As reported at the Wall Street Journal today, Emperor Steve fessed up to masterminding the iPhone kill switch. For those of you who don’t know, the idea is that every iPhone has a handy little piece of code that allows Apple to kill an app. No questions, no justification needed from the Emperor.

Why have a Kill Switch?

Official reason: The kill switch is there to give Apple the ability to shutdown any “malicious” app.

Real reason: Power. If you knew how hard it is to get an app INTO the store, you would know that there won’t be any “malicious” apps getting that far. With the kill switch Emperor Steve holds complete control over any developer. If a developer complains about the 30% cut Apple gets, Emperor Steve shuts it down. Say Apple gets sued Scrabulous style over an app, Emperor Steve shuts it down. Emperor Steve wakes up feeling grumpy, an app get shut down. You get the picture. The kill switch represents complete power.