There has been some confusion recently about the iPhone 3.0 SDK, the iPhone 3.0 OS, and AdMob’s libraries for monetizing apps. I’d like to clarify the situation a little.

First, I should make a clean distinction between SDKs and the OS. The SDK comprises the tools and resources used to build applications. The OS, on the other hand, provides the platform on which applications run. Though the 3.0 iPhone SDK is being released alongside the 3.0 iPhone OS — so as to enable developers to take advantage of new OS capabilities in new apps — it is entirely possible to build an app using a 2.x SDK, and run it on the 3.0 OS. In fact, when the 3.0 OS is released, the vast majority of apps running on iPhones will have been built with a 2.x SDK, yet be running on the 3.0 OS.

When Apple announced recently that all new submissions to the App Store had to be 3.0-ready, what they meant was that those apps — all still built using the 2.x SDKs — had to function correctly on the 3.0 OS. Apple has done a good job making sure that most apps will make the transition smoothly, but a few apps will have to be updated, still using the 2.x SDK, to work correctly across all versions of the OS.

The libraries — built with the 2.0 SDK — that AdMob has provided to developers work correctly on both the 2.x OS and the 3.0 OS. Developers whose apps include AdMob ads will not be broken by the AdMob libraries on the 3.0 OS, and they do not have to make any changes or resubmissions specifically for the AdMob libraries.

Only developers who are building applications using the 3.0 SDK need to think about this. (Note that this does not include any apps currently in the App Store, since apps built using the 3.0 SDK may not be submitted to the App Store at all right now.) If you attempt to integrate AdMob libraries built with the 2.x SDK into an app being built with the 3.0 SDK, you will see crashes in the iPhone Simulator. The fix is to a use temporary version of the AdMob libraries built with the 3.0 SDK, made available to developers who are a part of the Apple iPhone Developer Program. These libraries are temporary because they were built with a pre-release version of the 3.0 SDK; they are available only as a convenience to developers and are not for use in submission to the App Store (like anything built with the current 3.0 SDK). They can be found in the “extras” folder of the AdMob libraries available at www.admob.com for registered iPhone developers. As soon as the 3.0 SDK is officially released, we will provide a final version of the libraries for use with the 3.0 SDK.

Again: Apps currently running ads will not be disrupted. No action on developers’ part (vis-a-vis AdMob ads) is necessary, although as always, they are encouraged to make sure to grab the most recent version of the AdMob libraries whenever they are updating their apps.

Josh
Engineering