MobileCrunch ‘s recent post with suggested New Year ‘s resolutions for Apple and the iPhone included many that I wholeheartedly agree with.  It also had one item that I absolutely disagree with “ a call for Apple to ‘learn to sideload ‘. Sideloading would allow users to be able to add apps to the iPhone […]
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More Ways To Get Apps on the iPhone – No Thank You!

Jan 2nd 2010 by

Sideloading

MobileCrunch ‘s recent post with suggested New Year ‘s resolutions for Apple and the iPhone included many that I wholeheartedly agree with.  It also had one item that I absolutely disagree with “ a call for Apple to ‘learn to sideload ‘.

Sideloading would allow users to be able to add apps to the iPhone (without jailbreaking or hacking their phone in any way) through sources outside of the App Store.

I hate that idea.  As much as I love having the ability to jailbreak my iPhone, and add some of the hugely innovative and useful apps that jailbreak stores provide, I do not want to see any further fragmentation of iPhone app distribution methods.

Just to be clear, I absolutely want to see jailbreak stores and apps continue to be around and I hope they thrive and achieve greater success as time goes by.

But I don ‘t like the idea of there being more ways for ‘stock ‘ (non-jailbroken) iPhones to install apps without using iTunes / the App Store.  The idea of developers deciding to market and distribute their apps directly from their websites or similar seems a bad one to me.

For all its many faults, the App Store is still a huge win overall for users.  I spent way too many years with Windows Mobile and Palm devices and the crappy, fragmented ways that apps were distributed for them, to ever want to see anything even approaching that mess come to the iPhone platform.

I would love to see Apple loosen some of its restrictions on what is allowed into the App Store, and to reduce the scope of their app reviews process by a lot.  I ‘d also love for there to be enough changes in those areas to allow for some of the amazing jailbreak apps we ‘re seeing to find their way into the App Store. 

All of that sort of change would be great to see.  More alternative ways to get apps onto our iPhones would not.  Luckily I think Apple are way too smart to let that ever happen.  I believe they ‘re more than well aware of what a miserable failure sideloading and fragmentation was for years on other mobile platforms “ and will not be going down that road any time in the foreseeable future.

What do you all think?  Would you like to see more ways to get apps on your iPhones? 

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