Apple Rejects iPhone App As Competitive To iTunes

DaveyJJ sends news of yet another rejection of an iPhone app by Apple, with perhaps a chilling twist for potential developers of productivity or utility apps. John Gruber of Daring Fireball writes: "Let's be clear: forbidding 'duplication of functionality' is forbidding competition. The point of competition is to do the same thing, but better." Paul Kafasis (co-founder of Rogue Amoeba Software) makes the point that this action by Apple will scare talented developers away from the iPhone platform. And Dave Weiner argues that the iPhone isn't a "platform" at all: "The idea that it's a platform should mean no individual or company has the power to turn you off."

Comments

People are surprised?

[SerpentMage]

I have stated multiple times on Slashdot and have multiple times be called a troll...

THIS is EXACTLY the same behavior Apple exhibited with the Apple and their token program!

Ah, but this is so old news (over 20 years ago) that people tend to have forgotten!

Now Apple is all good and dandy! BS!

Re:People are surprised?

[causality]

I have stated multiple times on Slashdot and have multiple times be called a troll...

THIS is EXACTLY the same behavior Apple exhibited with the Apple and their token program!

Ah, but this is so old news (over 20 years ago) that people tend to have forgotten!

Now Apple is all good and dandy! BS!

Yeah, I know what you mean. I posted on this same story and said that a company which believes in its products isn't afraid of competition; I was almost instantly modded Redundant even though all preceding comments were about whether the iPhone can be considered a "platform". It seems that Apple is another of these near-religious subjects that weak-minded people get all upset over and of course that's your fault for saying something with which they disagree. In a society where many children don't even know who their father is, it seems that there is a lack of calm, collected, strong-minded men not given to this type of childish impulsiveness who could perhaps model a better example of how to live. Make no mistake, it is about how to live; that sort of impulsive, reactionary mentality is not at all limited to this subject or this Web site. If anyone perceives my disdain of it as being caused by a lower score on a Slashdot posting, they have missed my point entirely.

Re:People are surprised?

[riggah]

Apple has consistently and predictably followed the same practices for which people condemn Microsoft. The caveat is that Apple has always cultivated a "cult" attitude, as well. I know I'll probably be modded flamebait for this, but the fact is that it's "ok" for Apple to practice competition stifling policies if they continue to also perpetuate the "Cult of Mac" attitude.

Apple is no more nor is it any less evil than Microsoft or any of their ilk. Is it any surprise that they're exercising strict control over the iPhone? No. No. No, not at all!! It's the same behavior Apple has exhibited with everything it produces!

"Let's be clear: forbidding 'duplication of functionality' is forbidding competition. The point of competition is to do the same thing, but better."

Sure. Why would they want to possibly put themselves in the position of admitting that someone "did iTunes" better than they do? Their business practices and marketing are almost the same thing; they need to promote "Cult of [Apple]" and to effectively justify their approach they need to be able to say, "No. We did that application/utility better. See what our strict adherence to our policies brought us? A better product." If they can't say that then the millions (billions?) they've spent on their marketing for the last 30 years is worthless.

They built the cult for a reason.

Re:Competition?

[SUB7IME]

To ensure that developers keep using their platform?

To make sure that the Latest and Greatest apps are developed, first and foremost, for the iPhone and not for the Android or another platform?

Prepare to be spun

[squiggleslash]

Here's what's going to happen. It'll happen because it always happens.

Apple gets caught with its pants down. Everyone condemns Apple while its PR teams huddle together to find a way to deal with the issue. Finally, Apple announces that the issue was to do with an oversight caused by a miscommunication caused by an unrelated issue that actually was a case of the application not being approved yet, not that it was really rejected.

People outside of Apple circles will laugh, but then be flamed endlessly for laughing to the point that we no longer want to talk about it any more.

Happened when Apple was using cheap third world labour to build iPods. Happened when Apple stopped releasing source code to Darwin. And it's going to happen again. Apple will, as with those issues, completely reverse itself, while making it sound like it was its policy all along.

