This year’s 2008 Worldwide Developers Conference kicked off with the launch of the iPhone 3G and demos of a number of new iPhone and iPod Touch games. We were hoping that Apple would finally provide some solid details on the exact launch of the iTunes App Store and also release developers from the somewhat vaguely termed Non Disclosure Agreement which accompanies the SDK.
During the keynote, however, Steve Jobs never gave an exact date for the launch of the iTunes App Store, but did say the iPhone 2.0 Firmware would be released in “early July". The iTunes App Store has always been one of the major features of the 2.0 Firmware, so we should expect the app store launch at that time.
We’ve been told the App Store is still undergoing active development so Apple may not even know when the final version will be ready.
Also, there’s been reports that the latest 2.0 Firmware is “locked down like no phone has ever been." So, Jailbreaking is currently out of the question.
Once the iTunes App Store launches, we suspect the popularity of Jailbreaking will decline, but some apps (such as emulators) will have to remain outside of the official App Store due to restrictions placed by Apple.
