Cydia or AppStore?
After JailBreaking my iPhone 4 I started playing with the new Cydia AppStore… very interesting. I have been using iPhone’s since the 2G, and have for years JailBroken them. This new adaptation of the “store” component is extremely innovative. Developers who for years have been hacking out apps and enhancements to the Apple BSD linux OS, now finally have a way to get paid, to to support their apps directly (mono-a-mono).
What is more interesting is that the store can be linked to Google’s e-retail payment methods, PayPal or Credit Cards. The Google integration is impressive, since Google is now taking a shot at competing, it would appear, with EVERYONE – *smile* …
The most obvious reason to JailBreak an iPhone or a 3G iPad is MyWiFi … the ability to truly leverage your 3G connection as a “hotspot”. This capability has come in very handy indeed. Other new innovations are My3G, the ability to fool any app which only works on WiFi, to think of your 3G connection as WiFi … not that is cool. Apps like Skype especially or Apple’s facetime capabilities work flawlessly.
Now this begs the question – “Why would Apple not want to expand the AppStore to link to Cydia Store as an extension?”. In my view I believe that the answer lies in R&D. It is no secret that while Apple has been aware of ModMyiPhone, BigBoss, etc for years they have not put much effort into stopping the “hackers”. If I were Apple, that simply would not make sense since I have a FREE R&D capability at my finger tips. Yes, that’s right – free R&D. Have you noticed that until the release of OS 4, that the dock on the phone was always 2D? I think Apple had the ability to change this from the get-go; but in order to achieve this enhancement they would have to open-up other potential vulnerabilities in their OS.
Think about it, there is a lot more going on under the hood to generate this simple effect. This is why the Cydia “springboard” extension to the OS was required in the first place. The springboard (now Winterboard), makes full use of all the hardware accelerators in the phone; thus affecting performance for multi-tasking – which means BAD apps which are written in an inefficient manner would have a severe impact on the phones performance – imagine all the crap on the AppStore – any junior programmer with some knowledge of C# can develop apps using the OpenApi.
In closing, I believe that eventually Apple will have some serious competition with the AppStore for both iPhone and iPad. Especially if the Cydia store partners with Google … we will have to wait and see!