Can Apple kill your iPhone apps?

iPhone rumour mongering is always an interesting sport and, like the Olympics, mostly it’s a waste of time with the occasional bit of gold thrown in for good measure. Here’s the latest piece of Apple scuttlebutt, courtesy of iPhone developer Jonathan Zdziarski. Zdziarski has found an interesting line of code inside the iPhone 2.0 software, initially theorised by some as some form of “kill switch” – a mechanism by which Apple could find which applications are running on your mobile and nix the ones it didn’t like.

It wouldn’t exactly be outside of the realms of possibility – think back to the whole furore that surrounded Apple’s decision to ‘brick’ hacked iPhones – but just how much control does this code give Apple over your iPhone?

According to Zdziarski: “Either there is some mechanism that can be activated to kill the app entirely, or this isn’t really designed to kill “malicious” applications, as advertised, but rather applications that interfere with Apple’s business model. Either way, the idea that Apple can choose what functionality my applications should have frightens me.” I”m with Zdziarski – time to lose the paranoia, Apple.