An iPhone App Store That Apple Doesn't Control 144
waderoush writes "Princeton's Ed Felten has criticized the iPhone and iPad as Disneyland-like 'walled gardens' and says there's no way the iTunes App Store can 'offer the scope and variety of apps that a less controlled environment can provide.' Now there's a central marketplace where developers can sell iPhone-optimized apps without going through Apple's gatekeepers. Launched today, it's called OpenAppMkt and it's a showcase for mobile Web apps — not just the type seen back in 2007-2008, before the advent of the App Store, but also for new games and other apps developed using HTML5/CSS/JavaScript (in some cases, the same apps compiled and sold as native iPhone apps). Xconomy has a behind-the-scenes interview with OpenAppMkt's creators, who say they're not out to compete with the native App Store, but that developers deserve new ways to reach users."
Hi, I'm at black hat (Score:5, Insightful)
The iPhone App Store never, ever looked so good.
So, we are dying in virus infections (Score:2, Insightful)
As a Symbian user, I really wonder what kind of evil thing not having a walled kindergarten like Appstore cost to me.
You know; iPhone and iPad app store also means you can't take extra measures such as app firewall/antivirus if you really have critical data or overly concerned about the threats. It is not like Apple will allow something like "F-Secure" for iPhone and obviously, nothing can hook to file IO etc. functions.
Those "black hat" conference guys aren't really black hats. The actual black hats are wa
Take a look at their so-called apps. (Score:4, Informative)
Sudoku. A flip clock. A picture of a watch. I'm so not impressed.
Re:Take a look at their so-called apps. (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Take a look at their so-called apps. (Score:4, Funny)
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Fun fact: the creator of the Fleshlight invented it while his wife was pregnant.
What? Pregnant women are hot!
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No sir I believe he was fucking the fleshlight.
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i have a fart simulator on my ipod i love it its quite amusing
and web pages posing as apps coded in obj-c (Score:2)
Lets not forget so-called apps does nothing more than displaying HTML with couple of stock Obj-C UI tricks.
If I have agreed to Steve Ballmer of MS one time, it is the time when he mentioned that fact.
Sad thing is, that joke like claimed "apps" made their way to Symbian too, with stupid Nokia/Symbian shipping a web wizard for them. http://www.oviappwizard.com/web_nokia/signIn.jsp [oviappwizard.com] . So there we have thousands of "apps" (!). Of course, it is the bloggers/users/industry constantly whining about number of apps o
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Disneyland (Score:5, Insightful)
Ed Felten has criticized the iPhone and iPad as Disneyland-like 'walled gardens'...
I like Disneyland. It's a ton of fun. I especially enjoy Bats in the Park. Good fun.
Oh. Wait. You were trying to use Disneyland as a way to imply there was something wrong with it? Oh. My bad. Sorry.
On a serious note, however, I think it's very cool that there's now an app store for the web apps that can run on the iPhone. After all, that is one of the features of the device.
Disneyland is fun but (Score:3, Insightful)
I wouldn't want to live there
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Why not?
I mean, assuming the food was free - what more could you want?
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assuming the food was free
that's a hell of an assumption.
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I mean, assuming the food was free - what more could you want?
Alone time with the Little Mermaid.
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I've always been more partial to Belle.
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The witch with the bouncers from Black Caldron.
What? I'm old!
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Are we talking with legs or with flippers?
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Why not?
I mean, assuming the food was free - what more could you want?
Check out the Disney town..
Think Stepford without the robots.
Wild West is fun but (Score:2)
The Wild West is fun but most people don't want to live there. Most people want the walled garden of safety. If anything I think Apple should be more aggressive in screening out offensive, dangerous, and just plain bad apps that don't add value for the customer.
On the flip side I think Apple should sell Xcode for iPad ($9.99 like iWork apps?) that lets you actually write iOS code including putting your iOS devices into a developer mode that will let you compile and install whatever you want with minimal int
Slashdot: Disneyland shouldn't exist for anyone... (Score:5, Insightful)
because some people don't want to go there.
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That is the sort of thing that makes me want to go down there and buy those kids some tickets. Sure it may not be the best use of the money, they probably need other stuff more, but it would be a ton of fun.
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There is one scene where they revisit a particularly sad little girl and see that she has a buzz-cut. When they ask her what happened to her pretty hair, she replies "I had lice" with the saddest look you've ever seen. It's a heartbreaking moment.
Poor kids are always the most tragic thing to see. It's one thing to see a piece-of-shit adult meth-head who has thrown his/her life away. It's quite another to look into at that meth-head's poor kid, who doesn't even have clean clothes to wear to school.
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He was using Disneyland of an example of a completely controlled environment. And it is. Disn'y is the prototypical example of a walled garden.
