"If Apple simple allowed another method but provided zero support to people that used such method, jailbreaking would not longer be necessary and everybody would get what they need."

If they were going to go that far, then I'd still argue that there would need to be a single new 'alternative' store – one with Apple's 'at your own risk' wanring plastered all over it or whatever they would require. A sort of Cydia for the non-jailbroken I guess. I could support that sort of concept. I would just hate to see things descend to where a user never knows if they need to go to the App Store, or a number of competing stores, or an individual developer's website.

That's where you get back to the Bad Old Days of WinMo and others – where casual users have no clue how to download a .zip, extract it, run an exe then sync your phone etc – many casual users are just going to pass at that point. It's not just the centralized point of sale that makes the App Store so compelling – it's how easy the entire process is for users of all levels. A few taps and they've got a new app on a home screen. No downloading .zip files that need to be extracted, no messing with installing themselves etc. – I think you lose a ton of sales and interest in apps by taking that simplicity out of things.

I absolutely agree that the App Store – and its reviews process – has many major flaws, and have railed againist many of them in this blog – but I still would far rather aim for 'fixing' the App Store rather than seeing the distribution process become any more complicated.

Ah, ok – thanks for clarifying.

If jailbreaking ever becomes impossible or if the next device is restricted to a tethered only jailbreak, it will hurt the iPhone community a great deal. I understand there are an insane number of users that don't jailbreak and will continue buying apps, but there is an incredible amount of innovation that occurs with the jailbreak community. Maybe I'm wrong, but I believe if you cut that off, the device will quickly stagnate and that innovation will move other places. I personally will be delaying my purchase of the next device until I know I can have an untethered jailbreak. The iPhone itself is not at all the device I want without the use of many functions only available when jailbroken.

I kind of turned this into a pro-jailbreak response. But my point is, there needs to be an alternate method. If jailbreaking remains possible, I agree that there is nothing else necessary. If Apple simple allowed another method but provided zero support to people that used such method, jailbreaking would not longer be necessary and everybody would get what they need. I disagree with those of you that think it would cause as many problems as you think. Before the App Store revolution, yes you are absolutely correct. Now that it's built up as much as it is, 99% of developers are still going to use it for the very reasons you explained. It's easy. People will still use it a lot. The reason the 'fragmented' distribution was such a problem before is because there WAS no widely used and accepted central repository. Now it's there. It's convenient. As much as it needs to change, it's not going away.

I don't think there needs to be a dichotomy between choice/control and utility; it would not be hard to combine the best of both worlds; for example in modern Linux distributions application selection & installation works in a manner somewhat akin to the App store (albeit not nearly as elegantly yet) and the user has a choice of software repositories to draw upon: the official repository, 3rd party, etc. The basic process remains just as easy.

And as long as the process for application acceptance in the App store remains opaque and inconsistent (think Google Voice or the recent Rogue Amoeba incident) , Apple runs the risk of some of the best and brightest developers choosing to develop for other platforms as time goes on.

Sorry Patrick, I should have been clearer; what I meant to say was that there might have been more justification from a network protection point of view for controlling what could be installed on a phone when it was just a phone, but I really think that doesn't hold water any more.

Sorry, but I'll have to agree to disagree with you on this one. The App Store never existed during the pre-smartphone era – which to my mind ended many years ago (at least 5 or so). The iPhone has been a smartphone, and much more computer than phone, since its birth.

People have been able to use varied distribution methods on other platforms without the world coming to an end, and I'd agree it works well on the desktop – but the fragmented, open model failed to gain any real traction with mobile users. Again, as a long-time Palm and Windows Mobile user, I can clearly recall how crummy the app distribution arena was.

While the App store control model may have been OK in the pre-smartphone era, the iPhone blurs the line between phone and portable computer, and it irks me that while I can install whatever I want on my other portable computing devices, unless I jailbreak I do not have that option with Apple. People have been able to use whatever software distribution methods for other platforms (including other Apple platforms) and the world hasn't come to an end.

Apple, what are you afraid of?