Disqus
Talk about taking matters into his own hands.
Soured by Apple’s restrictive iPhone SDK and increasingly delayed turn-around times for new iPhone developer contracts, one iPhone developer is preparing to take Apple’s venerable iPhone App Store head-on with an AppStore alternative. Dubbed the “Cydia Store,” in reference to the jailbreak application repository “Cydia” that comes pre-loaded on jailbroken iPhone firmwares, the new application store alternative will offer more powerful and flexible iPhone apps to adventurous iPhone owners willing to jailbreak their handset.
Jay Freeman, Cydia’s godfather and creator of the free iPhone video-recorder “Cycorder,” has announced his intentions to bring the AppStore’s lucrative business model to the jailbreak scene. The Cydia Store will give jailbreak developers a chance to cash in on the hype-wave generated by the AppStore’s tremendous success, without having to limit their apps to meet Apple’s guidelines – allowing iPhone developers to flout Apple’s SDK and develop iPhone apps with access to deeper parts of the iPhone’s operating system and hardware components.
Freeman says that he plans to charge developers the same commission-rate that Apple charges to use the AppStore’s payment infrastructure and marketing machine. “The overworking goal is to provide choice,” he says. “It’s understandable that [Apple] wants to control things, but it has been very limiting for developers and users.”
But, with Apple officially going on the offensive with their DMCA petition requesting to have the “jailbreak” process considered a copyright infringement and therefore illegal, Freeman may face increasing pressure from Apple.
[Via: iLounge]
About The Author
Will Park
Will hails from The City of Angels - Los Angeles, California. He spends his time playing with his numerous gadgets and looking forward to seeing what future holds for mobile technology. An avid promoter of a fully "digital" life, he promotes the widespread adoption of truly mobile, paper-less living. He dreams of the day when he can go completely digital. No more snail mail, paper receipts, bound books, notepads/spiral notebooks, credit cards, hard currency. He's a digital warrior - fighting for the converged life. He is an idealist and a realist - he has a perfect view of what the world should be but knows that the world is not perfect. Can we ever hope to see Will's dream become reality? We'll see...
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[TheBORG]
