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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."
And there goes Apple's monopoly. I can't say this is a bad thing, it gives users another option, without severely damaging Apple.
Laughter is the best medicine, except if you have a broken rib.
Normally Apple is on a totally different playing field from any competition... Not here, and it will be interesting to see how they deal with this. :) I am betting lawyers and politicians.
Those that hack or pirate always have it better. No DRM, no restrictions on what software you can install, no need for physical media and the list goes on. Being a nice customer simply doesn't pay anymore these days.
right...
Software programmers are free thinkers. They don't like being told what to do by a monolithic entity trying to hold all the cards and write all the game's rules.
That the company trumpeting how 1984 wouldn't be like 1984 was the company to most make it like 1984?
Although you can't really blame Apple for denying Google Voice and similar apps
You can't really blame Comcast for denying access to hulu.com or tnt.com or scifi.com.....
Just something to think about - the motives for these denials are clear.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
One big one that I find frustrating on the Touch is the inability to use it as an USB storage device. I brought the Touch with me on a recent trip to Europe, and found (much to my frustration) that I could not copy pictures from my camera over to the Touch without installing iTunes on every random computer I used. I wanted to just connect both the camera and the Touch to my friend's laptop & drag the pictures across...apparently Apple doesn't want me to do that, which I think is stupid.
Also, on a corporate level, I'd love to be able to have a separate App store that just our company's iPhones/Touches used. That would allow us to put out custom apps for just us, which would make the iPhone & Touch hugely popular at the office. But we can't. Pity.
Whoops accidently modded the wrong thing.
My addiction: Arguing with idiots. AKA Slashdot!
Apple did open their platform to clones. It very nearly killed them completely. Apple are a hardware company.
Apple is making an *enormous* amount of money with their hardware and software in its current configuration, and I believe is very high up the charts on total number of machines shipped. They are very clearly not dying. In fact, their marketshare in terms of computers and phones, and portable music players is going up, year on year.
A hackable iPod/iPhone is a niche market. The slashdot audience really isn't the primary target audience. If you want a hackable smartphone, there's Android. If you just want a flashy smartphone with the internet, street cred, a camera, games, and tons of apps of varying usefulness (from things that make your phone into a flashlight and make silly noises, right up to high quality games, task manager apps and sat nav) then the iPhone is for you.
Not that I'm saying the Android lacks street cred, but the iPhone really made smartphones cool. Blackberrys were around, and were pretty popular, but when the iPhone came out - boom. And now we have a huge slew of competitors who are releasing phones that look just like an iPhone. Funny that!
The platform is very transparent up front - ie, you know it is locked to AT&T, you know the app system is tightly controlled by Apple, you know the hardware is tightly controlled. None of this is hidden. If you want a hackable phone, it is yelling at you right out that it's not the purchase for you.
Unfortunately, that is true. For a jailbroken iPhone/iPod Touch can be trivially enabled to pirate App Store (the official Apple one) apps. Jailbreaking won't get you the ability to install pirated apps, but it's trivial to do it (basically you enable a new repository, which involves maybe 5 or 6 taps and a bit of typing, then another 4 taps or so to install the required tool).
The only interesting thing is, considering how easy it is to pirate real App Store apps, how long until Cydia gets locked down to prevent people from doing the same to its paid apps? RIght now it isn't much of a problem because the vast majority of Cydia apps are free...
apt-get has it right IMO:
Ubuntu (or debian?) blessed apps are categorized as such. If someone only wants such blessed (and signed) apps, they can limit their search to that space. If you want to take chances, you can open up to the 'multi-verse' of apt-get where stuff is placed, but not blessed. You lose the sense that someone has inspected the code and found it ok, but you gain the ability to get things that didn't seek/get such a blessing if you want it.
It sounds like your beef is with the phone companies - and rightly so.
I think Apple would love to sell you an iPhone that works on any carrier. They would make more money - there is very clearly a market for people who want one but don't want AT&T, just as there is in the UK for people who don;t want to use O2. Unfortunately, they just can't do that right now and are obligated to try to keep you from unlocking it to change networks (even though they know its fruitess since jailbreaking is trivial, they are contractually obliged to try to stop you).
The same process happened with the iTunes store. They didn't want to sell DRM'ed music tracks - customers don't like it, but it was the only way they could do so at first. Now it has changed somewhat and DRM-free music is available for sale, but it's still not Apple's content, so they are selling it based on an agreement with the actual owners.
I'm sure that if the exclusive deal is not renewed with AT&T (or another carrier makes a better offer) that the locking will change. It is an artificial barrier that exists solely to further the business model of AT&T - it's not Apple's decision. The VOIP and tethering is AT&T again (didn;t you hear the very thinly veiled digs at AT&T during the WWDC keynote - it is clear that Apple are not happy with them and don;t mind publicly hinting at it with huge comedy wink-winks).
The consumer pressure is good though - it;s the only serious way to get companies to change things that are not necessarily in their obvious interest (like DRM on music, or tethering, or the dropping of firewire from the cheapest Macbook). Apple reverted that change in response to customer complaints - I expect they are trying to negotiate with AT&T about some of the nasty restrictions on the iPhone.
Jobs is worth millions, if not Billions. You post on slashdot. Who made the mistakes here?
Thanks to the Magnusson-Moss act, if you installed a third party air filter, hood or aftermarket headlights, for Ford won't be able to void your warranty on the transmission, for example. Warranty shouldn't be voided just because you opened the (software) hood, unless it can be proven that your changes caused the problem.