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Respected Developers Begin Fleeing the App Store
wiedzmin writes "Facebook's Joe Hewitt, Second Gear's Justin Williams, the long-time Mac software developer known as 'Rogue Amoeba' and other respected App Store developers have recently decided to discontinue their work on the platform, citing their frustration with Apple's opaque approval process. Continued issues with erroneous and snap rejections of applications and APIs are prompting more and more developers to shun the platform entirely. Though there are tens of thousands of other developers who have pumped out over 100,000 apps for the platform, continued migration away from iPhone development will most likely result in lower quality software."
Same story... "Hi, I'm Mac guy, and I've got nothing to do...because I have no software..."
This is my sig.
cellphone
> "...continued migration away from iPhone development will most likely result in lower quality software."
Dooooooooooom!!!
The only ones to "stick it out" are the ones who are the most likely to profit. This tends to be apps people mostly want.
One could argue the less likelihood of profit on an Apple Mac platform is what increases the average quality of programs -- only the "good stuff" gets ported, in addition to a handful of Mac-only apps.
Keep in mind part of Apple's "problem" with the approval process isn't related to quality at all, but rather strategic thinking on which apps to allow, to discourage competition to its own apps, or the OS as a whole.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
There's an app for that.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Note the irony of a FaceBook employee complainng about Apple's closed system.
I want to join the protest against iPhone apps. Is there an app for that?
My webcomic
Could this mean lower quality fart apps for the iPhone if all the Respected Fart App developers abandon Apple?
I've got an iPhone and I use a Mac at work, but I certainly don't consider myself a "fanboy". I got the iPhone in part because there were a few good apps that I wanted on my first smartphone. However given all the bad press Apple gets over summary rejections of apps I'm very inclined to NOT buy another iPhone when I decide to get rid of this one. There are a number of smartphone apps that I'm aware of that Apple doesn't allow on their phones for one reason or another. My brother can dictate entire e-mails or text messages on his Blackberry using an app from a company called Vlingo. It apparently provides high quality speech to text capabilities and integrates with almost any app on that platform. They released an iPhone version a year ago but it's very limited in what it can do because Apple restricts things so much. The iPhone Vlingo app is limited to Google searches and updating Twitter & Facebook, and it's all apparently because of the way Apple restricts things.
If a company like Vlingo can extend the functionality of smartphones like the Blackberry, Android, etc. in ways that Apple and others never seriously considered then I'll very likely go with those phones in the future, and not one that's artificially restricted due to the limited vision of people like Steve Jobs.
Stevie's been doing it since the days of disco.
Jobs wants developers in a cage; just as any fashion designer wants the actual labor in a sweat shop in an overseas dictatorship. Just don't tax it; that'd be interfering in "free trade".
Subject says it all.
They may cite disapproval with Apple's approval process but the reality the app store is getting diluted with more and more apps and developers, and it's getting tougher to make those million dollar apps. Like anything, the first on board have the best chance of benefiting the most fiscally and in popularity. I assume some of these developers are also getting disillusioned that the glory days are gone.
I'm a full time iPhone developer. I'm going no-where.
I find Joe Hewitt's whining to be maddening. He made a very popular iPhone library (the Three20 project) and knowingly used some private API's inside - as far as I can tell without anyone knowing. Then when it turned out Apple started looking to see what symbols your code was using in an extra step to enforce this, Joe basically abandoned the community and decided to quit.
The sad part is that he didn't even need to use them. There are multiple forks of Three20 now that fix the use of the private API's with no loss in functionality.
The other guys, they have more of a reason to be angry although apps rejected continue to be a pretty minor aspect of things, and many rejected apps get through with a few simple changes. But Joe lost any right to complain when he abandoned the people that relied on his expert judgment in the creation of a framework.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The N900 is about to be launched. Come on over to http://www.maemo.org/
You will be welcome, and no one will tell you what you can, or cannot do.
Cheers!
* Carthago Delenda Est *
"respected developers" indeed
Over 100,000 apps on the store, and a handful of anecdotes of people deciding to leave the market. Somehow, I'm not particularly concerned.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Not the trend I have noticed. In the beginning lots of useful apps came out. Lately i have noticed a ton of crappy 99 cent "games" and anything more complex is having a heck of a time getting approved.
>> Though there are tens of thousands of other developers who have pumped out over 100,000 apps for the platform, continued migration away from iPhone development will most likely result in lower quality software."
The developer who flits from language to language trying to get rich off the latest trend isn't going to be the guy I want to buy apps from anyway. I'd rather buy something from a hardcore guy who won't give up on a platform no matter what the world says. That guy is going to be making the best app for the platform. Not the guy who learned enough objective-c to make compiler errors stop.
An alternate statement could be made that it will result in fewer high quality apps making it easier for the cream to rise to the top. The same exact thing that I actually enjoy about OSX. OmniGraffle is kind of the only game in town but it definitely gets the job done.
So they flee.
Where there's money others will step in.
(This is still capitalism, isn't it?)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
With the increasing number of smartphone running Android, I think many developers are shifting toward the new platform, maybe some going for Maemo 5 too. There may be some greater benefits to release software with Google rather than Apple. If any expert could give a quick comparison... Perhaps Google and Nokia even contact the top developers directly.
