Scott Forstall told Pandora to jailbreak early iPhones to get a head start on development

Ahead of the official App Store SDK, Scott Forstall told Pandora to use jailbroken iPhones to develop their music app.

Long before he left Apple, and has proven hard to track down, Scott Forstall promoted the then forthcoming App Store to developers. Music service Pandora's chief technology officer, Tom Conrad, says around 2007, that included advising them to start work early using jailbroken iPhones.

According to an interview in Vice, Conrad says that he and Pandora executive Tim Westergren were invited to lunch by then Apple senior vice president Scott Forstall. They met away from Apple, and reportedly talked for hours, before Conrad asked what Pandora should do next.

"What, if anything, can we do at Pandora to get ready for the next generation of iPhone that includes an App Store and native APIs?" Conrad asked

"Forstall said," reports Conrad, "[that] it wouldn't be a waste of your time to jailbreak some iPhones and use the kind of back door toolkits that were being distributed by other people to build a native Pandora app while we get our act together at Apple on something more formal."

Subscribe to AppleInsider on YouTube

Forstall's recommendation meant that Pandora was able to develop its app ahead of both the App Store, and of Apple's official App Store SDK. Consequently, its music app was available to on the launch day of the App Store.

According to Vice, nine months later, the Pandora app had been installed on 21% of iPhones.

Pandora most recently added Siri voice support for controlling the service via the HomePod and HomePod mini.

16 Comments

22july2013 3725 comments · 11 Years

About 3 years ago

As I've been saying for months, to people who "want to run anything," Apple doesn't care if you jailbreak your iPhones. This is proof.

asdasd 5682 comments · 21 Years

22july2013 said:

As I've been saying for months, to people who "want to run anything," Apple doesn't care if you jailbreak your iPhones. This is proof.

Well this was before the SDK.

They do care as in it voids the warranty, and bypasses the App Store, they surely don't want it to be easy which is why they make it hard.

asdasd said:

22july2013 said:

As I've been saying for months, to people who "want to run anything," Apple doesn't care if you jailbreak your iPhones. This is proof.

Well this was before the SDK.

They do care as in it voids the warranty, and bypasses the App Store, they surely don't want it to be easy which is why they make it hard.

Fair point, but my point which I made several times is also valid, that Apple won't sue you if you jailbreak your iPhone, which also makes me think they might make installation of other OSs a legit feature just like they do in macOS. They don't void the warranty if you install Windows. And if they void a warranty it's only on the jailbroken OS, not the phone itself. It's easy enough for the user or Apple to install a valid OS again later.

ichbinglitched 11 comments · 3 Years

22july2013 said:

As I've been saying for months, to people who "want to run anything," Apple doesn't care if you jailbreak your iPhones. This is proof.

um, no... this was 2007 and it's ONE *ex* VP who was such a raging narcissist that he wouldn't acknowledge that he fucked up Maps and got himself fired as a result. He was also the dillhole who was behind the "skeuomorphic" elements of the iOS interface... elements that THANKFULLY got ditched when Jony Ive was given the job of revisualizing iOS... Tim Cook firing this clown-shoe was the best thing that could have happened to Apple. Forstall was Jobs' pet and as long as he was there there was going to be a power struggle between the guy who *thought* he should be running Apple and the guy who actually was... the quote in the article that says "while we get our act together at Apple " says it all... he was in it for himself.