I think I can vouch for Steve just a bit when he didn’t want 3rd party Apps but not for the reasons provided. My experience with them was what I was expecting but some things cropped up that prompted a full software restore.

Don’t get me wrong I love the 3rd party App support for the iPhone, well to some extent at least. Installer.app is the epitome of awesomeness when it comes to installing 3rd party Apps (hence the name Installer.app) but things do get messy.

Take for Instance Dock 2.0, it’s one of the many App launchers on the iPhone but is very poorly done. The original conception was a very good idea but it’s flawed execution caused tremendous problems which Greg had noted in his post of the App.

I don’t know how this small dilemma could get worse, having a phone that may require a complete wipe down while your content resides on another computer is a disaster for App design. Upon installing Dock 1.0 (I even tempted the problem more by installing version 2.0) I was presented with a non working touch screen. I knew it was on the Software end and trying to uninstall it caused the screen to appear like it was covered in static snow and parts of the screen would be cut out and repeated.

I know this is an isolated event but it demonstrates a problem that plagues the iPhone on a small scale. It is so easy to distribute Applications for iPhone but no easy way to get rid of it. It’s not like a computer where Software can be disabled and uninstalled, once an App is on your iPhone and it tweaks the system your only solution is a complete restore.

If 3rd party Apps were allowed it’d have to be based on a distribution system by Apple in that Developers would submit their Apps and those deemed safe would be made available for download, unfortunately gathering up all these Apps is a very time consuming process and still rogue Apps can run rampant.