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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."'"

9 of 509 comments (clear)

  1. Re:And yet... by MrMista_B · · Score: 0, Troll

    And yet you provide not a single piece of proof or evidence to support your rant.

    Hm.

  2. Re:And yet... by jcr · · Score: 0, Troll

    Aw, what's wrong? Did someone can you for your attitude and then replace you with an outsource vendor?

    -jcr

    --
    The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
  3. Re:And yet... by jcr · · Score: 0, Troll

    Apple is hurting the development process by not doing more to encourage projects like PhoneGap.

    Well, I just went and looked up PhoneGap, and I now understand why your app was rejected. The mistake wasn't in rejecting your app, it was in approving any other apps that used PhoneGap in the first place.

    -jcr

    --
    The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
  4. Re:And yet... by MeNeXT · · Score: 0, Troll

    There is a saying that is based on the word assume.

    There is no logic to Apples actions. They are acting as if they are back in the 1980's. That almost sent them into bankruptcy but it also made them the second rate player that they are today trying to catch up to Windows.

    As OS X does NOT need Apple to say which apps are OK so should the iPhone NOT need Apple. This is about control and greed and it WILL bite Apple in the ASS.

    Hey Apple! Look at the great success you have by incorporating FreeBSD into your product. Cooperate and encourage the NEW MAC community and see how fast you will grow. Fight and alienate your users and developers and see how fast you crash. Take it from someone who has seen you at your best and at your worst. Sometimes you shine and other times your stench is unbearable......

    --
    DRM? No thanks, I'll just get it somewhere else...
  5. Re:And yet... by peterwayner · · Score: 0, Troll

    Uh, I've addressed this elsewhere.

    While BasilBrush seems to feel that it is obvious that PhoneGap is forbidden, it's not spelled out in any of the rule books. Can you point out where? Can you even explain why someone might even come to that conclusion? There's been no answer and Apple never answered any of my emails. When I speak to members of the PhoneGap team-- members who've successfully published many apps-- they tell me that they've been unable to get any worthwhile guidance from Apple.

    My reading of the rules tells me that PhoneGap should produce apps that are more compliant because they only push information through one major part of the API, the UIWebView.

    So if you can explain what's wrong with the code, I'm sure many would like to understand what's going on.

  6. Re:Good by mjwx · · Score: 1, Troll

    Not hype. The early adopters of the iPhone bought because they can see something you can't.

    Fanboys see many things I cant but to make up for it they cant see many things that are quite obvious to others, like hype.

    The value of good design.

    Yes, a UI will always overcome poor engineering like overheating issues. The Iphone has no other merits apart from being easy on the eye and that is entirely subjective.

    That's because of the innovative design of the zooming and scrolling UI.

    Because scrolling and zooming has never been done before. BTW, the iphone is not a ZUI (Zooming User Interface), its a GUI (Graphical User Interface) with a zooming overlay in some applications, like Windows has had since Windows 95. Hardly an innovation.

    The later masses have bought into the iPhone because they've seen someone else's being used,

    Apple experiences very quick bursts of sales at release time which taper off very quickly, this is consistent with hype based marketing and not with your point.

    The iPhone has been the roaring success it has because it's years ahead of any other smartphone.

    That's why it took 3 releases to do what WinMo could do for a few years and Android could do from the beginning (video capture, full speed HSDPA and so on). The only part of the iphone that is more advanced then other smartphones is the marketing. But don't let the facts distract you and other fanboys will always be there to buy the iphone.

    To deny that just illustrates that you don't really know the market, and probably haven't used an iPhone.

    Fanboy logic, argumentum ad logicam. If you disagree with me, you are wrong no matter what the evidence or facts arrayed against me.

    For the record, I used the Iphone in October 2007, a scant three months after its release in the states. This is unusual as I'm from Australia. I could have bought a legit Iphone v1 for 35,000 THB in Bangkok (A$1200 at the time), I played with one for a while as I had a 9 hour stopover with time to kill and was completely unimpressed with it. The only differences from HTC and Samsung WinMo at the time phones were superficial. Apple's dictatorial level of control over a device I am supposed to own is a major turn off for me, this is the kind of thing that they hype covers up.

    --
    Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
  7. Re:And yet... by jcr · · Score: 0, Troll

    It's possible that Apple has encouraged a great deal of innovation but stifled a great deal more.

    Possible? Sure. Know any innovators who could attest to that? You're not one yourself.

    -jcr

    --
    The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
  8. Re:And yet... by jcr · · Score: 0, Troll

    You seem to be arguing

    Try arguing with what I say, not your own caricature of my statements.

    You need some basic logic lessons sonny.

    I had no trouble spotting your fallacy.

    -jcr

    --
    The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
  9. Re:And yet... by jcr · · Score: 0, Troll

    Obviously, you have no idea what "stagnation" and "stability" mean. The pace of innovation in the iPhone OS, and in third-party apps that run on it is excellent, and the stability of the platform is a major contribution to that.

    -jcr

    --
    The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."