The devil will be in the details if Cydia wants to rival Apple’s upcoming Mac App Store.
Mac Cydia will be available “within weeks,” according to Jay Freeman, who developed the Cydia Store for jailbroken iOS devices. Details are light at the moment, but Mac Cydia will likely lack the restrictions Apple will impose on its own store. (The Mac App Store won’t allow in-app purchases, demos, “lite” software or content that Apple deems inappropriate.)
It’s tempting to dismiss Mac Cydia as a solution in search of a problem. The main purpose of Cydia’s iOS store is to give iPhone owners a marketplace with virtually no rules. Mac users are already unrestricted in what they can download and install, so the purpose of a free-wheeling storefront is less obvious. But that doesn’t mean it’s unnecessary.