Though there are tens of thousands of other developers who have pumped out over 100,000 apps for the platform..
100,000 apps? Are these truly unique apps or are most trivial differences (app#1 main icon is blue, app#2 main icon is red...)
The problem isn't so much the app store approval process, it is that there is no other way to get your app onto (non jail broken) iPhones.
Soon everyone will have an app store, and maybe they too will refuse to carry applications that compete with them, but at least those other platforms allow the consumer the choice to get those applications somewhere else.
The smartphone is the next personal computer, so let's imagine for a moment that Microsoft had done for Windows what Apple is now doing with the iPhone: they get to approve every app, take a 30% cut of all profits, and deny anything that might compete with them (e.g. any browser other then IE). Windows would have no viruses, but at what cost?
I love my iphone, but I'm going to get a nice Android phone when my contract is up because I'm tired of Apple putting its own design philosophy and profit motives over my preferences as a consumer. Their rejection of the Google Voice app was bs, plain and simple. I like Google Voice, and I want to use it as easily as possible. Their meddling in the app store prevents me, the user and customer, from doing this.
I wonder what other great, useful Apps are being turned down because Apple thinks they will "ruin the user experience" or "confuse the user."
Imagine if Microsoft tried to tell people what software they could and couldn't put on their PC's.
There's two sides to that coin. Software with high production costs do need to be extremely popular to make porting to apple OSs worthwhile; however, products with low production costs benefit by being as widely available as possible without the worry of massive overhead. Furthermore, simple programs are more likely to be accepted as they pose less threat.
"By the time they had diminished from 50 to 8, the other dwarves began to suspect 'Hungry.'" -Gary Larson
Yes, you may get rejected for no understandable reason, but you also get accepted without any major modification.
To clarify, Steve Jobs is not personally approving all apps.
Some recent college grad with an unknown degree and a checklist is doing this work, which is why it's kind of random.
The iTunes store has so many advantages, it's worth the hassle.
Read the following sentences VERY carefully:
Facebook's Joe Hewitt, Second Gear's Justin Williams, and long-time Mac software developer Rogue Amoeba have all recently decided that enough is enough, and the loss of these [two?]developers and others [what others]
What a load of weasel language. ALL should really be both, and "these" should really clarify that "these" is only two. And where are the others?
There are 100.000 apps out there. Now call me silly but while there are a lot of possible programs I think that it is safe to conclude there won't be many CAD applications or ACID databases among them, the rules of the app store and the limitations of the iPhone hardware limit what is available. So a lot of it is meaningless drivel that nobody will miss.
And this respected developer mentioned in both story links? Did a facebook app. ONE facebook app... OMG NOSERS!!1!!!! How will they EVER find anyone else to write something like that!
Sorry, everyone knows that Apple likes total and complete control, people knew this when they signed up for it and they were happy to take the dollars that came with it. Why should Apple change?
Don't get me wrong, I think the one good thing about Bill Gates/Steve Ballmer is that at least they are not Steve Jobs or IT would REALLY be screwed but what is the issue her? What next, companies complaining that they can't add nudity to a 360 game? Then don't develop for a closed format with a megalomaniac calling the shots. Either you support open formats OR you accept that you WILL be fucked up the ass, no lube and bite your tongue.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I think this also has to do with the maturing of the platform. The low-hanging fruit is essentially gone, and it will get harder and harder for the free-thinking lone wolves to come up with original and compelling software that can compete. Businesses however, have the resources to continue to create more advanced and complicated iPhone versions of their products. They also have the resources to better manage the approval process, both by building carefully to the API, and (for bigger businesses) by having a phone call relationship with Apple.
Hewitt, who is undoubtedly a great and innovative developer, decided to strike out for more open pastures. Who can blame him? But the Facebook app is not going anywhere, and most likely will continue to be developed to a high quality. Over time I expect we'll see a greater mix of apps by existing software businesses, and less duplication in app functionality as more independent developers get frustrated or bored and leave.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
/. has posted this same story or variants on it about three or four times in the past week. I guess keep saying it til' it's true.
btw, in regards to the headline: "developers" in this case equals 2. "respected" in this case means "working for a well known company" in the case of Hewitt. "fleeing" means dramaposting and ragequitting.
With the Droid pushing momentum behind the demand. It will be interesting to see how Apple's and Android's app markets compare over time. Based on their tactics I don't think this one is going to swing Apples way.
This is one of the many reasons I bought the 'berry instead. I can purchase whatever apps I want from whomever I want. I bought it, I paid for it, it's MY smartphone, I'll do what I want with it.
I've had no problems with approvals. In fact, my last updates were approved in less than a week (for both the full and free versions).
What has surprised me is that sales have not been as good as expected, considering the app was featured on the first page of the "What's Hot" in iTunes Games for weeks, and peaked at #6 in Adventure in the USA (for a comparison, The Secret of Monkey Island peaked at #4 in Adventure).
We've placed better than many well established franchises. So assuming there is any correlation whatsoever between the top 100 charts and sales then a lot of big publishers are losing money.
So if developers are leaving the platform it is because: .ru TLDs. Now they are front and center.
* Competition is so fierce that the pie is cut very thin, resulting in low sales for the vast majority of apps.