So I'm not even going to bother. Here's the thing though: this is Apple's mentality. They will try to lock down iPhone if they can. They do in many areas already, and they will continue to do so. I can swap out a SIM in an iPhone and tether my laptop to a real cellphone instead, and it'll work, but Apple bans applications that allows you to use iPhone for this. I can install any application I want on my Motorola V635 - which isn't even something most people would describe as a "smartphone" but is, thanks to J2ME, completely programmable and has oodles of storage space thanks to microSD - but I can only install "approved" applications on an "smart" iPhone.

So yes, Apple will reverse itself on this issue, and all of you criticizing it now will be criticized as lying Apple haters who misrepresented what Apple was doing. But iPhone will always be a locked down platform. And as long as it is, there will be many of us who will just steer clear of it.

And if what you want is a locked down platform, don't start whining when you hear some app developer has been screwed over because of it.

Re:Apple stop the insanity!

[iron-kurton]

iPhone is neat hardware.

Yes it is. Artificial and intentional crippling makes me really angry because this device is capable of doing so much more. It's a beautiful device will horrible restrictions that would make even Microsoft blush. Crippling is enough to make one not become an Apple developer.

*Crosses fingers* C'MON ANDROID!!!

Re:One Can Hope

[samkass]

Apple's cut (30%) is extremely low for what you get. Unlimited distribution, completely flexible pricing, international markets, hosting, updates, auto-pariticpation in their "top 100" lists and "feature apps", etc. And the $99 entry fee is also very comparatively low. If you can't make back $99/year on the App Store, you're doing it wrong.

And if the argument is ease of development, Apple definitely has Google beat so far regardless of ones ability to share. I'm no huge fan of XCode, but iPhone development is really easy. So easy that here we are less than two months after release and there's thousands of apps. My guess is that within a few months all the big names will have their stuff ported including Skype. So from a user's point of view.

So it's good for the users, and good for the developers. In return, you occasionally (4 apps so far out of 3000) get slapped down by Apple. I don't think it's going to affect the market much.

Re:WHY?!

[Firehed]

The competition honesty isn't up to scratch yet. The vast majority people care about how well the device works and how the interact with it, not the business policies of the manufacturer and carrier (God knows that no carrier would be in business if that was the case). I'd absolutely love to see more genuine competition in this area, as the iPhone certainly has a number of shortcomings. But most of the companies are just trying to hop on the touchscreen bandwagon and completely miss the point. My iPhone experience has been for the most part very positive (AT&T much less so, but again, that's true of all carriers) - it's got some small things that bother me, but for the most part nothing major (that isn't specific to AT&T).

Now I've got the original model, and the 3G model seems to be having quite a number of other things causing problems so I've been relatively unaffected. I've experienced the slow backups and some unstable apps (some are better than others, to say the least, though on the whole the 1.x jailbreak apps were somewhat more solid for whatever technical reason) which has been mostly addressed by the most recent firmware. My two issues that remain are a lack of CalDAV calendar support directly on the device (the desktop iCal supports it, but you can only sync local calendars and one subscribed calendar via Exchange/MobileMe) and some weird WiFi issue that I think are more related to bad signal strength than something software-related.

Point being that on the whole, the device is fairly solid. Competition is a very good thing, no questions about it. But I've seen and played with the "competition". While some of those devices have things that some people bitch about (MMS and video recording to name two; I care about neither), they still tend to have clunky software interfaces and other arbitrary restrictions put in place by the carrier in order to charge you that much more. Hell, as far as I'm aware Verizon still disables Bluetooth data access on most phones so they can charge you $1.99/mo for their proprietary phonebook syncing (I didn't think to ask despite being in one of their stores today; my father was getting his second-time-broken Blackberry replaced by a lying and mostly incompetent albeit attractive sales rep). That kind of stupid nickel-and-diming BS is half the reason I left Verizon for AT&T in the first place. Of course, they're guilty too for the most part, but Apple negotiated some pretty reasonable deals for the first-gen phone, at least as far as the cell industry is concerned.

I'm NOT defending Apple here - I think blocking an app for this reason is absolutely despicable. I hope competition comes along and applies some real pressure. I hope that Android comes along and starts kicking ass. But that hasn't happened yet. There's no denying that Apple raised the bar on cell phones in quite a number of different areas and they've seen a lot of success as a result - but I certainly hope that information is used against them to create even better products. Like you imply, competition is absolutely a good thing. It's just not all there yet.