BlackBerry App Center photos leaked
It seems like the marketing team at RIM has figured out a way to compete with Apple's marketing prowess...leaks, leaks, leaks.
Fortunately, the items they are leaking are actually pretty cool. Via CrackBerry.com and BoyGeniusReport.com, we have the BlackBerry Storm user guide and pics of the upcoming BlackBerry Application Center--something long missing for BlackBerry users, especially amid the iPhone App Store hype.
Details remain sketchy, but Gizmodo thinks the BlackBerry App Center has some rough edges:
RIM's take on an app store is much less ambitious than Apple's for one fatal reason: the store will be run on the carrier's side, which will give your mobile provider the chance to veto an app even after it's been approved by RIM. The apps--and this is pretty weird--are actually downloaded through the device's browser, as the App Center is only able to search, monitor and delete programs from the device. Yeah, that's right: the App Center program can't directly install apps.
I still have a week to go on my iPhone test-drive. And while I have come to like the device and its functionality, I still struggle with AT&T. The ease of use and integration with the Mac desktop and the ability to get new applications are hard to fight. It would be a huge boon for BlackBerry users to have as good of a user experience.
Dave Rosenberg dishes up "Software, Interrupted" with nearly 15 years of technology and marketing experience that spans from Bell Labs to multiple start-up IPOs to open-source enterprise software companies. He is co-founder of MuleSource and currently serves as the general manager of Hardy Way. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can contact Dave via e-mail at softwareinterrupted@gmail.com or follow him on Twitter @daveofdoom. 
- by EvilGeezer October 7, 2008 5:24 AM PDT
- Is this more evidence of Jobs' reality distortion field? Has Apple's app store all of a sudden made people think that hardware vendor approval of software is *normal*?? Pay attention: RIM is not locking down its phones. Developers don't have to submit their apps to RIM for approval. They just make them, and put them on the Internet, and any BlackBerry user can download it. Got it? So this app center is a carrier store for RIM apps to make it easy to find them and upgrade and whatever, and probably your carrier decides what is available there, but RIM doesn't have any say in it, and -- get this -- if an app you want isn't in the store, you can go elsewhere to download it.
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