|
Thursday March 6, 2008
|
One of the more entertaining bits of the iPhone SDK announcement was figuring out which traditionally radioactive applications would be permitted on Apple's sort-of-free platform. Three good examples were voice-over-IP, which wireless carriers hate; peer-to-peer applications, and unlocking apps to let you use your iPhone on T-Mobile.
Considering how much Apple likes control, one out of three actually isn't bad here. Apple will permit VOIP applications over the iPhone's Wi-Fi connection, Steve Jobs said during his presentation. Unlocking, obviously, is forbidden, so the underground community of phone unlockers will stay underground.
So how about peer-to-peer? BitTorrent clients were never brought up explicitly at the event, but I think it's pretty clear from Apple's slide showing their categories of forbidden apps that they would consider P2P to be both "illegal" (yes, I know it isn't) and a "bandwidth hog" and would bar it.
The six forbidden categories give me some worries. Okay, there's "porn" (not Web sites, which are allowed, but apps), "privacy" (i.e. privacy violators), "illegal," and "malicious." So far, so good. But then there's "bandwidth hog," which could block anything down to Sling Player and RealPlayer - in fact, anything that streams - and "unforseen," which is just mysterious. Hopefully, we'll get some more clarity from Apple in the next few weeks.
|
|
|