Ever since Apple launched the App Store for iPhone owners, the company has seen some serious criticism regarding its willy-nilly admittance policy. Several popular applications were not allowed into the App Store, forcing the developers of those applications to offer their work only to owners of jailbroken iPhones. From now on, that will be a whole lot easier: the first unauthorised iPhone application store is about to open up shop.
The new store will be called Cydia Store, and as you might have guessed, is an initiative of Jay Freeman, the developer of the Cydia software installer for the iPhone. “The overworking goal is to provide choice,” Freeman says, “It’s understandable that [Apple] wants to control things, but it has been very limiting for developers and users.” Freeman also said he has already hired a lawyer.
The Cydia Store will be structured in the same way as Apple’s store, and Freeman will charge developers no more than what Apple wants from iPhone developers, which is a 30% commission. Obviously, the store will be built around Cydia, and therefore will require a jailbroken iPhone. The Cydia Store won’t be the only one; two more are on their way, one of which focusses on selling adult games for the iPhone.
Sadly, it’s hard to measure how man jailbroken iPhones are out there. Freeman says that the Cydia software installer has been installed on 1.7 million iPhones, which all need to be jailbroken (since else Cydia won’t work). However, where this number is coming from is unknown.
The next question is whether or not Apple will undertake legal action, and of course if such legal action will be successful. The DMCA might give Apple some legal leverage, but some legal experts are doubtful. “Courts have said you shouldn’t use the DMCA to leverage your copyright monopoly into other markets,” said Susan Crawford, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School. According to Crawford, courts have ruled that previous DMCA-related cases were more about stifling competition than about copyright infringement.
The arrival of “unofficial” application stores was of course inevitable thanks to Apple’s muddy App Store policies. It’s also a good thing for iPhone owners, as it gives them something Apple doesn’t want to them to have: choice. Independent application stores shouldn’t really affect Apple, since they will mostly be filled with applications the Cupertino company won’t sell in its own App Store anyway. iPhone owners benefit as well, as it will enlarge the pool of applications they can draw from.
Together with the recent news that Apple is having lots of troubles with processing iPhone developer contracts, this could be another setback for the company.
I expect this will be a tech drama with at least as much techie interest as Psystar
Not just Psystar is it? Its also efi-x and PearC, not to mention the hackintosh forums, and its also jailbreaking the iPod. The locked app store is legally different, but its the same basic approach in terms of business model: its the lock-in.
Stop the OS buyer from using the ‘wrong’ hardware, stop the iPod user managing their database from the ‘wrong’ OS (Linux), stop them buying their tunes using the ‘wrong’ software (anything but iTunes), stop them for as long as you can playing their bought tunes on the ‘wrong’ kind of player. Stop them putting their iPhone on the ‘wrong’ networks, stop them getting applications from the ‘wrong’ place (anywhere but the app store), stop people putting the ‘wrong’ applications into the app store for purchase….
The issue is, as a company, your time and energy are limited. The amount of communication you can do with your customers is limited.
How much of that time and energy do you want to spend stopping them from doing what they want to do, suing them, trying to control them? How much of it do you want to spend trying to meet their needs and enable them to do what they want to do?
After you get through answering the question, if you are Apple, you will come up with the answer that as a company you want to spend as much time and energy as it takes to keep on with the lock-in business model. Then ask yourself a simple question. Why?
And as a customer ask yourself the equivalent simple question: why do I put up with this?
I for one don’t put up with it. The only thing Apple that I ‘own’ is the Quicktime player, and I only do that because I ‘have’ to.
If someone can show me an alternative that plays all the current movie trailers, etc then I’ll dump Apple in a heartbeat.
Can’t VLC read pretty everything quicktime does?
I just removed Quicktime and then installed VLC and just as when I tried it ages ago, it doesn’t automatically bring up the ability to play the movies, like it does when Quicktime is installed.
If anyone can tell me how I can do this, then I wont reinstall Quicktime.
I’m not sure what you mean with:
it doesn’t automatically bring up the ability to play the movies, like it does when Quicktime is installed
Are you talking about codecs, or about opening an embeded movie when you’re browsing ?
Yeah opening the movie that’s embedded in the page.
Well, here it depends what browser and what system you’re using.
If it’s firefox, you can choose in the preferences which app you want to use for whatever is in the page, but you must have the vlc’s mozilla-plugin installed.
If you’re under windows I’m afraid I can’t really help you further. Try to see if you can find the information you need on the VLC website:
http://www.videolan.org/
If under linux, just loock for that package in your package manager, whiever it may be, and install it.
Depending on your distro, it may be all you need to do, or you may yet need to tell firefox to use vlc (in preferences/apps).
Yeah.. I already checked the plugin is installed and it is, but still no good.
I’ll need to look into this later.
For what it’s worth, I’d like to be able to do this too. Anything to get Quicktime off my system. Not that I am anti-Apple or anything, jsut that Quicktime is a horribe, horrible app.
QuickTime Alternative has worked fairly well in my experience.
Because LOOK. Its SO shiny, and and watch: I can ZOOOOM in on this picture with this finger motion!!! Its SOOOOOOO COOOOL!!!!!
Maybe they will get the hint that it’s an arms race, and open the damn device so people can hack on it without jumping through so many hoops as we have to do now…
One can only hope, of course.
Do you still have to buy quicktime pro to do mundane things like full screen videos? That used to irk the hell out of folks, hence the popularity of VLC in most Apple fora, I guess.
Rationally (now theres a word that’s out of favor in this day and age) the only thing Apple could do is say that you void your license by using the non-Apple app store. Then again, since you have already voided your license by jailbreaking the phone it’s a moot point.
Knowing Apple, it probably won’t stop there though.
I just love how the IT industry think it’s so special and does not have to play by the same rules as other industries.
Edited 2009-03-09 09:25 UTC
Regardless of other reasons, this is enough of a reason for this store to exist. Apple, listen up… people want and are entitled to choice.
People do have choice, they have the choice on whether to buy an iPhone or not. It is NOT as if the iPhone is the only phone in the world.
If it is Jailbroken. Does that mean I can’t buy apps from Apple’s store?
From my understanding you can still use the App Store with a Jailbroken phone.