Apple "wrestles" with 3rd party iPhone apps

Apple's success has been its "gatekeeper" mentality... letting those in who follow it's vision, and keeping out the free license that allows other to produce inadequate, if not debilitating software.

Imagine a user downloading an unauthorized app, only to find it has cause a major system problem, affecting everything. While this is possible on any system, keeping those issues at bay and keeping the product protected is Apple's primary goal.

This "gatekeeping" is why Apple has done so well. The company has not changed, people's perceptions of the company have.

I'm all for Apple making it's decisions of who can or cannot develop for it's products. Afterall, it's their vision... a vison that has been successful, and based in providing good products that are easy to use, impact our lives, and change our thinking... and one that I can look forward to.

Apple should open the iPhone for 3rd party application!

I need dictionaries, databases and office documents.


Without this I probably would not buy one and stay with the Treo or even a WindowsMobile device...!

I'm just wondering, the phone, at least to get started, sounds pretty good.

What other apps are you looking for/NEED to have whenever you get your iphone?

The thing hasn't come out and you're complaining that you can't add software to it? What's it missing for you already besides the fact you can't add more software?

It seems like a lot of people just like the idea/novelty of being able to add stuff to something new.

Yeah, uhm, I'm with the poster who said someone clearly hadn't installed many Java midlets, unfortunately.

I've tested mobile communications software on my Windows Mobile PDA-phones which, frankly, could basically lock that poor little OS hard. I grant you a midlet is harder to explode than a native app, but many of them also run quirkier, and some still can crash the java VM. Which isn't that much more fun than crashing the phone as a whole; if the JVM is eating the PDA's full CPU, for instance, you suddenly discover you cannot receive incoming calls.

So, while I'm all for third-party iPhone apps -- and would love to get into /writing/ them, as an OS X developer -- I can absolutely understand why Apple's taking a cautious approach to this. If they release it and 8 billion badly written third-party apps land on it, people will go 'ZOMG iPhone crashes!'

#16
Apparently you've never installed many 3rd party java apps on a cell phone. Apple is doing what they have always done and are first establishing a baseline of quality. Apple is positioning itself as the gatekeeper, which is always the price you pay when working with their non-computer hardware.

Everyone seems to forget that Java midlets have been available and unrestricted on any phone for years now and I have yet to ever hear of one crashing a phone or causing any security issue or network performance issue.

This is Apple/Cingular greed (probably a big combination of both), pure and simple. They want to keep you in the walled garden while pretending to offer you some sort of advanced platform.

iPhone is NOT a smartphone. Adding a web browser and a touchscreen to what is otherwise a regular phone does not magically make it a smartphone. A smartphone needs to have the ability for anyone to write apps for it, not just 'widgets' that, if they are like dashboard widgets for Mac OS, are even more restricted than Java midlets.

the iPhone will have 3rd party apps just that Apple will have strict rules of how the applications are created. It is just not going to be like those other phones with a million poorly written java app that could eventually crash the system. It would be similar to the iPod closed ecosystem with apps sold through iTunes Music Store

The real reason Steve doesn't want to open it up is he doesn't want other ITMS competitors to write clients for it enabling direct downloads. imagine if MS ported urge to the iphone. you might use them instead of ITMS etc...

re #10
So Dashcode doesn't fall into your radar why?
Come on people, they had google and yahoo on stage during the iPhone announcement, how much bigger of a clue do you need?

Just my $.02 cents, FWIW...

Maybe Jobs is 'wrestling' with the idea because it's evident that the iPhone will be such a revolutionary device that ALOT of 3rd-parties do not want to "miss the boat", so to speak.

However, as stated earlier, (some of) these very same 3rd-party developers who will want to make software for the iPhone exclusively, have NEVER EVER considered making ANY of their software available for the Mac platform in the past.

Some have even been sitting around dissin' Apple for years, now all of a sudden, they're standing on the beach watching the tide recede before the TSUNAMI hits. (No offense.)

Dunno about the rest of you, but over the years, I personally have lost count of the number of companies whose websites (and/or software products) have incorporated some sort of 'Windoze' or 'IE' only functionality.

Jobs probably just wants to avoid all the possible headaches associated with providing endless tech support to certain 'Windoze' fanboy developers who won't hesitate to blame Apple as soon as their code/spyware doesn't work properly.

- Who wants that headache? Would you?
- Why jeopardize a great reputation for making solid hardware/software that 'just works'?

[Just saw a RealPlayer exec walk out of this thread - lol]