Apple continues to loosen up the restrictions on app developers using the iPhone’s 3G connection: a little less than a month after Apple finally started to allow VoIP applications to make calls over 3G, and a couple of weeks after Slingbox’s video-streaming app was finally granted 3G-capable status comes the news that Apple has increased the maximum app size for download over the 3G network from 10 megabytes to 20.
That’s not exactly a huge bump, but it should be enough to suck down almost any application that isn’t heavily media based (for example, larger games). It’s almost definitely a move meant to give iPad app developers more wriggle room as they put together apps catering to a larger and more high-resolution display, but iPhone owners should see some tangible benefits as well.
It’s great to see Apple getting less restrictive about exactly what developers can do with the 3G radio. Let’s just hope AT&T’s beleaguered 3G network is up to the task of handling the upped bandwidth usage.
[via Macworld]
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