Something that should be avoided with computer devices.
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Something that you want to avoid.
That doesn't mean other people want to avoid it. There are some advantages to walled gardens, and for other people those advantages outweigh the disadvantages.
Re:Disneyland (Score:5, Funny)
I tried that, and failed -- but it wasn't Disney that stopped me.
For the sake of brevity, let's just say that the Minnie Mouse character is NOT anatomically correct.
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For the sake of brevity, let's just say that the Minnie Mouse character is NOT anatomically correct.
From that I'm going to assume you were charged as a sex offender shortly thereafter...
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God damn it, I thought you said "Mickey", which changes the nature of the joke... so, yes, in short, *woosh*.
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I would place a bet on zoophilia instead.
Re:Disneyland (Score:5, Funny)
Tell me about it. I think I managed to avoid the Cinderella stand-in filing a restraining order, but just barely. I'll be damned if she's getting that shoe back though.
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We went last summer and in one of the Animal Kingdom locations they had a Pocahontas character come out for picture time...Pocahontas was rather endowed and kept coming close to having a wardrobe malfunction, but she caught it every time...for once i didn't mind waiting in the long line for the photos...
We can't I open a Liquor store in Epcot? (Score:5, Insightful)
Disney should be forced to allow 3rd parties to do anything they want inside Disneyland. If their customers don't want to go into the porn shops, gun shops, brothels, casinos, and check-cashing stores then they can simply avoid those places while walking down Main St.
It's really just a question of freedom.
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No, but they do have to let you leave and do those things elsewhere. The Iphone is locked into disneyland.
the Apple point of view (Score:2, Insightful)
is that you've purchased a ticket to Disneyland by purchasing an iPhone, you haven't purchased Disneyland itself.
Considering you paid a few hundred bucks for an iPhone and not a few billion dollars, that seems pretty reasonable.
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Try going to Disneyland and doing whatever you want to do, rather than what the people in control of the park actually condone.
I did that. After a few beers I bent Minnie over and rammed. Did you know they have guys in the Minnie Mouse outfits?
Boy was I embarrassed. Hope the dude's ass is OK.
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"Try going to Disneyland and doing whatever you want to do..."
Try coming into my home and doing whatever you want to do, and I'll fuck you up so fast, you won't have time to blink. Just as you would do the same to me if pulled some kind of stupid shit in your home. And rightfully so!
Disneyland is private property. You are allowed onto that private property at the sufferance of the owners of Disneyland, with the understanding that you do not do anything that will disrupt the enjoyment of the other guests at
Apple also has a web app gallery... (Score:5, Informative)
Apple has a web app gallery [apple.com] too.
The difference between now and then is, that web apps have access to most of the sensor data on the phone... so there are a lot more ideas that a practical to do as web apps now than there were before.
But still native apps will always give a developer the performance edge and full access to every nook and cranny of the device.
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Every nook and cranny of the device?
Sure, as long as the API provides access to it.
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It beats developing with BREW.
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Except the ones Apple says you aren't allowed to access, even when doing so is technically possible.
Like I need an army to take out a bunch of guys (Score:1, Offtopic)
Doug: "It's like 'that guy's coming around the corner?' BOOM, HEADSHOT! It's like 'that other guy's coming around the corner?' BOOM, HEADSHOT! Send yer tank, I got frags! I got frags!"
Jeremy: "So, you're like a one-ranger army coming at me and I'm like SCUD STORM. BOOMBOOMBOOM."
Doug: "OK, Mr. Botanical tank with no balls, that's all I gotta to say. It's like 'Botanical tank, Look at me, no balls, no balls!"
Jeremy: "You wanna see some balls? My Nuke Overlord will show you some balls!"
Ah, such an ol
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"You can train a noob, but he'll just be a trained noob like for all time n stuff, rite?"
a little OT but didnt verizon.... (Score:2)
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I've been downloading apps|software from an app_store|package_manager for a very long time on linux as well.
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Paid repositories on Linux? (Score:2)
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No I have not, but it wouldn't be hard to do if you really wanted to.
In fact, Steam is on its way to native linux support sometime in the next year.
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Why would I want do?
What does paying have to do with it? I have apps on my phone that are free and FREE software as well. Does that bother you in some way?
As to your previous comment:
Netflix Watch Instantly : Hulu
Adobe Photoshop, : Gimp, I do not need the extra shit
Adobe Flash CS3: there are other ways to do vector animation, better ways Ktoon is one
The rest I am not bother with, as I just noticed your reply to yourself on that thread. You're a fucking troll.
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Netflix Watch Instantly : Hulu
Hulu is incompatible with Moonlight.
reply to yourself
A reply to an Anonymous Coward post below your threshold is not a reply to myself. Must I put "Anonymous Coward wrote:" at the top of every reply to an Anonymous Coward post?