* Piracy is rampant, and Apple is not doing anything to resolve the issue. Google search results for our app was showing 4-5 hits on the first page of pirate sites providing cracked versions of our app. I've never seen piracy so prevalent and mainstream as it is for iPhone. Back in the Pocket PC days we had to search very thoroughly to find pirated versions of our apps - usually in the
* Free. A typical end user could "live" off of free apps alone and satisfy months of gaming just playing the free / lite versions of apps. I have around 60 games on my development iPod. All are free versions except for 1, because it was the only game that I wanted to purchase after playing the free levels. So the current market scenario of the iPhone is resulting in such a tremendous amount of free content that instead of users buying full versions, they seem to simply seek out other free games when they tire of or have played through a lite version.
* Platform is limited. There is only so much that can be done without a D-Pad. This is why Carmack produced Doom on rails instead of an actual FPS type game. I have yet to play any game originally built around physical controls that transferred to iPhone in an acceptable manner. The really good games for iPhone are games designed around a touch screen, and not a port or modification of a game to try and make it use multitouch, accelerometer, etc.
* 95% of the foreign markets are a joke. We were the #1 Paid App, #1 Paid Game, and #1 in the sub categories for a number of foreign markets and only sold around a dozen copies a day in those markets. Totally pointless, especially considering you have to have $250 in commission in a single country for Apple to pay out the developer's share.
Finally, the article doesn't actually bash the approval process, as far as being opaque, or taking too long, or the developer having any difficulty getting apps approved. The developer states "I am philosophically opposed to the existence of their review process. I am very concerned that they are setting a horrible precedent for other software platforms, and soon gatekeepers will start infesting the lives of every software developer.". In other words he wants all platforms to be open, like Windows, Linux, OS X, Windows Mobile, Blackberry, etc. I tend to agree, but it is also true that most platforms have certification processes in place to brand, promote or sell applications within certain market spaces. Essentially all iPhone Apps are represented by Apple and sold in iTunes, whereas with other platforms (like Blackberry) only developers that specifically submit their apps for the "official" store have to go through an approval process.
So again, I don't think this is as much about the difficulty of getting an app approved, but simply that the developer has to seek approval in the first place.
Better known as 318230.
Just for listing on their 'app store', they take a shockingly greedy percentage. I really hate the whole controlling attitude of apple, and their totally locked-in monoculture, where it is totally forbidden to Think Different, and if you do, Apple lawyers will soon declare a fatwa, and hunt any infidel down, before legally torturing them in the court of death.
Can we PLEASE just have a truly open source phone yet? This is FOSS's chance to beat out the big crap corporations. AGAIN. Let's not drop the ball this time.
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Yes, that money he stole from Wozniak really paid off.
My question is, where are the developers going to move to? I'm hoping that Windows Mobile and Android can woo them to their platforms, so new apps appear there. As it is now, if a local news station has an app, it will be for the iPhone only. I'm hoping that changes to at least the iPhone and the Android platform.
At least the iPhone boom and bust was over fairly quickly, as bubbles go. Long term, Apple will be hurt overall because they wanted so much control over the distribution chain (have to use OS X for app writing, use me.com for the account, pay $99 at the minimum for a dev ID, then have to submit your app to their store and at their whim, they might approve it.) This was a dumb move on Apple's part. Both Android and Windows Mobile allow for application developers to distribute to users their works without having to go through a central choke point.
In 2006, the industry was caught with their pants down because they thought American phone customers only wanted the next RAZR or a minimum functioning phone. However, unlike the MP3 player market which expanded and took people in who never had such a device, cellphones are a zero sum market. One iPhone sold means one less Nokia phone. So, even though Apple won the first round, now they have actual competition from companies such as Motorola and HTC. Cell phone providers who don't like being in AT&T's shadow (in the US that is) are furiously working to stay relevant. Sprint/Nextel is trying to cater for businesses. Verizon has a solid CDMA network. T-Mobile has very good customer service and top notch global coverage.
So, combine the fact that there are a lot of entrenched cellular network providers, many cellphone makers, and four solid operating systems (Symbien, Android, WM, and BlackberryOS) that can easily go head to head with Apple, and there is plenty of room for the devs who have gotten the middle finger by Apple.
Yes, Apple has momentum because they have had around two and a half years of unrestricted market grabbing, but with the latest gen phones like the Droid, Apple actually has competition.
One lesson I hope that HTC, Motorola, and the other Android makers learn from having Apple's boot to their crotch for two years is that they need to innovate and not just play catch up. Their phones need cool and useful features and they need to invent those themselves and not chase Apple's latest thing. For example, if Sprint decided to get an Android unit made that included wireless routing like the MiFi, they would have a hot seller on their hands because virtually every laptop user wants tethering. Or, if T-Mobile got together with Napster and offered a music subscription offering unlimited music for $15 a month, people would jump at that.
"I'm a full time iPhone developer. I'm going no-where."
Apple likes to control user experience, and that won't change. That is their niche. They may relax their review process a little bit if there's a backlash, but they won't change their spots. Other phone brands will probably take up the cowboy coders who don't like red tape because they want to catch up to Apple's offerings. Their more relaxed review process will probably result in cheaper and perhaps more varied apps. However, it will be just like the Windows world compared to the Mac world:
* more choice
* lower prices
* more hackers
* more chaos
* more bugs
* inconsistent UI
Same as it always was.
