Cydia to offer App Store competition

So the news in the iPhone world this week has been dominated with the Cydia installer, you know the installer that you get when you Jailbreak your iPhone, they will be offering an alternative to paid applications in the App Store. So what does this all mean for iPhone users and to Apple.

Well personally speaking the App Store offers a fantastic service and developers get a fair share of the sale of an application and it all works well with the exception of a few things mainly the restrictions and rejection procedures of Apple. 

For example, we are still waiting for decent turn by turn GPS software, office suite and hell even a video camera and MMS integration. If Apple released their grip and started allowing us to use our super powerful smartphones to do the things we want to do this wouldn’t even be news worthy.

But it is news and it is important news, if developers want to develop an application and it doesn’t fit into Apples ideal world then what option do they have, give it away for free or don’t bother doing it, not exactly encouraging great application development is it.

Take Windows Mobile, there are no restrictions on what can be developed, Microsoft are introducing an application store but it will not be the only place to get applications, you still have a choice and that is exactly what we don’t have with the iPhone platform.

Apple will complain and will see this as infringing on copyright etc, but really as long as the applications that are being provided are legitimate and not provided to circumnavigate copyright or running ripped off or cracked applications then there should be no problem with it at all.

It should be a free market, Apple needs to release their grip and let the iPhone develop into a more open platform, if you are happy with things as they are, you don’t need to do anything, choice is important and without it all we will get is more and more frustrated with the current system.

What do you think?