Jay Freeman Takes On Apple

Call him a reluctant entrepreneur.

Jay Freeman stays plenty busy with his graduate studies in computer science at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In his spare time he’s worked on applications for the iPhone, but now he’s competing against Apple itself.

As I wrote about last Friday, Freeman launched The Cydia Store, an alternative to the App Store, out of frustration with Apple’s policies.

He couldn’t get his own Cycorder video recording application approved by Apple, which has blocked other iPhone apps it says duplicates functions Apple already provides.

Cycorder doesn’t currently compete with any Apple program for the iPhone, though the company is expected to release video recording capability for the device at some point.

To put this all in perspective, Apple’s restrictions come at a time of unprecedented growth in iPhone software. The iPhone App Store has reportedly passed 25,000 applications, which gives it more applications available for download than for the venerable Windows Mobile (at about 20,000 apps), a platform that’s many years older.

Clearly thousands of developers are happy to live under the friendly dictatorship of Sir Steve, but not Jay Freeman.

[Continue reading this blog post at Eye of the Needle by David Needle]