Apple shooting itself in the foot with iPhone apps?

Apple are in a tricky position - their iPhone apps store on iTunes was something brave and new. It works well - and I like the general idea - but from day one there was some controversy over the quality and range of applications available. Many were frankly useless. Some appeared and then were pulled - such as a means to use the iPhone as an internet connection for your laptop. You might suspect the phone network operators are behind having that one pulled.

And of course Apple take 30 percent of everything. Is that a tad too high? Possibly - but many developers on there are doing very, very well out of it.

Over on The Guardian is news of a Podcast application being rejected seemingly because it competed with Apple's own offering - or was better. Oh dear oh dear.

This would appear to be one area where Microsoft often get it right - they do actively promote their partners' applications for free.

Let's hope sense prevails and we have some healthy competition. And while we're at it - I hope Smile do an iPhone version of their banking site soon!