Table-ized A.I.
forgot who it was, but someone blogged that RA was told by Apple that their app was rejected because the iphone API doesn't allow Apple copyrighted content to be used. the Mac API does. instead of fixing it, RA sat on it for months, whined on the blogs and then decided to stop developing for the iphone.
tweetdeck was also rejected at first because they sent an app that crashed all the time.
most of the other sob stories i read about Apple rejecting apps also had a real story where they were told why it was rejected but didn't want to fix it. the C64 emulator games app is a perfect example
this made me laugh.
In fact the analogy used is good, but there is one better based on fact: back in the eighties IBM licensed it's hardware, ensuring anyone could create an IBM compatible PC, Apple, Commodore and others did not. This is the reason the PC became the dominant platform eventually. As they included an obscure cheap little OS (DOS) from Microsoft, MS benefitted greatly from the spreading of the platform.
Today IBM, the creator of the 'personal computer' as we know it, no longer makes them. Apple was on it's knees at the end of the nineties and needed saveing from bankrupcy by a loan from .... Microsoft, who I believe still own Apple shares. Commodore is dead, and Apple makes PC's with Intel chips.
Dennis Onstenk
The only ones to "stick it out" are the ones who are the most likely to profit.
I disagree. The unprofitable applications will be unprofitable on other phones too. The profitable applications will be profitable on other phones too. The developers who migrate away from the platform are the ones getting rejections from Apple. These are the most unique, edgy, or innovative applications, or ones that compete with the built-in Apple functionality.
Therefore, I conclude that this will not increase the quality of programs on the iPhone. It will decrease the diversity, while increasing the diversity and quality on other phones. But that was going to happen no matter what Apple did: When you are at the top, the only direction to go is down.
Your post is pretty disingenuous I think but you still managed to get the 5.
As others have noted, you are the one not reading carefully, as there are 3 mentioned in just the article. I don't know that any type of support for claiming "others" exist is even necessary, as I don't doubt that this is not a complete list of developers fleeing the app store.
Furthermore, calling Joe Hewitt the developer of "a facebook app. ONE facebook app" is ridiculous. He is not only the developer of ONE just any facebook app, he was the developer of THE ONE official facebook app. Calling the reporter out in that type of deceptive manner is basically shameless pandering to mods that don't know the backstory.
If only they would have kept the iamrich game around, none of this would have ever happened :(
I hear lots of complaints from developers and wanna-be developers, but I don't hear anyone complaining about security breaches, viruses, spyware, and malware in general on the iPhone - basically an OS X computer. Obviously the first reason is because it is OS X not Windows (any flavor). But the second reason is that Apple is watching for it. While I am not a fan of the opaque approval process (it is getting better), I greatly enjoy knowing that there is less likelihood of my mobile being taken down by some crafty coding. I depend on the device. I try different software to see if it will help me in my life and work. That means trying things from people I don't know. That means taking a risk with my device up-time and my data. So I'm glad that Apple is running as the front-end security. Maybe you are not. Maybe you (whoever is reading this) posting here complaining that Apple won't let you do whatever you want are one of the developers trying to create crafty code to get my data. I hope you keep complaining and Apple keeps guarding the gate(s).
When any app can be rejected for any reason at any time by someone who is for practical purposes anonymous and answerable to nobody and the process has a reputation for being capricious and arbitrary, nobody wants to risk a significant development cost on AppStore acceptance.
Economically, the most likely to turn a profit are a series of $0.99 throwaways that might become the next "pet rock". If it's rejected by some guy because his corn flakes got soggy that morning, little is lost. Statistically, some of them will certainly be accepted.
Add in that Apple has ALSO gained a reputation for rejecting anything more useful or more polished than their own iPhone apps and you create a huge disincentive to spending a lot of time and energy on an iPhone app.
Developers who want to spend a lot of time and energy on a killer app will tend to target a platform where they are certain to be able to market the result. If successful there, they *might* decide to risk the cost of porting to the iPhone. In making the decision, they will consider that the more "killer" the app is, the more likely Apple is to decide it threatens their platform dominance and kill it.
My apps always get approved in the 14 day time frame which is typical for most developers.
What has changed though, is not all new and all updated apps are not displayed in the new release list starting about two weeks ago. So, for small developers, there is essentially no visibility for your product. The only other lists represent the top 100 or hand picked apps by Apple. That might represent about 2% of all apps and are now dominated by large corps. Essentially, 75% of all apps now get no visibility or sales.
Most users buy on the phone while on the go in a mobile environment. So, alternative forms of marketing are limited.
Expect more small developers to be leaving the platform. btw, I don't see android as an alternative -- sales are abysmal over there. Sad because the iPhone is a great platform.
When you buy any other gadget, be it a PC/laptop/other mobile phone/gaming console, the manufacturer's warranty simply defines the operating conditions for the product, and how you will
void warranty if you use it in any other way. For eg, if you spill coffee on your laptop keyboard, you'll have to pay for the repairs as it wouldn't be covered under warranty. If you overclock your CPU/GPU, you cannot complain if it gets fried.
Understandably, Apple caters only to the technologically challenged and those who don't mind paying and then paying some more for a smooth experience.
If you're a hacker type, your only option is to jailbreak it (or not use it at all).
