People have to realize that this was a "Wow, we're just not ready for this yet," and not a "go away and never come back."

It may have been worded a little poorly, but Apple isn't trying to shut developers out. They're just asking for more time.

Yeah, this is just one of the worst pieces of writing in the history of P.R. -- if it had been phrased properly nobody would have even noticed. If Steve Jobs had composed the memo people would be grateful to have gotten it.

Given that the public version of the app store doesn't even exist yet, why should we be surprised that Apple is not yet willing to take your $99 for the right to sell something there? Hell, if Apple was taking the $99 now, in exchange for nothing but promises, people would be complaining about that.

i applied to the developer program because that's how you get the key necessary to install apps on an actual iphone. until you get that key, you can only write apps for the built-in aspen simulator.

i'll gladly pay 100 bucks to install my apps on my actual iphone, if and when apple will let me.

Does anyone have any theories on why Apple is acting the way they do (except the ones raised in this article), could it be legitimate?

Have we heard of any third-party developers that has been accepted into the beta program?

Apple are overwhelmed by the positive response to the SDK. Wasn't it 100k downloads in the first 24 hours? All this talk saying third-party devs will be locked out is nonsense. Steve Jobs wants to sell all the apps you can code through the iTunes App Store. He takes 30%, remember.