are going to see some really creative applications."

Now he'll be the one helping to spur that creativity inside Apple as he has outside the company.

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