It would be better if they were a bit more flexible- officially continue with the app store, but also allow 3rd party apps with the disclaimer that you're on your own if your phone gets bricked by installing other stuff. At least it allows tinkering for those who want to.
Then again, this is Apple we're talking about.
Quick question- what smartphones did the average Joe in the US use before the iPhone? Never mind.
"..One hosts to look them up, one DNS to find them, and in the darkness BIND them."
"The only ones to "stick it out" are the ones who are the most likely to profit."
And those most likely to profit are those with deep pockets in order to promote their apps in the sea of crud. Note the last 6month's top ten apps were from Global 2000 companies. There's been a novelity app from an independent here and there, but we know there's a catch to it from Apple to heavily promote its success in order to keep developers salivating at making millions in the appstore. And if it's not a marketing app, your get what you pay for.... which means high quality apps will definitely see an increase in price as this exodus continues which is risk to Apple (they prefer lower price apps as in their game app initiative)..
As for me, what broke the camel's back was the $99/yr subscription and every 2.8GB download for each SDK update. Thanks, but moving to Android and Maemo. The approval process has been average for me and the profit for a indie dev has been close to non-existent.
In other words: Less Google voice and more fart apps.
TFA title is a bit over reaching. To make matters worse, the guy handed the app over to someone else to continue development in the App store.
The second link lists 3 that are leaving. This doesn't strike me as the same as rats leaving a sinking ship.
There are thousands of developers lined up behind them.
Yes the approval process sucks, and yes it needs improvement. To be fair, they are making it more transparent. They are also still swamped with submissions meaning there are still way to many developers submitting apps. The 'not so great' developers that we end up with tomorrow will hopefully be great developers in a couple of years.
IMO, the app store is too much like Steam. It's too easy and convenient, all around, to fail.
In spite of having been a programmer all my life, with Apple Pascal on a 16k language card in an Apple IIe being one of my earlier platforms, and having resurrected a friend's dead iMac logic board by converting it to use an ATX power supply (yes, with soft boot no less!) I've never actually plunked down a lump of cash for an Apple product. I want that to change now. I want to buy an iTouch because they're so cool, and the very first app that I want to buy is the Baby Shaker, because it's so hilarious. However, I can't, because of censorship. It is truly bizarre.
Great post. It shows the divide between marketing and implementation. Marketing at least implies that the iPhone is the best phone on the market. They follow up with the idea that whatever there is under the sun, there is an app for the iPhone that will make it better/easier/faster. If the tech is capable to handle the voice recognition app that was mentioned, it should be able to use it to its fullest. In reality with the voice recognition the "app for that" is crippled, not by hardware limitations, but by corporate limitations. Are we sure the iPhone isn't really on Verizon?
Heroscape, it's like legos combined with anachronistic wargames.
The way I see it, the problem is not with Apple enforcing its unknown API restriction. The problem is with Apple *selectively* enforcing that particular restriction and many others.
The thing is, that is almost true but not quite.
I would slightly rephrase the problem is not selective enforcement but selective allowment (you are now free to use that as a word since I made it up for you).
The reason I would phrase it that way, is that there is no-way Apple can realistically wall a developer off from every private API. So they detect what they can, and warn you not to use them. Lots of people get away with slight infractions for a while but in the end, they were not supposed to be doing that and everyone knows it.
The "allowment" part comes in when some apps are obviously "allowed" to bypass the rules. The biggest example of this is the recent "Trench Run" Star Wars game that uses a huge iPhone graphic on the instruction page, clearly disallowed and something many other apps have been rejected for. While I personally find that a bit maddening, it's not something you cannot work with simply by keeping your own nose clean and shaking your head when you see examples like that - or writing something so compelling Apple "allows" you to bend the rules, too.
For example, the RedLaser app which is one of the top selling apps in the app store uses an undocumented API, specifically, UIGetScreenImage().
That's not a good example because some apps slipped through but all of them are being denied now. I am using that in one project and they had to issue an emergency update that does not use that call so that applications could ship updates. The good news there is that since a number of people were using that framework they have a compelling case for Apple to offer some kind of API to make that possible, so I think it will happen sooner rather than later.
Many of the original camera tweaking apps also skirted the API.
Also not a good case because they didn't really skirt the API, they simply altered the view composition. Again though that was actually helpful because it pushed Apple to provide an API to assist with that by stripping out all the view elements and letting you add your own.
The problem with Apple's approval process has never been about the restrictions, the problem has always been with Apple's unpredictable, arbitrary and selective application of those restrictions.
But again Apple has only been really unpredictable with what they have allowed - not with what they have denied (there are a few app exceptions but they mostly got approved eventually).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
....Its whatever Steve Jobs Says. Anytime. Autocrats and Deities make it easy for the plebes.
The problem is that you aren't even given a chance to profit in many cases anyway, regardless of app quality and despite jumping through all the hoops.
Take my own app, "The Watcher". It was approved yesterday morning but still hasn't filtered through onto any of the storefronts - it should be at least listed at the top of the puzzle section but is not in there at all, despite me matching the approval date with the launch date etc. etc. So at some point (maybe, who really knows) the game will actually be listed, but by that point will be pushed way back down the list and not noticable at all because of all the newer stuff above it.
