Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

How Apple's App Review Is Sabotaging the iPhone

Posted by kdawson on from the race-to-the-bottom dept.

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."'"

13 of 509 comments (clear)

  1. And yet... by jcr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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."
    1. Re:And yet... by thisnamestoolong · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yes, but how many of those apps are good? I don't personally have an iPhone but from what I have seen it seems like most iPhone apps are half-baked juvenile distractions, rather than anything seriously useful. It seems logical to me that the overall quality of iPhone apps could be improved tremendously if devs could actually devote time and resources to apps without fear of arbitrary rejection.

      --
      To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
    2. Re:And yet... by syousef · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      Apple is stifling innovation and you think it's fine so long as they've let through 50,000 tetris clones (okay an exaggeration, but it makes my point). Gotta love it. Think different indeed. Think with our marketing blinkers on. To top it off I bet I get modded troll by Apple zealots.

      This is EXACTLY why we need OPEN architectures. No developer should have to go through putting together an application only to have it rejected arbitrarily. The same people who support DRM and copyright supposedly to compensate the creator are happy to deny a developer ANY money for their effort at their whim. Hypocrites!

      Well I won't be buying an iPhone no matter how "cool" they look or what nifty features they have let alone gambling my time and effort developing for one in the hope that some junior Apple cronie rubber stamps it.

      --
      These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
    3. Re:And yet... by wizzat · · Score: 5, Insightful

      How many of them are good? Well, quite honestly alot more are good than if there was no review process at all. If there wasn't a review process, we'd see apps that ignored or borked your settings, leaked memory like a sieve, chewed through your battery life out of ignorance, or hell - maybe we'd simply be looking at a deluge of carbon copy flashlight and porn apps, making the app store effectively useless. Hell, in my opinion (and I do have an iphone) the app store already has *too many* apps, and the quality on the ones there aren't quite high enough for my liking.

      I suppose you could think of it this way: you're looking for a needle (good app that does what you want) and you can either search in the pin cushion full of mostly needles and a bit of straw or you can search through the whole fricking hay stack yourself. I'll take the pin cushion, thank-you-very-much.

      Also, I'm not sure that you're really qualified to say anything about the relative quality of the app store. You don't, afterall, actually have an iphone.

    4. Re:And yet... by hedwards · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If the iPhone were properly designed it shouldn't be possible to brick via just a software installation. Childporn is a straw man argument, they've been banning things which could be used to access content that doesn't go with Apple's wholesome image whether or not that was the purpose of the app. As for the description being accurate, there are ways that they could handle that without reviewing it formally chances are the reviewers have different standards than what an individual has..

    5. Re:And yet... by BasilBrush · · Score: 4, Insightful

      There is nothing abusive about setting standards for the apps they accept. When you agree to the contract to become an iPhone developer, you know they have standards you need to adhere to. Most of us get published without problem. This guy ignores the reasons stated for rejection, tries to hide his tracks, and resubmit the app without remedying the problems. No wonder he gets rejected again and again. This is the behaviour of a loon banging his head against a wall.

    6. Re:And yet... by jcr · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Tell-tale strings are a pretty bad way to search for malicious or dangerous applications.

      I'm curious: do you actually expect to get your app approved by arguing about it on /.?

      Write your app with the native API.

      -jcr

      --
      The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
    7. Re:And yet... by COMON$ · · Score: 4, Insightful
      "Who wants a platform that is so locked down you can't screw it up hacking it"

      This is exactly why OSX is so solid, and why I am a linux/windows admin. Don't mod me troll or flamebait yet, I love OSX because of that, it runs very solidly and I barely ever have to go to my creative department to fix things, but you don't get a mac for its mod ability. But the reason OSX is so great is because it runs in a handful of platforms, so driver and software problems are minimal. I assume they are trying to do the same with the iphone, this will get you a solid device, even though it will be a pain to develop on.

      --
      CS: It is all sink or swim...oh and did I mention there are sharks in that water?
  2. And this is different from what? by girlintraining · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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
  3. Have you tried the alternative store? by szyzyg · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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)

  4. Wasted time by Djupblue · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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?

  5. Re:More sensible review please, not less. by peterwayner · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yes, I think this getting at the deep point I was trying to make. Any one company-- even Apple-- can satisfy all of the demands of all of the customers. Many want only quality apps. Some want violence with faux school shootings. (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/07/20/apple-approves-iphone-app-that-promotes-school-shootings/) Some don't.

    Apple can't make one group happy without angering the other. It's caught in an impossible bind.

    Personally I'm peeved that they approved this school shooting simulator before approving my GOLD app. But what can I say?

  6. Re:Good by timeOday · · Score: 4, Insightful
    But it isn't dying a painful death in the marketplace at all, is it? In fact it's flourishing.

    You may recall this story about how Apple thrives under Steve Jobs dictatorial and secretive management style.

    You may even recall the infamous slashdot iPod launch coverage in which it was deemed "lame" because it was less feature-rich than the competition.

    This is the history of Apple: there is a market for simple, well-managed products that work out of the box, and maintaining tight proprietary control over the Apple universe is how this is accomplished. I don't know what this says for openness, but there you have it. So long as your use cases aren't too far out of the ordinary, I guess it's worth it to have the trains run on time.