On the up side, this is one less reason not to buy an iPhone, since it looks like jailbreaking will continue to be where the true innovation lies. Once a jailbroken 3G iPhone arrives, I'm there -- none of this control-freak Apple crap for me. And if iPhone v2 can't be jailbroken...well, then I guess it's over to Android.
Sorry, kids, but BK's right. After buying my iPod touch a while back, I went looking to see what third-party apps existed so I could decide whether to jailbreak. (Keep in mind that I'm an enthusiastic homebrew user on my PSP, DS, and Nokia Internet Tablet.)
Anyway, the apps are along the lines of the sliding puzzle that shipped with the first Mac 128K. Or Snake, a game that was on the Atari 2600 in 1978. Or this... *thing* with a crude drawing of a tree, and you shake your iPhone or iPod touch back and forth, and the *leaves fall off.*
And those are the *highlights.*
Lest I be marked as a troll, perhaps I found a site with an incomplete listing of third-party apps. There absolutely was nothing in their list worth jailbreaking and installing. There were a very few clever hacks, like iListen, but too few to talk me into jailbreak. It was all proof of concept stuff as far as I could see.
But if there *are* any worth installing, I'd love to know, because I do support homebrew communities. And for that matter, I could see jailbreaking an early iPod touch to get the apps that Apple later added.
So what third-party apps do you people use on a regular basis? Talk me into this.
I'm probably going back to a Treo. Yes, it's old technology, but the fun factor is wearing off of my iPhone, and I miss all the numerous PALM applications that I used everyday and the refined syncing with Outlook Calendar. I was really counting on getting the same functionalities through 3rd parties for iPhone, but Apple appears to be dashing that hope!
Plus, if Apple actually supported these developers with an SDK the apps could probably be a lot better. When you are fighting against the device you trying to make the apps for, and have no support whatsoever, it must be a lot harder.
I agree that there are a lot of crappy 3rd party apps out there, but I consider them as proof-of-concepts, and after all I don't have to install them :)
Apps I use regularly are: - MobileCast (listen to podcasts without the need to use iTunes, i.e. download them via WiFi) - Books (eBook application with lots of books to choose from) - iSolitaire - iZoo - Labyrinth (this is a very nice game, and I mostly use it to impress other people with the Touch :) - weDict (access to local dictionaries of any kind) - Funambol (sync Contacts with my Thunderbird)
Thanks, phoomp and KyleK; I do appreciate the lists. I have to admit, Books was one of the apps that baffled me; as I recall, it opens only text and HTML, so it can't do anything Safari can't. I use a bunch of emulators on my PSP, but while I appreciate the level of hack needed to get them running on the Apple mobile platform, it's just too awkward. The Nokia Internet Tablet has a decent if slow PDF reader, but that screen's just too small for the format, and the iPhone/iPod touch screens are smaller, so I'm afraid I have to be cynical. And for weDict, I'm an editor, so there's usually a print dictionary around, but I've also bookmarked dictionary.com.
Again, don't get me wrong. I think the scene could develop into a good one someday, and as both of you point out, some of those casual apps are useful to a lot of people. And I think Apple's model is based pretty strongly the T-Mobile Sidekick model; I've used Sidekicks since the day the B&W was released (it's why I'd never consider an iPhone), but T-Mo's stranglehold on control has hurt the platform more than it's helped it. So my sympathies are with the white hats on a lot of levels. But just as I haven't bought a single iPod game because they're just so dull, I haven't yet found the killer app for my iPod touch yet. Maybe someday, but it's looking equally like to be through a licensed, Apple-approved developer as through an app requiring the jailbreak.
I'd like to point something out to those people saying, "well, what's the point - there aren't any worthwhile apps for the jailbroken iPhone anyways."
The reason that there aren't any really clever or useful apps for it is precisely BECAUSE Apple isn't allowing people to develop for the platform officially! As a developer, I'd love to create apps for the iPhone - it's a really sexy device, with a lot of potential - but with the number of restrictions and ridiculous crap that I would currently have to go through (and will likely continue to have to go through, based on news like this), why waste my time?
Apple's made it clear they don't want us developers making useful apps for their platform. We get the message... and so we're not bothering.
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This was expected, let the jail breaking continue!
If this is what it takes to keep the quality of the apps where they should be, then who cares. Some of those jailbreak apps are just ridiculous.
Heh. Spotted this link (featured on the 'Sponsored Links' section of this page):
"There’s so much more you can do when your phone runs Windows. See it all at StartDoingMore.com."
That is so true. I feel for you iPhone users, you make the pretty colors flash but you can't do much else with your iPhones.
So you just toss all of that hard work under the bus just to keep the company line?
