Inside the New iPhone App Store

AppleInsider has posted an in depth look at the Apple's iPhone software development kit, the App Store, and iPhone 2.0's third party apps themselves

Shortly before the release of the first iPhone, Apple announced a standards-based web platform for creating relatively simple, interactive web apps. Developers hoping to tap into the full power of the iPhone wept bitterly, although some took advantage of the web platform to deliver impressive or useful iPhone web apps, such as Facebook (below left) and the MuniTime NextBus client (below right), required in San Francisco because transit here operates with the frequency of a solar eclipse.

For the next several months, the only way to add more significant applications to the iPhone was to "jailbreak" it, which worked around Apple's security features to enable other arbitrary code to be copied to the unit and run. However, jailbreaking the iPhone also complicated every software update, as Apple continuously made changes to its software and addressed general security holes that the jailbreak community had been exploiting to enable third party apps.


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