Are 9.5% of iPhones Jailbroken? I’m a tad skeptical of that figure myself. Still it points to a lot of things Apple needs. I bet that if Apple/AT&T offered cheap occasional tethering, easy backgrounding, quick & easy turning off services like wireless or 3G, and a better map program that a lot of jailbreakers wouldn’t feel the urge to jailbreak. Seriously. I’m convinced Apple could fulfill the needs of jailbreakers easily. Of course the ideal situation is just offer non-App store installation of software like Palm or Android. Not just because of user needs but because of how it is destroying developer relations. I remember developer relations with Apple in the 90′s. Apple bent over backwards the past 8 years to try and repair that. And they are undoing it quickly.
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#1 by Alex on 2009/11/23 - 5:18 am
The only feature of Jailbreaking that appeals to me is the tethering, and perhaps the ability to turn all the radios on/off from one control panel.
I do agree with you that Apple’s iron fist approach to the App Store is hurting their image. But then allowing anyone to sell apps from other adhoc stores would mean the iPhone market gets infested with the fleas known as deprecated APIs, poor UI design, copyright violations, trademark disputes… all stuff outside of Apple’s control but which will reflect poorly on the brand.
It’s a case of being stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea. In my case, I take the deep blue sea and learn to be patient with Apple’s approval process. There’s always the option of distributing applications open source and using the Ad-Hoc mode to load the application onto one’s own iPhone using one’s own developer tool kit.
#2 by Clark on 2009/11/23 - 2:33 pm
I think what you have to do is have a “partition” between approved apps and unapproved apps. So have an option in iTunes to disable unapproved apps. Or if the iPhone crash, have an option to disable unapproved apps. And at the Genius Bar have them say they only will fix it with the unapproved apps removed.
You can also have the unapproved app installer put up a stern warning with a big “warning, danger, danger” kind of dialog box.
So I think there’s a lot they can do to discourage the use of unapproved apps. I doubt most people would use them. (Especially given the convenience of the app store) But it would drain a lot of steam from the debate. That’s not to say the app store doesn’t need a lot of improvement. It does. However it would go miles to mollify disgruntled developers. And that’s something they need to do. Especially if they want their tablet to be successful.