Following the runaway success of Cydia on iOS - with 10% of all iPhone users, about ten million people, having used the marketplace at least once - Jay "saurik" Freeman is planning to bring Cydia to the Mac OS X platform very soon. At the 360 MacDev conference yesterday, Jay said the new app store would be ready for the Mac "within weeks," positioning it to go head to head with the Apple Mac App Store expected sometime in January.
Jay has been evangelizing the Cydia vision for some time now, with high-profile talks at TED and elsewhere. Rather than merely an alternative to the iTunes App Store, Cydia is positioned as a resource for users to customize their devices to work in the way their owners want them to work. In his talk at 360 MacDev, Jay talked about Cydia, detailed cycript and Cydia Substrate, and took Apple to task for their restrictive policies and the poor quality of developer documentation.
His description of the Cydia Store for Mac was general, but presumably would give users easy access to tools similar to the tweaks available on iOS Cydia as well as useful apps free from Apple restrictions. Jay encourages developers who are interested in using Cydia for the Mac to distribute their products to contact patrick at saurikit dot com for details.
Source: TUAW