Now it's not the best game in the world, obviously, but it's a nice version of The Sentinel and brings something a little bit different to the platform, and it took a fair amount of time to make - but why would I bother in the future when there is not even the smallest chance of it even being seen by a human being to buy? If you have the PR connections you can get placement and make some money still, i'm sure, but for the indy developer it's getting pretty frustrating out there.
Really not sure what the solution is to this though, Apple is a victim of its own success to a large extent. What I do know though is that back when I used to do shareware on download.com they would at least post your app immediately in the new list on the frontpage so you had a running chance at getting some eyeballs.
A rejected-app-of-the-day app, or an Android-app-of-the-day app, so iPhone users can see what they're missing.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
While a humorous retort, I am in fact staying with the platform as I see a lot of potential in it still, and no signs of slowing market support...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
For the two people who don't know already, Finnish and Korean are related languages. Culturally, Samsung and Nokia have more in common than they do with US companies. And they have a potential non-US market twice the size of the US. Being #1 in the US looks good - in the Wall Street Journal - but it does not necessarily make good business sense.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
FTFA, Rogue Amoeba's issue was with a rejection to an update to their existing application, though the rejection itself had nothing to do with the proposed change.
That is correct.
Instead, Apple decided that features in its existing, approved version are now a problem.
That is not correct.
Or rather, it's almost correct but misphrased. The features in the existing application WERE a problem - just not one Apple managed to catch the last time Apple reviewed the product.
Use of Apple trademarked images were always disallowed, I've known that since shortly after the SDK launch. Now the RA case is interesting because they assumed because the images came from an OS X API they were safe to use in the application - and in fact if you read the case carefully, even some APP REVIEWERS thought they were OK to use for that reason. But after extensive checking on their part, it was decided they were not.
Now I can see why RA is arguing the way they were, but think of it this way - why did RA assume they had the right to re-distribute any images from the OS X platform? That is not explicitly allowed in the API. Would they also assume they were safe if they were exporting those images and publishing them on the web? They are obviously meant to be used by applications on the platform but re-distribution is a lot grayer area and I'm not sure I would have assumed it was OK to send and use them elsewhere on other platforms.
Apple's problem is that they have put a guard on the gate to enter their walled garden, except there are thousands of gates each with their own, different guard
That is exactly right. The problem is each of those guards is different, but it's not like they are not operating from a master list. It's just that they may not get quite everything on the list, the whole time. So that is why as a developer it makes sense to be careful about following the rules, because you might sneak something past a few guards but eventually you will probably be caught.
An even better aspect of the analogy is that the nobility (read: large companies) are able to sneak a lot of stuff past the guards, seemingly with tact approval - like LucasArts blatantly having an image of the iPhone in the instruction screen for Trench Run. If Apple really wanted to stop the amount of bitching, they would stop making seemingly special allowances for large companies or else explain clear why they were allowed an exception (like if LucasArts had actually licensed that iPhone image [which I doubt is the case]).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
As a part time Android developer I'm debating jumping ship too. This article sums it up nicely: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/11/android-fragmentation/ Between dealing with the SDK idiocy of Google, complaint emails from users of 10 different phones all running a different version of Android, and the shitty design of Market itself, the last sentence echoes my thoughts: “I will have to decide then how much return I am getting and if it is worth it.” There has got to be some kind of happy medium between the anarchy of Market and the totalitarianism of App Store.
They never learn, you cannot control all the software and lock everyone out to try and make every last cent on it and expect to stay on top.
According to TFA, his leaving the iPhone has nothing to do with Three20.
It's rumor so take it for that, but I heard a Facebook update got rejected because of these Three20 issues, and that's when he got fed up with the approval process.
If you think about it what other trigger makes as much sense for him to take this action?
Regardless I see it as professionally irresponsible to leave all the framework users totally in the lurch.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
There's a map for that
Running away from a market that has an itchy trigger finger on the buy button every time a new app comes out...
not a good idea.
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You may be a full time developer, but your clearly not the person who works with the approval process.
I have some of my own apps in the store, and several I have worked on in tandem with others. We have not had any issues in any of the apps with approval outside of very reasonable crash and UI related objections (in one case I had forgotten to disable rotation in a specific view that came up as a sort of random cluster of UI elements, clearly wrong).
We have not had problems because we know to follow the rules, even though some of the UI's have been more on the experimental side and outside the UI guidelines we still were not using private API's (well, outside of the ones in which we included 320 - my fault for not doing a more complete code review, but then who would have thought you could not trust the developer of Facebook? Take that comment as you will). When the rules are stupid we push for change, but we know enough to not break them in the meantime. We also know enough to know that using private API's could cause our app to break easily with future updates which is another great reason to stay away from them even if Apple said nothing about using them (though there are techniques to mitigate that).
How much experience have YOU had with the approval process? Or are you just one of those people who reads rants on blogs and thinks that is the whole world having the same issues.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
So the simple, easy-to-code games have a quick approval process, while the longer, more-complex games that include net code, notifications, and other doodads are delayed due to a longer approval process? I find that difficult to imagine why.
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This is interesting and indicates to me that RA was not making enough money on their iPhone apps. This public storming away is a way to exit the market and save face.
I haven't really followed the saga, but how is that different from what he did?
Because he dropped it in the middle of a crisis (in short: he knew of the private API issues when he announced he was ending iPhone development). A captain transitions power in port, not in the midst of a stormy sea to jump in a lifeboat.
