From Engadget: Live from Apple's iPhone SDK Conference

"Hopefully they love it and buy it -- but that's not possible today,
even the big developers would have a problem getting their app in front
of every iPhone user. It's called the App Store -- and we're putting it
on every single iPhone on the next release of the software. This is how
we're distributing apps to the iPhone."

 Interesting but not unexpected. One of the things I love about Ubuntu and many other distros is the ability to get all of the supported tried and true apps from a trusted repository. Apple is doing the same thing with the iPhone... kinda. They will allow developers to delivery apps for free (as long as their app is also free) on the iPhone App Store. But it looks like they will take a cut of the price for the "for pay" apps. 

So what is the big distinction? Besides the obvious open source difference, its the fact that the iPhone will ONLY work with the App Store. Linux distros have their default repositories, but anyone with a web server can created their own software feed/library for distributions out there. Apple is still so tight gripped with their technology. I imagine this will be cracked very shortly.

Another thing that I have heard is that 3rd party apps can only run one at a time and will close as soon as any of Apples apps need to run. This sounds like a very silly and lame attempt to keep hacker tools from grabbing sensitive information on the phone. This too will be cracked shortly I'm sure.

When will these companies learn that freedom is always better. This heavy handed stuff always fails and hurts them in the end.