Underground App Store Courts the Jailbroken

PainMeds writes "Apple's stepped-up and controversial rejections are helping to foster competition in the app store marketplace. According to an article by Wired, developers aren't taking AppStore rejection lying down, but are turning to the hacking community's repository system for the iPhone to launch an app store of their own. The 4-month-old Cydia store is yielding notably higher sales for a few application developers than Apple's AppStore, and is reportedly running on over 4 million Apple iPhone devices, with perhaps 350,000 connected at any one time. In this store, developers are distributing applications they've written that push the limits of Apple's normal AppStore policies, with software to add file downloads to Safari, trick applications into thinking they're on Wi-Fi (for VoIP), and enhance other types functionality. You'll also find the popular Google Voice application, which was recently rejected by Apple. Third party application development has been around since 2007, when the iPhone was originally introduced, and became so popular that O'Reilly Media published a book geared toward writing applications before an SDK was available. The Cydia store acts as both a free package repository and commercial storefront to third-party developers."

Comments

Jailbreaking is where it's at

[nsteinme]

If you haven't jailbroken yours yet, you haven't lived.

Re:Jailbreaking is where it's at

[commodore64_love]

>>>If you haven't jailbroken yours yet, you haven't lived.

I suspect it's only a matter of time until this falls into common slang. "That was my girlfriend Emily." "Wow she's cute. Have you jailbroken her yet?" "No but she promised me on the night of the prom she'd let me."

Re:Competition? What is that?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you can't compete, litigate. It's the American way!

Re:Bye Bye Monopoly

[Anonymous Coward]

need jailbroken iphone

There's an app for that.

Re:all hail...

[Chyeld]

"Apple - Think Less"

On the other hand if you peruse an actual list of 'real' Apple slogans, some of them work without any changes.

"Apple - What kind of man owns his own computer?"

Re:Pros and Cons

[Anonymous Coward]

Woooosh

Re:Pros and Cons

[Kozz]

You can't really blame Comcast for denying access to hulu.com or tnt.com or scifi.com.....

Don't you mean Siffy? Err, SyFy?

Re:Isn't it ironic...--OH, I DON'T KNOW...

[H0p313ss]

That the company trumpeting how 1984 wouldn't be like 1984 was the company to most make it like 1984?

Very insightful, and I'd Mod you to +6 if I could. However, I make the case that Amazon.com is currently duking it out with Apple over the top position in the 1984 mentality race of late. Then again, if Amazon deleted 1984 off of the Kindle reader software on your iPhone then it all comes together and I can see the Big Picture now.

Damn... and I thought we'd always been at war with Amazon.