Apple blocks direct iPhone app distribution

Apple is not your friend. If Apple were an ice cream flavor, he’d be Pralines and Dick!

Earlier today I posted how Apple is trying to make developer’s life a little hearder, one NDA at a time and Apple is making the news, again, about it’s very unfriendly way of doing business.

Back story: developers rejected from the App Store found a way to legally distribute their applications, without having to put them on the App Store. Apple previously allowed developers to distribute apps directly to users by binding the software to the serial number of their iPhone. This was usually used by companies who created applications for their staff and didn’t want to put the app for sale on the App Store.

Today, Apple decided to block developers from distributing their app other than through iTunes by removing the developer’s ability to deploy software onto client’s devices. While it is ok to now allow an app in the App Store, it’s very shitty to block the developer from selling the app through other venues.

From PhoneNews.com

This puts Apple in a dangerous legal position. Before today, Apple had rights to assert that the App Store was only one sales channel, which they had every right to control. Now Apple is asserting rights to control any and all sales channels of software to iPhone and iPod touch owners. Apple appears to be betting on the legal precedent of time; it would take years, and hundreds of thousands of dollars, to challenge such an anti-competitive business practice.

Apple now joins the ranks of BREW carriers as imposing a fully walled garden. The “walled garden” refers to an ecosystem where one company or group has complete control over what software can be run on a user’s device. A groundswell of legal and consumer opposition to walled gardens prompted Verizon (the largest BREW carrier in America) to announce late last year that it would no longer prohibit any valid application from their store.

Come on Apple, give us a break! Stop being so evil and greedy! The release of Android’s App Market (which is pretty much a “no-rule market” could change the way Apple is acting right now.

As an end user, I do not want anyone to disctate what applications are good or bad for me. This is the behaviour o fa dictatorship. I am not an Apple fan. I actually hate Apple (although I love my iPhone), and that is a perfect example of why I hate Apple so much.