Recently his “Steve-iness” (aka Steve Jobs) feed some tid-bits of info about 3rd party apps on the iPhone. There is more info here.

Supposedly, Apple is “playing it safe” and not planning on having 3rd party on the device *immediately*.

Smart move for sake of stability? … OR, if you think like Alessandro, then it’s also part of a larger conspiracy to dominate the mobile space acting as a MCNO (Mobile Content Network Operator).

Given Steve’s rep and what he did with the iPod and iTunes, Alessandro is probably right, but it’s also an excuse to provide a 1st stable release of the device (by keeping all development within Apple and trusted 3rd parties, similar to what they do with iPod games … which come to think of it, remains a closed forum, still!).

Hopefully the mobile space proves different, and at some point they are forced to open it up, due to competition from others.

For now, I don’t blame them to much for being “closed” to start with, as they are still new and immature in the mobile space … but so is a large majority of their potential customer base …

iPod users moving to the iPhone are just not going to accept a phone crashing. They are already device (iPod) savvy and others have experienced the stability of some of the other mobile OSes (such as Symbian) out there.

Given the maturity of OSX on the iPhone, I’d say this is a good move to start, as some other mobile OS platforms have been around for much much longer and are (knock on wood), relatively stable.

If you’ve had the experience I’ve had, you’ll be hard pressed to find the last time your Symbian-based Nokia crashed. Lockups and crashes do happen, but in my experience been in extremely rare situations (due to the model and platform restrictions imposed).

A seamless and pleasant experience is key to the success of the iPhone and I’m glad to hear that Steve hired some folks to make sure the iPhone is on track in terms of “stability” (even it’s an excuse to keep the platform more under their control) … just hopefully, they keep their word, and open it up at a later stage for all developers!

Still no word on the official deployment date, but I’m sure we’ll know when the Apple store becomes otherwise “unavailable” for scheduled maintenance … as history indicates this is when they make new products available (never sure if this is planned, or because of server hits)!

UPDATE: Apple filed a patent … that seems to me a clear indication that they are not going to open it as much as everyone would like. Good luck Apple!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 30th, 2007 at 10:50 pm and is filed under Apple, Mobile, iPhone. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.