Or at the very least, even if he didn't know about the problems when he left, he should have come back just to fix this specific set of problems and then left for good. As it is it's absurd we still have to use forks of the official project created by other people to get the fixed versions.
It's one thing to let people gracefully migrate off a depreciated platform, quite another to pull up the rope while the users are still climbing. Most people deprecating a library still support it for some period of time as well, which is not being done here (although technically he handed it off to other Facebook developers I personally would have handled this fix myself if Three20 were my library).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Economically, the most likely to turn a profit are a series of $0.99 throwaways that might become the next "pet rock". If it's rejected by some guy because his corn flakes got soggy that morning, little is lost. Statistically, some of them will certainly be accepted.
To be fair, soggy corn flakes suck.
They weren't shipping any Apple icons in their software, they were obtaining the icons through documented API calls and using them in a nonconfusing and reasonable way
They were using images obtained from an API on the Mac desktop - not on the phone.
They then sent those images to the app on the phone.
Would it also have been OK to just download images from Apple.com ? After all, they would not have been stored in the app then...
The whole issue of transference is very grey to me, I can see why they thought it might be OK but can also see why Apple decided in the end they were not.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Except:
1) The RA app does not contain any of the copyrighted icons. It requests them over the network. A Mac replies with a Mac image. A PC responds with a different image. The RA app displays what the streaming box sent, using its publicly and openly documented protocol. Should the client app be responsible for making sure that a server (the Mac sending the audio stream) *really meant* to send that icon? Should Firefox be prevented from showing Mac icons that it gets from Apple.com? The idea is absurd.
2) Given that the app does not include any infringing content, RA asked Apple to identify possible solutions. Apple was silent.
3) Not only was RA's previous entry allowed, Apple allows other apps that *directly embed copyrighted images* into the store. In fact, they are featuring the Star Wars Trench Run, which contains what should be (and has been, for other devs) a forbidden image of an iphone itself.
RA's complaints about the technical absurdity of the rejection and Apple's haphazard application of its own so-called-rules are both well founded.
He said its in multiple apps. He said the reason it can't integrate with other apps is because apps aren't allowed to integrate with each other.
That is false. Using custom URL handling, you can easily have a "cloud" of apps all passing data to each other, even if they are from different creators. There's no reason they could not build it out like that if they wished to.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The only ones to "stick it out" are the ones who are the most likely to profit. This tends to be apps people mostly want.
Um hmmm. And the Market Fairy will come flitting along and make Everything All Right.
Profitability has absolutely nothing to do with that, except that some people will do anything to make a buck. Including peddling trash to anyone gullible enough to cough up the cash. Consider the enduring nature of spam.
In actual fact, I could make a fairly credible claim that if Apple makes their world too hostile, only those people who simply don't care will remain to develop. We already know that cheap (censored) tends to outsell expensive quality. Everyday.
5. Thinning Of The Herd
6. The strongest and highest quality apps and developers remain.
Your number six implies that the "thinning of the herd" takes out only the best, not the weakest, from the herd...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
My guess is that most of the developers leaving the iPhone platform are leaving because there is no market for them. Mainstream consumer applications are a very small percentage of the software written in the world. There are a few companies that have the talent and resources to invest in producing highly polished apps that appeal to a broad range of users. It takes time, creativity, and marketing dollars to be successfull in that playing field. For the rest of us, we are most likely writing some internal software app that attempts to solve business problems at the least amount of cost. It doesn't need to be pretty. Hell, it doesn't even need to work well. But we all get paid for doing it and, hopefully, what we write is useful to someone. I know it's not Apple's target market, but I can think of a thousand ways to utilize the iPhone hardware, just none of them would matter to anyone outside my company. I guess my point is, until the iPhone platform is opened up to where it can be used to solve custom business issues, iPhone development will be little more than a side hobby for most developers.
You missed one huge point: More is not always better. Mac has been based on SIMPLICITY and allowing 100 apps that do the same thing only hurts the average apple user who doesn't want choice as long as the app does what they want it to. I guess I shouldn't expect anything different from a bunch of FOSS fanboys who think its fun to make 100 distributions of Linux with 100 different programs that all do the same thing installed on each distribution.
Complain all you want but Apple's decision probably works better for the AVERAGE mac user (not techies) and pisses off techies and developers. This decision will likely not lower quality because developers (who are trying to make real money) will realize they can't throw some crap together and expect it to get approved, it actually has to work well and not duplicate functionality.
Overall I thought your comment was very well thought out and a good insight into what is happening now - I would say however that the sales issues hit the game category a lot harder than other areas, since there is so much action there compared to a relatively more calm set of productivity applications.
We are at a transition point in the iPhone market now where simply existing on Apple's list is not enough, and you have to market in other ways to get decent levels of sales. I really subscribe to the "two app store" idea, where the App Store is really two separate app stores - free or low priced apps, and second shadow app store of much higher quality and more complex applications. That I still see as being a major growth area, but it requires more work and a lot more promotion.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
For me as an iphone user, the biggest problem is the app "browser" or the app store.
It is very slow, very cumbersome to find things.
There are supposedly 100k apps, but somehow I can only get 100 games to show up
on my phone's appstore, in a specific section. And when you install one app and go
back to the store, the list has forgotten your position, so you have to reload everything...
