What Apple needs to do to fend off new iPhone App Store rivals

Cydia and Installer.app have long been on the iPhone offering a selection of jailbroken Apps for iPhone users who aren't content to stay within Apple's artificial boundaries of what it can do. Recent news is that Cydia and others plan on offering a paid app service just like the app store. These will obviously violate Apple's terms of service.

But Apple should embrace their customers' desire for these "rogue" apps in order to kill the alternative app stores rather than trying to fend them off with legal threats. Here's how:

Apps like Qik and Cycorder bring video functionality to the iPhone. Cycorder records onto the iPhone's gigabytes of space while Qik does something even cooler, it broadcasts the video feed to the Internet for many to see. Unfortunately, if you want this capability in the iPhone, you have to jailbreak. The quality isn't going to win you an Oscar, but nobody is going to know the difference once you upload it to Youtube.

Apple simply needs to let these types of apps on the iPhone. There is no reason not to.

Another app, called PDANet, allows you to use the iPhone as a Wifi tethering device which shares the iPhone's internet connection with your computer. It works really well but does drain the iPhone's power pretty quickly. It basically works as a Cradlepoint personal hotspot. iPhone Modem is another application in this category but it doesn't work quite as well.

Apple should offer this functionality on the iPhone as well, but obviously AT&T will want a bit more because of the increased strain the laptop traffic will put on their network. On a Blackberry, the price is $15/month. I'd like to see a bit less since I am already paying a lot for "unlimited" Internet.

The iPhone was supposed to allow background application communication. In fact, it was scheduled for September 2008. Something went horribly wrong and now it isn't even on the radar. I used to use Fring as a Skype and iChat-type of IM application before it went legit and no longer operates in the background.

Apple needs to prioritize this. If they can't go with their original plans, they need to offer developers another way to have their apps work in the background. If not, someone else will.

Intelliscreen is a very cool dashboard App (pictured). It gives you a quick glance at all of your daily activities/emails/sms/weather and so forth.

Apple should just buy this and make it the iPhone's default screen. It is that good...but has some reliability issues that Apple could surely solve by bringing the app in-house.

Netatalk, Mobile Finder and OpenSSH all let you browse your iPhone, store stuff on there and pull stuff off manually.

Apple should let power users have access to the iPhone's file directory system - at their own risk.

Boss Prefs, Winterboard and others let you change the look and feel of your iPhone, the backgrounds and buttons. While I don't really have a need for this type of thing, people around me certainly love it.

Apple should get more flexible with the way they let people organize their screens. The mobile device is a very personal device to many and personalization options only make it more so.

Porn: Nobody likes to talk about it but it is a pretty big business. All indications are that mobile is the next big thing for the adult industry. Apple of course, won't let anything beyond PG-13 on the iPhone app store, so there is a huge market left unfulfilled.

Apple should create a special "Adult" area of the app store for mature audience that include violent games, mature themes and, yes, porn. There is a huge market there, and if Apple doesn't fulfill it, someone else will.