Monument entrepreneur bypasses Apple with his own software and store

This is simple stuff: A program that lets users text message holding the phone sideways, so they have a wider screen to view and bigger keys to type on. A way to display messages and information on the iPhone's "lock" screen. An e-mail alert that pops up while other programs are running.

Why, the 31-year-old asked, can't my iPhone do those things?

His answer was to develop his own application and, now, his own app store, which he calls Rock Your Phone.

Five years ago, Ciabarra sold a company he founded, DevStream, to software giant CompuWare. DevStream offered companies tools to monitor and analyze their server performance.

The sale left Ciabarra independently wealthy before he was 30. He and his wife, Jaimie, traveled the world. He took up photography and woodworking. The couple had a daughter, Tessa. And then Ciabarra asked himself, "What do I want to do next?"

"I just wanted to do things I enjoyed," Ciabarra said. "I actually love technology."

When the iPhone first came out in 2007, Ciabarra bought one and quickly set to tinkering. He wanted a way to use the Vonage Internet phone service over the iPhone. So he became one of a small cadre of curious programmers who set out to understand the iPhone's software system and then engineer programs that would work with it. Apple wasn't releasing any documentation at the time, so much of the development was trial and error.

"Literally, it's guessing," Ciabarra said. "I just did it as a learning experience."

With his Vonage app completed, Ciabarra moved on to a program he called Intelli-Screen, which displays useful information, such as text messages, calendar, e-mail and weather, on the iPhone's lock screen, which is normally just a static image until the user unlocks the phone to access programs.

Now, Apple didn't simply overlook applications like the ones Ciabarra created. The company deliberately didn't include those kinds of applications ¬- and will not allow them to be sold in the App Store - because it fears they could compromise the iPhone's stability or interfere with other applications.

However, he said, Apple underestimates the strength of its product. IntelliScreen, he said, doesn't cause instability.

"If that was the case," he argued, "we wouldn't have any customers."

And he certainly does. In the past year, Ciabarra has distributed more than 400,000 copies of IntelliScreen (that's trials and sales - Ciabarra doesn't break out the number of sales).

But none of those sales has come through the official App Store.

It frustrates Ciabarra, since some developers have had big hits with some pretty silly apps that are available in the store - there's the iFart and an electronic Koi Pond, to name a couple.

But to install his more practical applications, customers have to do something called "jailbreaking" their iPhone to allow it to run unlicensed software.

"That's the worst term," he said. "It's misleading (to customers): They don't want to go to jail and they don't want to break their phone."

What Ciabarra came up with is his own, independent app store that includes the jailbreaking process - Ciabarra calls it a "soft unlock" - in the install program users download.

The process is nearly invisible to the user and requires no technical ability.

And Rock Your Phone offers a 10-day trial period, so if customers don't like the software or if it does cause compatibility problems, they can return it and not pay.

"Mario likes to use the phrase ‘Love it or leave it,'" said Tom Cross, Rock Your Phone's CEO (Ciabarra, who is Cross' son-in-law, took the title of chief technology officer).
"It forces us to only put out quality products."

So that's how Rock Your Phone was born. Ciabarra gave his store a soft launch in March and officially opened the electronic doors last month. Since then, he's been featured in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and MacNewsWorld.

Apple maintains that unlicensed software is an infringement on its copyright.

Earlier this year, Apple filed a lengthy claim with the U.S. Copyright Office under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. What Apple hasn't done is sue anyone.

Ultimately, independent apps, Ciabarra argues, help Apple.

"Competition breeds innovation," he said. "That's what America was built on."

Having said that, the biggest start-up cost for Rock Your Phone wasn't programming or office space (he runs it out of his home office and has a handful of workers spread through cyberspace), but legal review.

"We have done our homework regarding the legality," Cross said. "We feel like we are offering a set of services and applications that Apple is not offering."

The advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation is siding with Rock Your Phone. It filed a request for an exemption for independent developers from the DMCA.

Apple did not respond to requests for comment on nonlicensed apps.

Art Nutter is CEO of Colorado Springs-based TAEUS International, which provides patent and intellectual property consulting and research and has worked with Apple on other issues.

He said Apple stands to gain, both in market share and in innovation, from allowing a certain amount of gray market development for the iPhone.

"Microsoft allowed bootleg copies of Windows to be used for years," Nutter wrote in an e-mail. "Microsoft's laissez-faire approach to collecting licensing income allowed a faster adoption of the Windows OS worldwide.

"Since MS still owned the OS, when they decided they wanted to collect/enforce their license rights, they could and did."

For now, Rock Your Phone and Cydia, the only other independent app store, are too small to merit an all-out response, Nutter said.

"A legal response is typically a cost-benefit calculation," he wrote.

"The iPhone is still in its growth stage, though. Apple can still change the iPhone OS and disable all nonauthorized applications, if they choose to do so."

The aforementioned iFart app was developed by Loveland-based InfoMedia Inc. IFart was a big hit, selling more than half a million downloads since last fall on the App Store, but an earlier fart app was rejected by Apple.

"It really is interesting to see which apps Apple approves," said Joel Comm, InfoMedia's CEO.

"They are figuring out some policies as they go along.

"They have every right to approve or deny whatever they want: It's their store."

Time, in many ways, is on Apple's side. Every new iteration of the iPhone will include more features.

The sideways text feature that was one feature in Ciabarra's Tlert app was included in the upgrades Apple announced last week, as was the functionality of another of his apps that allowed cutting and pasting between applications.

Apple is developing its own lock screen display and Ciabarra fully expects some future update of the iPhone will include similar technology that will squash IntelliScreen like a bug.

It amounts to cherry picking, Ciabarra said.

Apple sees what catches on in the independent community and incorporates it into the iPhone, just like Microsoft took a cue from Netscape and included an Internet browser in Windows.

And that's OK, he said.

"If someone will give something for free that other people are charging for, that's America," he said.

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Call the writer at 636-0275.

Online > Rock Your Phone

Independent application store for the iPhone. www.rockyourphone.com