Last week all hell broke loose. An Apple iPhone developer went digging in his phone, and found several lines of code referring to “phoning home”.

The code linked to an Apple URL that contained a blacklist. This blacklist is at the heart of a lot of outrage over even more “big brother” involvement by Apple.

Today, Steve Jobs went on record admitting the kill switch, and explaining that Apple had no other option. The app blacklist feature was designed so rogue apps could be killed by Apple, if they started displaying bad behavior, like hacking into your contact list or sending your personal information to a third party.

Of course, Apples claim that they had no other option seems pretty bogus to me; Windows Mobile has done without this for years, and it has never been an issue. But then again, Windows Mobile users can install whatever they want, from any source, without having to go through an official Apple sanctioned repository of applications.

The funny thing, is that the iPhone has had access to applications since last year, albeit through an unofficial source; installer.app. Despite 100’s of applications being uploaded to installer.app without any third party controls, there have been no incidents of rogue apps.

On Blackberry devices, things are even tighter; but everything stays under the command of the device owner. The Blackberry application firewall controls every aspect of an application. When you install an app, you can allow or disallow anything from interaction with the phone book, to outgoing connections.

But once again, Apple shows it doesn’t trust its users, and implements something akin to parental controls on the cable box. It’s your phone, with applications YOU paid for, but they still want a little bit of control over what you do. Add that to the DRM already in place on these apps, and the DRM on your music and videos, plus a very vague and restrictive NDA for developers, and you’ll understand why many iPhone owners are not as happy as they were with the first iPhone.