Slashdot Mirror
How Apple's App Review Is Sabotaging the iPhone
snydeq writes to recommend Peter Wayner's inside look at the frustration iPhone developers face from Apple when attempting to distribute their apps through the iPhone App Store. Wayner's long piece is an extended analogy comparing Apple to the worst of Soviet-era bureaucracy. "Determined simply to dump an HTML version of his book into UIWebView and offer two versions through the App Store, Wayner endures four months of inexplicable silences, mixed messages, and almost whimsical rejections from Apple — the kind of frustration and uncertainty Wayner believes is fast transforming Apple's regulated marketplace into a hotbed of bottom-feeding mediocrity. 'Developers are afraid to risk serious development time on the platform as long as anonymous gatekeepers are able to delay projects by weeks and months with some seemingly random flick of a finger,' Wayner writes of his experience. 'It's one thing to delay a homebrew project like mine, but it's another thing to shut down a team of developers burning real cash. Apple should be worried when real programmers shrug off the rejections by saying, "It's just a hobby."'"
Apple's managed to get more than fifty thousand apps through the process and onto the store. Nobody's going to write stories about the ones that went smoothly.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Might have been 2 billion if it was an easier process.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Apple is not interested in allowing you to control your own hardware. This is just another example among many. I hope this sort of thing makes the iPhone and other Apple crap die a painful death.
Long live Android!
Sidekicks -- They have a "marketplace too". Locked down. T-mobile phones. Locked down. AT&T phones. Locked down. Almost every phone in existance has a "market place" equivalent, which has an approval process. Suddenly the iPhone comes along and people were expecting sunshine and kittens?
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
First they came for the "lame" apps that wanted to be distributed on the iPhone, but I didn't care because I didn't have and iPhone and/or trust Apple to filter apps for me. . .
Its easy to shrug your shoulders now, when you don't care about a particular functionality. Or if you happen to be the type that habitually runs their cash through Apple's distribution system to buy gimmicky apps that you only use once.
Make sure you click on every story that doesn't involve you, and inform us of how it doesn't relate to you. I find that comments like yours really add to the discussion.
Your response is not really an issue for those of us who are not Rival.
This message should be modded up to 5 insightful if recent trends are any indication.
I unlocked my phone within minutes of getting it home. I then proceded to take a look at the apps available via the Cydia store, which is unencumbered by the Apple review process.
Pretty much everything I tried was garbage with the developers doing just enough to get something ported and then abandoning it regardless of what kind of glaring bugs are in the system, yes the reveiw process is harsh but it does help maintain a minimum level of quality that is bettter than 99% of the apps in the cydia store.
(still, being able to get low level access to my phone still makes the jailbreak worthwhile)
Look around. Palm and Symbian applications can be downloaded from many websites. Here's a website with more than 500 open source Palm apps:
http://www.palmopensource.com/
Microsoft works with a number of stores like Handango.
If the sandbox is good enough-- and it's not that hard to build a good one-- then any software should be downloadable.
Why would I as a developer put time and hard effort into developing software if I believed there was a good chance it would never even get the chance to be installed?
I sincerely understand both the frustration and the annoynance, but it is almost like the developers are seemingly sitting still and not doing anything while waiting for the approval? I am sure they must be having other stuff to do while waiting for the approval and if the issue is going to be ongoing I suggest their strategy change accordingly although I am not defending Apple here at all. Apple should perhaps change their tactics or at least make it easier for updates to get through (like bugfixes) and the developers should not bet everything on one horse either.
... this example is not necessarily the best way to publish electronic books. Wouldn't it be better to put the book (both editions) up on Amazon Kindle, and let people use the Kindle app for the iPhone?
Imagine the horror of having a 1,001 authors all packaging their books as separate apps...
Michel
Fedora Project Contribut
If the results of the review process resulted in less junk cluttering up the appstore than the delays would be more acceptable, but the things they allow are just bizzare. Do they really need almost 400 separate 'supafan' apps from the same developer where the only difference is which celebrity news is being tracked?
air and light and time and space
This has been how Apple has done business for years. How much more money could they make if they allowed OS X to be installed on any x86 PC? They do not because they like being in control. You do not purchase a Mac, or an Iphone, you purchase the experience, as regulated by Apple. Right or wrong, this business model is along the path they chose long ago so I doubt that they will change much now. If, as a developer, you do not want to play by their rules, then you can take your software elsewhere. Just as it is their right to do this, it is also your right not to develop for their platform.
I cut it three times, and it's still too short.
Can't you just post a link to a bug tracker in your product description?
Was the html in his "Application" as bad as what was on that site? Why did I keep seeing the line ""? If I was apple, I'd reject an App that was just a piece of bad html too.
So, a guy with mediocre programming skills and even worse writing skills gets his app-that's-really-just-a-book rejected and this means the iPhone is doomed?
I hear a lot about the app reviewers being jerks and very little about how the rejected apps in these stories aren't the least bit compelling. There may be worse already in the App Store but that doesn't mean all the crap must go in. And it certainly shouldn't make anyone sell their stock in AAPL.
Apple's customers are not the app developers. Apple's customers are the iPhone users. So long as there are users waiting in line with money to spend, there will be app developers competing for that money, no matter how arduous the review process may be.
This will only change when a competitor such as Android offers better apps or better selection than what the Apple store carries. This could happen, but it will take quite some time due to Apple's head start.
WinMo requires you to pay $0. Palm requires you to pay $0. Xbox 360 development requires you to pay the price of the device (MUCH MUCH MUCH less than an iPhone and Mac to dev with) and $50 (and nothing for development tools). You're full of shit. Apple has one of the worst developer programs out there, and most serious developers don't even consider writing apps for the iPhone because of how shit Apple's tools and fees really are. It's not worth having Apple arbitrarily reject your app if you're a developer that actually makes a living off his/her work, which most people making "iFart" for the iPhone aren't.
It's a fucking Ebook. Why the hell do you need javascript?
From what others have been pointing out you've been trying to do something naughty or odd and you're getting called out on it. You just won't admit that you're at fault and would rather just take the shot at Apple.
I certainly rather enjoy that you make note to call out Apple for their vague reasons for denying your application, but yet you have not been very open exactly as to what has been rejected. You could very well post the source code to your application if you were this desperate to call Apple out, but you won't, because chances are someone, somewhere, will call bullshit on you. The fact is, that Apple is vague because they might not have all of the source available--but you do. And you are the only one that can change what you're doing, not them.
This is the same author once again using slashdot to advertise one of his books, by blaming someone else for destroying it. First he was whining that pirates were sharing his book on the internet (dubious at best that very many were even interested in downloading it in the first place); now he's whining that Apple won't distribute his book in a cheesy UI software that he wrote without following Apple's guidelines (software that appears useless for anything other than reading his book). Forgive me for thinking it looks an awful lot like he intentionally violated Apple's rules to get the software rejected from the App store so he could use slashdot to plug a book about free software that's almost a decade old -- something people otherwise probably wouldn't go looking for on the App store in the first place.
By the way, according to this page, the book is already available for free on the App store. Is there a compelling reason the store should have copies of this book in two different display formats?
"The same can't be said for a development studio. If you decide that you are going to commit resources to making an app, you are likely to want a guarantee that it can be released."
If you're a development house and you commit resources and create a console game, is there an ironclad GUARANTEE that Walmart or Best Buy or Gamestop is going to stock it? No. The game may suck. The game may crash. And so on.
Just like with music and books and video, just because you create it doesn't mean you're guarenteed to sell it.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.