Slashdot Mirror


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."

4 of 295 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Bye Bye Monopoly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    need jailbroken iphone

    There's an app for that.

  2. Re:all hail... by Chyeld · · Score: 5, Funny

    "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?"

  3. Re:Jailbreaking is where it's at by commodore64_love · · Score: 3, Funny

    >>>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."

    --
    "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
  4. Re:Pros and Cons by Kozz · · Score: 4, Funny

    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?

    --
    I only post comments when someone on the internet is wrong.