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The iPhone will never be awesome until anyone can sell an app without approval.

• derefr 17y ago
  Are you sure "awesome" is the word you're looking for? I'd hate to have to run an anti-virus program on my phone.
  • noonespecial 17y ago
    Do you run anti-virus on your mac?
    • jstevens85 17y ago
      The iPhone isn't a Mac. The iPhone has a higher share of the smartphone market than OS X has of the OS market.
  • endtime 17y ago
    It's really not hard to avoid getting a virus when installing arbitrary apps, even on Windows, for which nearly all viruses are written - just download reputable apps from reputable sites. Not hard. The iPhone has a full web browser, though, which is a much more likely point of entry for malicious code.
    • derefr 17y ago
      Mobile Safari doesn't run any sorts of code, other than Javascript. No Flash, Java or any Mac equivalent to ActiveX—and without hooks to those, the JS can't really do anything either. I suppose you could find a vulnerability in the app itself, but iPhone apps are themselves sandboxed to prevent installing code without getting an elevation prompt (which is what that "Login with your iTunes account" prompt really is.) To your first point, though: I thought you were talking about listing arbitrary apps in the central App Store without vetting them. People trust things that, like you said, come from reputable sites. The App Store is seen in its entirety as a "reputable site," no matter which publisher actually wrote the app. I'm all for allowing you to just surf to an .ipa file and download/install it, but don't allow people to list a trojan-horse "Apple Remote" right beside the actual "Remote" without creating some form of community filtering or known-developer verification.
      • edmccaffrey 17y ago
        > I suppose you could find a vulnerability in the app itself, but iPhone apps are themselves sandboxed to prevent installing code without getting an elevation prompt (which is what that "Login with your iTunes account" prompt really is.) There used to be a site that you browse to in mobile Safari, and it would jailbreak the phone. A potential vulnerability in the app itself is probably what he meant.
        • endtime 17y ago
          Excellent example - thanks. I did mean in the app itself, rather than some kind of plugin.
• makecheck 17y ago
  ...and until anyone can use any wireless network they want (AT&T is why I'm not buying it).
• 10ren 17y ago
  It also creates an opportunity for iPhone competitors. Competitors seem inevitable, given that the basic technology is available to everyone. But until those competitors get their act together, why shouldn't Apple do whatever it likes? There's a compelling point here: Mr Jobs knows all about this issue (he and Woz created the PC category... and today a "PC" means a non-Apple computer. That's a comparable ouch to getting sacked from your own company.) It superficially looks like he is repeating the same mistake, as when the IBM-PC beat the Apple. But I seriously doubt that, and I wonder, "what's his strategy this time around?"
  • dejb 17y ago
    I think Apple has a set of philosophies that makes it better suited to be a niche player. Didn't Jobs once say something about not being interested in price conscious users? Allowing non-app store programs would be a technically easy move to make, (unless there were terrible security problems with the platform) but my gut tells me they believe in what they are doing and they'll hold on to the bitter end. Also there are many competitors and there were before they launched. I owned for 2 years before it exists. Somehow Apple managed to rewrite history in the minds of a lot of people.