Hopefully Cydia will gain traction. I've bought a couple apps on it already and its been a positive experience.<p>It has the potential to be huge, however no VC firm will touch it since it also has the potential to be sued out of existence. I doubt it will have the resources to build things up enough where it can scale up and get a mainstream marketshare.<p>Android seems to be the only real alternative to Apple's appstore madness. I'll definitely be supporting that platform in the future. Getting an iPhone 3g last year was a really boneheaded move.
Until someone develops a phone thats as easy-to-use, feature rich, and as pretty as the iPhone, the smart money will be to develop for the platform, evil as the approval process is.<p>The simple fact is that Apple is light-years ahead of the competition with the iPhone and looks to remain in that position for the forseeable future. And I say that as an Android owner with no Macs in my house.
Android is gonna have to fight the old war of OpenSource platforms that go commercial (a fight that has been won only very seldom in the past). If it succeeds at that, its future is going to be very bright.
Cydia will never be as popular and/or successful as the AppStore. But then again, it never was supposed to be. Cydia is supposed to be an open platform welcomming any kind of developer without restrictions and/or fees. The idea itself is meant for an outsider-position. Saurik is doing an awesome job at maintaining the Cydia store, but his much more important work consists in bringing *nix software to the iPhone platform. Cydia is only one of these advantages ;-)
This article was very disappointing - thin, old news, and generalizes to all developers from two very specific and unique examples. Not to mention the jarring its/it's usage. I do not come to HN to get this kind of blogspam. Sorry to be so negative, but something is broken here. I suspect people are upvoting simply for the easy-to-agree-with headline. Please don't do that, without actually looking at the article first. I want those two minutes back, and I wish HN had a way to prevent this kind of thing in the future.<p>ObTopic: It still comes down to writing a good app, and not tempting fate by straying close to Apple's sensitive spots.
I thought that all this bad publicity wouldn't hurt Apple and the App Store model, but in the last few days I've heard many people how aren't geeks and who don't even own an iPhone talking about Cydia.
Developing _anything_ for _anything_ is a big gamble, akin to betting on horses. Talent, enthusiasm, and perserverance all play a role, but luck also stands behind success.