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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."
That and their control fetish.
Have you read any comments in the App Store? The average iPhone user has no idea how to read.
...how hard is a jailbroken device to maintain over time? I understand the initial process is fairly simple, but with most hacks maintenance and keeping it hacked can be difficult (witness hackintoshes when OS updates come out, Tivos when the kernel is updated, etc). Can anyone comment on how hard it would be for an "average user" to not only set this up, but keep it running over time?
I don't know what kind of crack I was on, but I suspect it was decaf.
I kinda disagree. I showed my jailbroken iPhone to one of my computer illiterate friends and he was impressed with the Winterboard themes, said I should show him how, which I agreed, and said the next time I'm at his place I'll show him. Come a few weeks later, I see him and guess what, he jailbroke it himself... So, I think the average Joe's are even getting sick of the Apple restrictions and are willing to stick their head out there a bit to try this cool jailbreaking.
Not everyone that can jailbreak an iPhone does either.
Now, a possibly relevant caveat is that I didn't actually go out and buy mine (gift from my Apple-fan father, after I said don't bother giving me one, since I don't care about it) but I honestly don't see the gain in jailbreaking it. I'm not planning on leaving AT&T (they're a hell of a lot better than Sprint in my experience, which gave me nightmares for years. I don't care how good they are rated right this second, they would have to basically hand me a bag of $100 bills for me to sign back up with them at this point). When things go wrong with the phone, I want Apple and/or AT&T to be the ones on the hook for fixing them.
And frankly, Apple approving all the software in the App store, while slimy doesn't particularly matter to me, because there's no way I'm ever buying any software for any phone, whether it's an iPhone or a Pre or a Blackberry or an Android phone. On top of that, while I certainly don't trust Apple to have my best interests at heart, I see no reason at all why I should trust any of these unofficial app stores any more, especially since I have to allow them to do whatever they damn well please with my phone in order to use their "service". Frankly, I think the FCC investigation is possibly the best thing to happen to the iPhone. I figure there's very little chance that Apple will be forced to allow any unsigned code whatsoever to run (which would pretty much mean I sell off the the phone and get one that isn't an invitation to data theft), but a very good chance that the black box in the approval process will be torn apart, some Apple executives embarassed, and some changes made.