Pretty sure Palm app stores before that... (Score:1)
There were app collections that were essentially app stores for the Palm V. The idea of an app store is not new, I don't know that anyone credits Apple for making it - just for making it very successful.
It's more like Nazi Computering with the banning (Score:1, Troll)
It's more like Nazi Computering with the banning and censorship that is in the istore.
Won't install on iPad (Score:4, Informative)
Go to openappmkt.com and click on "Install OpenAppMkt" using an iPad.
Popup sez "To install our app, use the iPhone browser" and offers to text the link to a phone number, same as if attempted on a PC.
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Go back to the page again, you see at the top right hand corner there is a little button with a life ring picture on it, it says "Help"? Try clicking that and reporting the problem there. You might get better results then posting your question here where the developers are unlikely to respond.
Consider the audience (Score:2)
I didn't post a question, I posted a statement - the point of which was to inform /. readers about to do what I did, and to prompt discussion thereof.
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Of course, this app store has been launched by Apple itself, and they will make it almost fail. I say almost, since they will try to keep only a critical mass of users, so no-one will attempt to make yet another app store.
How's that for a conspiracy theory? :P
Cydia? (Score:3)
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It's already been done (Score:5, Informative)
The Cydia App Store [saurik.com] has also been around for a while, serving the jailbroken iPhone market. Of course there is not a huge number of apps on it, but there are also lots of free apps in the Cydia repository.
Re:It's already been done (Score:5, Informative)
However, with Cydia there's a huge range of apps that make your phone significantly better. And most importantly they are the sorts of aps that you can't get on the official app-store. Things like frameworks to change the look and feel of your phone (winterboard, and springboard replacements, new keyboards etc). There's better ways to control your phone like SBSettings where all your critical settings are a simple swipe away.
So no, there aren't a lot of apps that could be sold in the app store (because you'd most likely want to sell them in the official app store), but cydia is like having a couple more isles in the store full of the stuff that will make your life better even though it's officially not allowed.
Now, where's my damn jailbreak for the new iPhone?!?
Sheldon
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If you want that sort of thing, why buy an iPhone?
By buying one you are voting with your dollars against this sort of thing.
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So you pay Apple for the privilege of downloading some hack from a random website so you can pay Cydia, all to end up with a half-arsed Android phone? why?
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The Cydia App Store [saurik.com] has also been around for a while, serving the jailbroken iPhone market. Of course there is not a huge number of apps on it, but there are also lots of free apps in the Cydia repository.
Yeah, but Cydia is only for users that can handle the truth. Not everyone can bear that burden.
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I have a jailbroken iPod Touch and haven't found Cydia to be all that great. First, it's ungodly slow not only to load and start up the program, but also just to browse the various applications. The Cydia application itself almost contains more advertising than actual function. And it has a much higher ratio of shovelware (themes, wallpapers, etc) to useful applications than even the Apple App Store.
So far the only must-have app that I've found in Cydia has been the Backgrounder app which enables multitaski
Walled garden discussions (Score:4, Interesting)
All walled garden discussions begin and end with this: Internet vs AOL.
The outlands will always become more diverse and desirable than the garden. The garden's residents will therefore always abandon it. It is only a matter of time.
Re:Walled garden discussions (Score:4, Interesting)
And after almost a decade, /. users are still predicting that iTunes + iPod will fall to a more opened platform.......
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But it has. I don't know anyone with an MP3 player. It seems crazy to carry one around when our phones play MP3s just as well. I do see people still organizing their collections with itunes, but I don't see many ipods. Phones have leap over mp3 players and unless you really need a feature that only specializing hardware carries then you don't need an mp3 player if you have a smartphone.
Granted, a popular smartphone is the iphone, but the phone market is much more competitive than the mp3 player market. I
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But yet and still Apple sells almost 50 million iPods a year (70%+ market share) and iTunes is the number one music retailer in the world.....
Where can I buy a phone with 160GB of storage (iPod Classic) or even 64GB of storage of the Touch?
So why have most m
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How?
The itunes market is now mostly DRM free and the iPod plays mp3s. Seems pretty open to me, my gf uses gtkpod to load mp3s on to her nano.
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Sorry I was unaware, and refuse to buy drmed media. I buy non-drm epubs are those not media?
I do buy DVDs, but CSS is such a joke I don't count it.
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How many of the New York Times best sellers can you buy in digital form without DRM?
So it's not a philosophical stance to DRM.....
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I've got another one for you: PC gaming vs Console gaming
PCs have been around longer, have more options re: hardware & software, not to mention complete freedom for developers to charge and distribute however they wish, along with extreme modability. Meanwhile consoles are hampered by incredibly restrictive walled gardens, developer-hostile revenue splits and licensing and they only release new hardware every few years.
