Time is Now for 3rd Party iPhone Apps

Independent developers are writing all kinds of cool applications for the iPhone, but Apple still won't support third-party iPhone apps. Steve: get with the program.

One of the smartest things about smartphones is that there's a whole universe of applications you can buy and install; just check out a site like Handango and behold all the apps for BlackBerrys, Palm OS, and Windows Mobile phones. All three of thee mobile platforms not only support third-party applications, they actively encourage them—indeed, they're smart enough to know that all those independently-developed messaging, office, PIM, and gaming apps add enormous value to their respective devices.

Yet here's the iPhone, a device that’s ripe for third-party development—so ripe, in fact, that coders are going ahead and writing native iPhone apps anyway—but Apple, stubbornly, insists on going it alone. In an interview on Gearlog, Apple marketing exec Greg Joswiak said that Cupertino takes a "neutral" stance on third-party iPhone apps, but later clarified that Apple doesn't necessarily "like" or "support" third-party development, either—in fact, upcoming software updates will "most likely break" any non-Apple apps on an iPhone.

I just don't get it. Yes, I've heard Steve Jobs' argument that allowing third-party apps on the iPhone might degrade its performance, but I've been installing non-Palm programs on my Treo for years and haven’t run into any problems. And believe it or not, Steve, people might be more likely to cough up $400 for an iPhone if they knew a galaxy of top-notch third-party apps awaited them. Or is it a culture of arrogance, perhaps—the feeling that the only iPhone apps worth having must come from Apple HQ? I wonder.

All that said, there's nothing stopping you from installing some non-Apple apps on your iPhone right now—but be careful. I tried doing it myself the other day (I found an offline RSS reader that I desperately wanted to try) and sent my iPhone into an endless loop of rebooting over and over. Luckily, performing a Restore in iTunes brought my iPhone back to life, but I almost had a heart attack in the process.

Related:
Apple's Joswiak: We Don't Hate iPhone Coders [Gearlog]