Can you imagine if all the OSs on the market forced you to go through a vetting process so your app can work on their system?
No one is forcing you to DL those programs, stupid or not.
That means don't expect seeing customize, emulators, radios etc... on iTunes SDK. Keep the jailbreak coming
On the up side, this is one less reason not to buy an iPhone, since it looks like jailbreaking will continue to be where the true innovation lies. Once a jailbroken 3G iPhone arrives, I'm there -- none of this control-freak Apple crap for me. And if iPhone v2 can't be jailbroken...well, then I guess it's over to Android.
Sorry, kids, but BK's right. After buying my iPod touch a while back, I went looking to see what third-party apps existed so I could decide whether to jailbreak. (Keep in mind that I'm an enthusiastic homebrew user on my PSP, DS, and Nokia Internet Tablet.)
Anyway, the apps are along the lines of the sliding puzzle that shipped with the first Mac 128K. Or Snake, a game that was on the Atari 2600 in 1978. Or this... *thing* with a crude drawing of a tree, and you shake your iPhone or iPod touch back and forth, and the *leaves fall off.*
And those are the *highlights.*
Lest I be marked as a troll, perhaps I found a site with an incomplete listing of third-party apps. There absolutely was nothing in their list worth jailbreaking and installing. There were a very few clever hacks, like iListen, but too few to talk me into jailbreak. It was all proof of concept stuff as far as I could see.
But if there *are* any worth installing, I'd love to know, because I do support homebrew communities. And for that matter, I could see jailbreaking an early iPod touch to get the apps that Apple later added.
So what third-party apps do you people use on a regular basis? Talk me into this.
To Bob S.
3rd party apps worth installing are:
PDFViewer
iRadio
Books (ebook reader)
Chess
NES (NES emulator)
snes4iphont (SNES emulator)
psx4all (PSX emulator)
VNsea (VCN application)
And, there's more appearing everyday.
I'm probably going back to a Treo. Yes, it's old technology, but the fun factor is wearing off of my iPhone, and I miss all the numerous PALM applications that I used everyday and the refined syncing with Outlook Calendar. I was really counting on getting the same functionalities through 3rd parties for iPhone, but Apple appears to be dashing that hope!
Plus, if Apple actually supported these developers with an SDK the apps could probably be a lot better. When you are fighting against the device you trying to make the apps for, and have no support whatsoever, it must be a lot harder.
I agree that there are a lot of crappy 3rd party apps out there, but I consider them as proof-of-concepts, and after all I don't have to install them :)
Apps I use regularly are:
- MobileCast (listen to podcasts without the need to use iTunes, i.e. download them via WiFi)
- Books (eBook application with lots of books to choose from)
- iSolitaire
- iZoo
- Labyrinth (this is a very nice game, and I mostly use it to impress other people with the Touch :)
- weDict (access to local dictionaries of any kind)
- Funambol (sync Contacts with my Thunderbird)
Thanks, phoomp and KyleK; I do appreciate the lists. I have to admit, Books was one of the apps that baffled me; as I recall, it opens only text and HTML, so it can't do anything Safari can't. I use a bunch of emulators on my PSP, but while I appreciate the level of hack needed to get them running on the Apple mobile platform, it's just too awkward. The Nokia Internet Tablet has a decent if slow PDF reader, but that screen's just too small for the format, and the iPhone/iPod touch screens are smaller, so I'm afraid I have to be cynical. And for weDict, I'm an editor, so there's usually a print dictionary around, but I've also bookmarked dictionary.com.
Again, don't get me wrong. I think the scene could develop into a good one someday, and as both of you point out, some of those casual apps are useful to a lot of people. And I think Apple's model is based pretty strongly the T-Mobile Sidekick model; I've used Sidekicks since the day the B&W was released (it's why I'd never consider an iPhone), but T-Mo's stranglehold on control has hurt the platform more than it's helped it. So my sympathies are with the white hats on a lot of levels. But just as I haven't bought a single iPod game because they're just so dull, I haven't yet found the killer app for my iPod touch yet. Maybe someday, but it's looking equally like to be through a licensed, Apple-approved developer as through an app requiring the jailbreak.
I'd like to point something out to those people saying, "well, what's the point - there aren't any worthwhile apps for the jailbroken iPhone anyways."
The reason that there aren't any really clever or useful apps for it is precisely BECAUSE Apple isn't allowing people to develop for the platform officially! As a developer, I'd love to create apps for the iPhone - it's a really sexy device, with a lot of potential - but with the number of restrictions and ridiculous crap that I would currently have to go through (and will likely continue to have to go through, based on news like this), why waste my time?
Apple's made it clear they don't want us developers making useful apps for their platform. We get the message... and so we're not bothering.