iPhone Apps You Won’t Find on Apple’s Store Shelves

iPhone owners for the most part love the App Store, where they can get a dizzying variety of applications to trick out their beloved device. Still, the App Store doesn’t fulfill all the desires of some iPhone users, who are willing to risk breaking -- or bricking -- their phones in order to load up on what’s not in the App Store.

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Let’s say you want to trick out your iPhone skin with some really cool new icons, but you can’t find anything that interests you at the iPhone App Store.

Are you out of luck? You might be. That is, unless you’re willing to go a few extra steps and take a few risks, one of which might be destroying what -- in this economy -- is a fairly expensive piece of communications equipment.

Ever heard of jailbreaking your iPhone? It’s not very difficult these days.

Here’s what you do: Access the Internet and do a search for "iPhone" and "jailbreak." Hundreds of results will come up with links to sites that tell people how to unlock the phone’s software so you can run applications not sanctioned by Apple or its exclusive American wireless carrier partner, AT&T.

Some of the links will lead to downloadable applications that do the deed automatically in under five minutes. Once the phone has been "jailbroken," do another Internet search under the same keywords, and a plethora of links will come up that lead to any number of different apps you can’t find at the App Store.

Cool icons? Try the "Winterboard" app, according to the iPhone Blog. There are so many icon options that you could end up spending the entire day customizing your iPhone’s user interface to your heart’s content.

Jailbreaking and Unlocking

Another risky maneuver iPhone tinkerers sometimes pull off is unlocking -- modifying an iPhone to run on a different wireless carrier.

All 3G GSM mobile phones have a subscriber identity model, or SIM, that contains the phone’s actual phone number and other identifying data.

All you need to do is go on eBay and find someone who will sell you a SIM code that will unlock your phone. It usually costs about $25 to obtain the code, Charles Golvin, a wireless analyst with Forrester Research, told MacNewsWorld.

Of course, Apple and AT&T might frown upon this sort of activity.

There are two main reasons people jailbreak their phones.

"The first reason is that people may want to use their iPhone on another carrier’s network," said Ben Bajarin, director of the consumer technology practice at Creative Strategies Group. "This is possible only if you jailbreak the phone and then use an underground app to link it up with another carrier."

The second reason is to get access to underground applications that are generally ones Apple has not approved for the App Store, Bajarin told MacNewsWorld.

However, doing so does not come without risks.

"If something happens and you freeze your device, Apple will not support it when you take it back to the Apple store," Bajarin said. "So you could potentially ’brick’ your phone and have to get a new one."

Here’s another risk: One of the reasons many jailbreak apps don’t make it to the App Store is that Apple wants to maintain a standard of quality assurance as well as user experience. So, users could potentially get a very buggy application or one that is difficult to use, he said.

No Shortage of Apps

The Internet is replete with iPhone applications users can’t get on the App Store.

Here are some of the "must have" apps out there, according to the iPhone Blog:

  1. BossPrefs -- While users can remove different apps from their iPhones quite easily, the built-in Apple icons are not removable on the iPhone. However, BossPrefs give users extra options for configuring their devices, including "Poof," a section where users can disable icons, even if they are fixed ones like iTunes or Weather.
  2. Intelliscreen -- Need to check your email but you don’t have time to thumb through your iPhone to do so? Intelliscreen allows for easy access to information on your iPhone lock screen, such as Mail and SMS messages, iCal dates, news stories, sports scores and more.
  3. Categories -- Categories allows users to create folders on their iPhone desktops. This gives them the ability to organize their home screens in ways far beyond anything Apple currently provides. When users add an app to a category, it is taken from the springboard list so that it no longer shows up on the home screen. When users remove the app from the category, it is returned back to the springboard. In other words, instead of scrolling from screen to screen, users have one screen containing all of their app folders for instant access.
  4. PDAnet -- PDAnet turns the iPhone into a WiFi hotspot, providing Internet access for laptops or other wireless devices.

With so many jailbreak apps out there, one has to wonder who’s creating them and who’s using them. The answer: lots of people -- even developers who have created Apple-approved iPhone apps.

People like Craig Hockenberry, a principal at the Iconfactory, for example.

The company won a design award from Apple in 2008 for one of its iPhone apps now available at the App Store.

"I have jailbroken my old iPhone," Hockenberry told MacNewsWorld. "The only jailbreak app that I run on my old device is PDAnet. I just swap my SIM card and I can use the EDGE network from wherever."

However, Hockenberry doesn’t seem all that impressed with many of the jailbreak apps out there today.

"To be honest, I find most of the jailbreak apps to be either crappy or something that I don’t need to do on a mobile device," he said. "That, combined with the hassle of doing updates, means that it’s just not worth it for me."

Apple: Not Cool

While many users may find unsanctioned iPhone apps cool, Apple itself thinks the practice of creating and downloading them is decidedly uncool -- and illegal.

In a document filed with the U.S. Copyright Office, Apple outlined a number of technological measures it has taken to protect the iPhone from jailbreakers and their apps.

The company has also stated unequivocally that jailbreaking violates copyright law.

"Part of what Apple is protecting is its ability to impose usage rules on their hardware and services," Forrester’s Golvin said.

The question now is what will Apple do to stop jailbreaking? Might it do what the record companies did years ago when they started suing users who illegally downloaded digital copies of songs for use on their MP3 players?

"It wouldn’t make much sense for them to go after customers who have jailbroken iPhones," Golvin said. "People with jailbroken iPhones aren’t doing any damage to Apple."