RIM may have ceased their plans to go all the way for supporting Android Apps on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet but now an enthusiastic developer has managed to run Apple iOS based apps on the BlackBerry PlayBook. As crazy as it sounds, CrackBerry Forum user businesscat2000 managed to run some select iOS apps on the PlayBook tablet after rewriting piece of code on those apps. This is big news for the cross-platform app developers.
Alec Saunders, vice president of developer relations at RIM, stated on a social network, “Piracy was a huge problem for Android developers and RIM doesn’t want to duplicate the chaotic cesspool of Android market. Following that, we could see the slowdown in the progress to bring in entire Google Play (Android Market) Store the tablet.”
Meanwhile, an enthusiast developer managed to side-load and run select iOS apps on the BlackBerry PlayBook. The iOS apps ran smoothly on the PlayBook and it was fairly visible from the videos posted by the developer. Now not all iOS apps would work for they require specific components to run smoothly.
Due to possible legal reasons and Apple’s outwardly known appetite to pull down any kind of “workarounds” related to iOS apps, this project may not be open to public. However, that does not deny the proof of concept that iOS apps too can be used on the BlackBerry PlayBook platform.
RIM can officially partner with Apple on development levels to allow iOS apps to run on PlayBook which however seems unlikely. As of now, there are no confirmations on whether the solution to run iOS apps on PlayBook would be made available publicly.