As the world impatiently waits for Apple’s iPhone to become like any other mobile out there that can easily be used and thoroughly customized with free applications for business and play, Apple is slowly but surely heading in that direction thankfully. It’s already a known fact that there are plenty of developers out there that have been coming up with iPhone applications on a weekly (if not sooner) basis to help us, as users, achieve the absolution of finally having a totally open iPhone. No strings attached, no more jailbreaking and what not.
Hopefully the day will come when one can simply walk into an Apple or any other store pick up an iPhone and walkout without having to pay anyone extra for making it compatible with your service provider. Just pay over the counter, put in your SIM card and you’re good to go. You won't have to worry about the firmware upgrading or downgrading etc. and most importantly the device Bricking in case you happen to install some third party software. The iPhone may one day be just like a Sony Ericsson or Nokia or Samsung handset. Version 1.1.3 already saw some exciting changes to the iPhone so there's a lot yet to be expected.

Apple has recently previewed its iPhone 2.0 software, scheduled for release this June, and announced the immediate availability of a beta release of the software to select developers and enterprise customers. The iPhone 2.0 beta release includes both the iPhone Software Development Kit (SDK), the previous one was actually leaked, as well as new enterprise features such as support for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync and the addition of Cisco IPsec VPN for encrypted access to private corporate networks.

"We’re excited about creating a vibrant third party developer community with potentially thousands of native applications for iPhone and iPod touch,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO.

The iPhone SDK provides developers with a rich set of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and tools to create applications for iPhone and iPod Touch. Starting today, anyone can download the beta iPhone SDK for free and run the iPhone Simulator on their Mac. As we’ve talked about before (link) the SDK will enable developers to come up with their own applications for various purposes to run on the iPhone's MAC OS. With the kind of technology that the iPhone already incorporates like its Multi-Touch user interface, built-in three-axis accelerometer and of course it’s rather large space capacity (now up to 16GB) it may not be too long before developers will make most of our initial expectations from the iPhone a reality.

Apple has licensed Exchange ActiveSync from Microsoft and is building it right into the iPhone, so that iPhone will connect out-of-the-box to Microsoft Exchange Servers 2003 and 2007 for secure over-the-air push email, contacts, calendars and global address lists. Built-in Exchange ActiveSync support also enables security features such as remote wipe, password policies and auto-discovery. The addition of WPA2 Enterprise with 802.1x authentication enables enterprise customers to deploy iPhone and iPod touch with the latest standards for protection of Wi-Fi networks.