BrightKite, my favorite location based social network, doesn’t have an iPhone app.

I feel like several people have told me this since the Apple Apps Store opened last Friday. I feel like they have screamed it from the top of buildings.

The reason?  They are waiting to launch something rock solid, and without being able to test something on the actual iPhone with 3g, they didn’t launch.  Was this a mistake?  Too early to tell, but they did miss the initial exposure of 10 million downloads.

The next question in my book is why does Apple do this to developers?  They released the SDK well in advance of the launch of the 2.0 version of their firmware, but until the announcement of 3g at the WWDC, most developers were in the dark.   Interesting some companies were let in on the secret, while others were left in the dark (the BrightKite team learned about this with the rest of us at SteveNote).

tuaw questions Apple:

As I’m sure many of you have noticed, many of the applications from the App Store are crashing frequently. Basically, an app I want to launch opens a blank screen, pauses for a moment, and then drops me back to my home screen without so much as an apology. Worse, it may even reset the phone. I’ve found with most of them that a simple reboot will allow them to launch again, but that’s getting old and doesn’t always help. You’re probably, like me, thinking that it’s a shame that so many developers rushed so quickly to make the App Store deadline and ended up putting out unstable applications. According to the development community, though, it’s not their fault … it’s Apple’s.

So was it a mistake?  Loopt, who I see as the main competitor launched, but then had some major privacy concerns brought up, losing any advantage they had with their head start.

Almost too early, but do you launch early, or do you lanch as early as you can when you know your product is solid.

**UPDATE** Two posts have been sent in discussing this topic, one about Agile and one about just f*%^$^ing shipping.