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]