Developers Hope That Apple Will Open Up iPhone

Many mobile phone companies already invite open source developers to come up with new and inventive programs to use on their mobile handsets and many software developers are hoping that the iPhone will follow in their footsteps.

However, security concerns with the phone could delay them from allowing people to develop applications that might breach users privacy.

“Apple says the limitations protect iPhone users from rogue programs that could steal data or disrupt their phone service. ‘Obviously, there’s an important security aspect to this,’” said Bob Borchers, Apple’s senior director of iPhone worldwide product marketing,” Hiawatha Bray of the Boston Globe reports “Programmers have scrambled to create applets for the iPhone. Over 100 are available, mostly free of charge, at websites like applists.com or getleaflets.com, with new applets released every day,.”

“But software designers agree that they’ll never exploit all the iPhone’s power until they can write code directly for the operating system, as they can with other smartphones,” Bray reports.

What are your thoughts on open software development for Apple’s iPhone? Is it something that they should embrace as an important part of their mobile phone development?

Boston.com