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

Good For Them!

[Nom du Keyboard]

Good for them. Apple needs to be told that once I pay for it that it's my iPhone and I'll use it as I please without their nanny-state anti-competitive meddling.

Apple may be the source of many new, good, and original ideas, but they aren't the only source of them. If it doesn't damage the AT&T system -- or any other carrier I chose to give my business to with my iPhone -- (and tethering and VOIP don't damage the under-provisioned AT&T system since I pay for the right to transport my bits) then I should be able to do it. The rest are just stupid restrictions designed with the sole purpose of ripping me off even worse than you're already ripping me off.

Quit trying to hold back and prevent the rest of us from being able to benefit from the advances in technology with your old voice business model.