During the interview with BusinessWeek, Schiller outlines the reasons Apple keeps close tabs on which appls can be downloaded onto the iPhone and iPod touch. He also outlines the ways the company is trying to become more flexible in its approval process.

"We've built a store for the most part that people can trust," Schiller tells BusinessWeek. "You and your family and friends can download applications from the store, and for the most part they do what you'd expect, and they get onto your phone, and you get billed appropriately, and it all just works."

The number of applications available at the App Store is now north of 100,000, and about 10,000 are submitted each week. Schiller says that most apps are approved, though some are sent back to the developer. In about 90% of those cases, Apple requests technical fixes -- usually for bugs in the software or because something doesn't work as expected, Schiller says. Developers are generally glad to have this safety net because usually Apple's review process finds problems they actually want to fix, he tells BusinessWeek.