iPhone Jailbroken....who is developing?

I just couldn't wait and the thought of a wide selection of applications was far too tempting for me. It's a bit ironic as we are now probably just a month away from the official launch of "proper" applications via the iTunes store so I really should have just hung in there. I used ziPhone to do just the Jailbreak bit, I don't need it unlocked but rather just wanted to try out some of the apps.

First time I used the jailbreaker things went badly awry and for a while I feared I had a dead iPhone but following the recovery instructions included with the app I managed a full restore via iTunes...phew. Since doing it I have noticed one or two issues, none which have lasted long, including loss of volume...all volume, which was sorted by a switch off and on of the phone. I'm sort of assuming here that when I do the v2.0 update, when it becomes available, it will un-jailbreak the iPhone for me, I hope so at least as there will not be any need for the apps on board at the moment once official ones start rolling out.

There is a big range of stuff out there at the moment. I downloaded, amongst others, a native RSS app called mobileRSS and it works well although oddly, when you exit the app and go back in you have to re-download all the articles again. I kinda assumed they would still be there....I then discovered another RSS app called Feeds which I think works better. It stores already downloaded articles so when you leave the app and go back in they are still there. The interface is better too, on mobileRSS the screen is a bit wobbly and it can be hard to line up the articles when scrolling, part of it can veer off left or right unless your scrolling technique is bang on. No such concerns with Feeds though and it has the further advantage of being able to sync feeds via GoogleReader.

I have also loaded on Showtime which lets you record video, a convertor app, an ebook reader, Dropcopy for transferring files from a mac (haven't tried it yet though) and some games. I could only find, oddly, one Solitaire game. Lastly, almost, I have tried a few ToDo apps and have yet to settle on one. There is also a useful app called Categories which lets you add category icons, which you can set yourself, and then hide groups of apps resulting in a less cluttered desktop.

I can't help feeling though that quite a few of the ones I tried out are a bit basic and that official, paid for apps will be on the whole superior in terms of features. It makes me think I'll be happier to pay to get the extra stuff from 3rd party developers which hopefully will lead to greater gadgetry satisfaction.

One further thing which has surprised me is the silence around which developers will be..ahem...developing apps for the SDK, I'd have thought we would know by now. There must be quite a few mac based developers in there porting mac apps to the iPhone and yet we have heard zip all...surely it would be in their interest, or at least they would have nothing to lose by letting us know, to give advance notice. For example, I would love it if there was an iPhone version of Yojimbo and whilst I don't expect a version to be available for launch date, if I know there is a version coming at some point that would stop me wasting money on another lesser app.