The Ad-hoc model requires considerable effort for the purchaser and especially the developer. The dev has to enter in the device UID for every single person who wants to use the app. This doesn't scale to anywhere near the millions of users Tap Tap has.

Surely you could automate the process. Have the user pay, enter their UID in a web form, and automatically build the app and send it to them?

Hell, you could probably build your own AppStore that 3rd party devs could sell their own apps through, though I'm sure Apple would squash that very quickly...

It isn't about building the app; its about logging into their portal and entering their UID in. After 100 UIDs are entered, you have to create a new identifier and rebuild the app to get around the 100-device limit.

If you really want to run unauthorized apps, you can just jailbreak.

Agreed. And upgrades will be a pain, too.

How about a legitimate iPhone App with a secret (hidden from Apple) backdoor which allows running of other apps?

that app will be banned too then. Maybe if someone can hack Safari...

If you're going to that extreme, just jailbreak your iPhone already.

For as long as it works, this is actually a rather nice hack of the Apple ad-hoc developers distribution model.

I guess we'll see soon enough if that Apple remote kill feature is real or not.