Given the obvious openness and freedom of PC gaming compared to console gaming it may
Nothing Apple itself hasn't said (Score:3, Insightful)
HTML5 limits (Score:2)
They always say there are two ways to develop apps: an open HTML5-based web app method
Can an HTML5-based web application make real-time 3D graphics? (I tried making my own 3D engine in JavaScript with the 2D canvas, but it was fairly slow even on a PC, and there were always cracks between the polygons.) Can an HTML5-based web application ask the user's permission to turn on the camera and microphone? Can an HTML5-based web application run with zero bars and save the user's work?
Re:HTML5 limits (Score:4, Informative)
google ported quake to html5:
http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/01/google-html5-quake/ [techcrunch.com]
so to answer your first question: yes.
I'm pretty sure HTML5 can access your camera and mic, although I'm not 100% on that. They can also work when you're offline, using the iPhones built-in caching.
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WebGL isn't yet in mobile safari; in fact, I think it's only in Chrome nightlies at the moment. But when it does come to mobile safari, you can bet HTML5Quake2 will be one of the first demos.
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Ah, history - where are you? (Score:5, Insightful)
But still, let's not let facts get in the way of a good conspiracy adventure.
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None of which alters the *fact* that WebApps were always permitted and fully supported on iPhone and are in no way a super-clever swerve-around.
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What apps? (Score:2)
There are no apps...all this "store" does is place shortcuts on your iPhone home screen to existing web-based apps like Google Voice and other apps which are mobile-friendly.
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They are a terrible waste of space. Flashlight apps a simple web page can provide, color changes and all -- most games. An app should only be a compiled app if it requires hardware input (MULTItouch, accel, gps. mic, etc) or if they can be used offline.
Most people don't seem to realize a bookmark can be a ho
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It's HTML/Javascript/CSS, so it's not as fast as native apps, and it doesn't have hooks into all of the phone's features, but some pretty clever people are doing impressive stuff. Maybe not in this market, but it's out there.
I'll catch a carp for this (Score:3, Interesting)
But I'd rather have a more controlled environment where, for the most part, the apps have been vetted so they're not trying to steal any info from me. Part of the reason I'm not an Android fan (and no, I don't have an iPhone. Actually, I don't even have a smartphone).
Being open and fancy-free is fine for some things, but for others I'd prefer some measure of security.
Dear Ed: (Score:2, Insightful)
You are NOT the target audience for the iPad/iPhone/iPod.
You have NEVER been the target audience for the iPad/iPhone/iPod.
You will NEVER be the target audience for the iPad/iPhone/iPod.
You are NOT the target audience for iTunes.
You have NEVER been the target audience for the iTunes.
You will NEVER be the target audience for the iTunes.
The target audience for the iPad/iPhones/iPod and iTunes does not care a fat rat's ass for YOUR perceived "limitations" and "restrictions" that Apple imposes.
The target audienc
Re:Oh good (Score:4, Insightful)
This means that if your iPhone app is a pile of Perl scripts, you can push it. What iPhone SDK EULA? We don't know what C/C++/Objective-C limitation you're talking about, we'll list your app in our store! If you feel like writing an app for iPhone in C#, you can push it as a .NET exe in PE-COFF format, instead of having to compile it to native code. If you wanted to port Firefox Mobile and have it use it's own JavaScript engine, you can. You could even push a port of Chrome using V8.
I'm pretty sure that none of this is true...
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Sure it is. All you have to do is writing a Perl/.NET/whatever interpreter in Javascript.
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No, because this IS NOT APPLE'S APP STORE and therefore you can push whatever apps written in whatever language you like.
I guess that you and the guy you replied to both missed the mark entirely. This is not Apple's App Store, the iPhone SDK EULA doesn't apply here. Do you get it now? Need I bludgeon you with a LART until you do?
And before someone else hops on and tries to correct me again (and be wrong again by trying so), we're talking about an appstore for jailbroken iPhones. Please, read every single printable ASCII character in a posted story, not just the ones that your spin-doctor mind wants to see so that you can push your faulty and incorrect "facts". Fuck, the name of the story is An iPhone App Store That Apple Doesn't Control. I guess your backwards mind reads that as "An iPhone App Store That Apple Controls.
I'm pretty sure that none of this is true...
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No, anyone with common sense would know that there is no "including, but not limited to" implied in this. The iPhone doesn't let you download and run programs from arbitrary websites. This is a well known limitation of the device.
This "app store" sells (bundled?) web applications. As such, there is no executable code.
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You mean, markets which distribute web apps exclusively?
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Yep. And apparently the folk(s) who drive by moderated us both as troll 24 hours after the fact don't get the irony that they're trying to wall off their own ideological garden. :)