I wouldn't call it a "shame" by any means. Owning both an iPhone and an Android phone, I can say that the app store "jail" also makes it 100x more usable, with better quality apps overall and more consistency among the apps.

I hear a lot of developers bitch about the app store, but from an end-users perspective it has been one of Apple's best moves to-date.

Yes, Apple restricting tethering apps make the other apps better.

I don't doubt that some Apple special sauce makes it easier to ignore the crappy apps, or that they are removed, but to imply that Apple's fart machine apps are better because you can't freely tether your device with 3rd party apps is just silly.

While I have no first-hand knowledge (and I doubt you do either, please clarify if I'm wrong), I'd be willing to bet that overall Apple could care less about tethering apps.

I believe that tethering is native to the OS, I remember doing some simple hack on my first 3G iPhone that enabled it for a while until a software update wiped it out. Other carriers (non-US) support it (a quick link I found re: Rogers: http://scilib.typepad.com/techreviews/2009/06/rogers-iphone-... )

So, your tethering restriction argument seems kind of straw-man to me. Additionally, it's not surprising that there are some bottom-feeder (fart) apps. Of course, the "fart-machine" apps are hardly the majority of the eco-system, but even so I could pretty much guarantee you that the fart apps would work 100% of the time on iOS, and probably 50% of the time at best on Android. As the app gets more complex, the probability of it working properly on all supported iOS devices, and NOT working properly on some subset of Android OS and hardware increases.

Except for the fact that Apple blocks tons of apps that have large user bases. Google Voice, Netshare, emulators, etc. Surely you aren't implying that Cydia is only full of apps that were rejected because they are crummy? Not to mention the fact that, for example, Google allows "Wifi Tether for Root users" on the Android Market. Show me something comparable on the AppStore. It doesn't exist.

Also, the fragmentation argument is weak and old, I won't bother refuting it or answering it here. APIs are backward compatible. If you target 1.6 you work on 95+% of devices out there, etc, etc.

Heh, I would say Apple's refusal to accept Netshare, PDANet, oh any other tethering app, etc pretty well shows that they won't accept tethering apps. I'm kinda shocked that this is news to ... anyone really.

Apple has routinely rejected apps that attempt to mimic core functions of the OS. So, if you go back and re-read my comment where it says tethering is built-in to the OS, then it would make sense that 3rd party apps that attempt to enable tethering would be banned. This may be "right" or "wrong" depending on your viewpoint, but it would serve to ensure that users are not seeing/downloading apps that don't work or function as they are expected to.

My personal experience with Android apps (Moto Droid and now HTC incredible) is that a decent percentage of apps (mostly (but not exclusively) games and odd things like "LED Flashlight Strobe" type stuff) do not work universally across all devices. Reading the comments on some of these apps supports my personal experience, so I think there is still a general problem with any random app on the Android store not offering a 100% consistent or "functions as expected" experience across all Android devices.

One thing I noticed today, was that with the announcement of the Google/MIT visual Android development initiative Google App Inventor (http://appinventor.googlelabs.com/about/), along came a flood of comments along the lines of "there's enough shovelware on Android already!" and "this will saturate the marketplace with crap!" etc.

Perhaps there's something to be said for the "app store jail".

News flash: 85% of everything is crap.

The solution is to make the good stuff rise to the top, not to suppress the crap. Luckily since Android apps can be distributed on the web, we can fall back to tried-and-true search techniques when the built-in Market app isn't cutting it.

Yes, I too am tired of all of this whining about the so-called App Store "jail." I, and most average owners, I suspect, just want applications that work. We don't care if we can only get them at iTunes. In fact, that makes it easier for us. Only techie-dweebs care about this.