Mac's app store isn't any better. No real way to see big lists quicky, sort with keywords, compare...
Apps abuse keywords, some have a hundred keywords just to attract searches. This should be enforced
(and get your app stalled for a couple weeks).
As a developer, I hate to see so many people copying other apps. It makes me very nervous to
imagine having a great new idea, and to find out that 10 other apps do the same things a few weeks/months
afterwards. And, relating to what I said earlier, I'm not really sure that people get to even see
all the available apps.
But, to get back to the headers here, there are millions of iPhones out there.
thousands of apps. This is just the beginning. Try to picture it in ten years.
Would you flee from such a big market just because there are too many devs ?
Sounds silly to me.
unless you have a large marketing budget or can get lucky enough to crack one of the top 10 lists.
If you think you need a large budget to market, you do not know anything about marketing.
Real marketing is not gaming the system to try and get on a top ten list. If you have an app you care about for the long term, the lists don't matter at all. Consider the fact that the apps on the "top revenue" list (not a list targeted to consumers) lists many apps that are on no other list, anywhere... and not all of them are from large companies either.
There are a lot of ways to market an application, and now that there are so many applications that aspect is important. We have reached a transition in the app store where marketing is important, in a way it was not before...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What, the iPhone is not the second coming of christ? What the hell are we going to do now? Maybe 2012 is really coming since the iPhone doesn't have an app to keep the bloody Earth spinning properly.
Who has time to know of/check-out/use/have-fun-with the million apps out there? Right, I know a few guys like that, with iPhone or purple berries or paranoid phones (oh, it's andropovid or something?) and try to avoid them outright; in order to be aware of all the apps, that's all they do - maybe the apps sleep for them, too.
A device is inferior if it performs simple but common tasks poorly out of the box. The iPhone is an inferior device since it cannot be used as a pager out of the box ("but you can do this and that, you ponzy looser that doesn't know squat about thechnology; just unlock it and see the light"). Ok, I give up, you feel superior with all the tricks one can implement, and I should not expect a $200 device to have a long enough text message sound file to wake me up when I'm on night shift. Or should I? Quite a few guys still have 800 MHz pagers at work and it's for a damn good simple reason: to be within reach if on-call in a noisy place, fishing, on top of a mountain, and all the other places on can be while performing her duties - all places within 3G coverage, yes there are mountains close by.
One more thing: all these bio scan based devices seem to be designed only for indoor or warm climate folks since I can't answer the crappy thing with my gloves on. So if I'm helping some poor folk in freezing weather and need to call out, I better have good peripheral circulation; otherwise, we're both doomed. Or we can make a fire with and eat some apps while waiting for the white light. Right.
I'm interested in knowing more about this. Do N900 applications need to be ported or can we just grab stuff from, say, Ubuntu and have it work on the N900? I understand that I'll probably have to recompile it, but do I need to modify the source code to get it to work?
The reason I ask is, of course, because applications are key to a computer like the N900 or the iPhone surviving and thriving; even Apple says "There's an App for that." If the N900 can take advantage of the multitude of FOSS already out there for Linux, that would slingshot its power out beyond anything the iPhone can provide.
On a semi-related topic: Is the N900 shipping yet? I keep hearing stories about how it will be Real Soon Now. I ordered mine on Amazon for the reduced price of $582, but it's now on sale for $550 or so. Should I cancel my $582 order and re-preorder it at $550? I even hear rumours of a $50 rebate on top of the $550, making the effective price $500 or so. Anyone able to comment on this?
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
If Apple's terms say that apps aren't allowed to communicate (which AFAIK they don't; I'm just going on what he said -- 'not allowed'), then how can you be sure that your clever system of URL handling isn't going to be rejected anyways?
How can I be sure? Because it's officially documented as an API on the phone? Because I have shipping apps that use this mechanism already? Because Apple has stated explicitly that custom URL handling is the official mechanism for application IPC?
Pick any one, or all of them because they are valid. It's simply not the case this is "not allowed" or even a grey area. This is well understood and documented.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The only ones to "stick it out" are the ones who are the most likely to profit. This tends to be apps people mostly want.
Speaking as somebody currently living on the proceeds of a software company I sold, this is a naive view.
It's not enough to have an app people want. You have to (a) sell it for enough money to make a profit and (b) keep support costs down enough so your sales profit doesn't disappear.
Right off the bat, when you sell software, it's not a matter of "a lot of people wanting" your product; it's how many want it at the price you set. Let's say you have a product that nobody would be willing to spend much money for, but you could sell it for about the price of a cup of coffee. Let's suppose the product is cheap to make and after you sell it your customers never call you. You can make money with that.
Suppose you come up with a ringtone. It takes you a week to get it into whereever you are selling it, then 5000 customers download it at $1.99, of which you clear $1.00 after the store gets its cut. $5000 for a week of work isn't going to make you rich, but it's a respectable payday. You can live off of that kind of project.
Is this something that people "want"? Well, sure, so long as its priced cheap. The key is that of those 5000 customers, you'll hear from maybe one or two, and you can just pay them $2.00 to go away.
Now suppose you (like I did) develop some kind of mobile data collection app that drives important enterprise decisions. That's pretty damned valuable. You can easily convince a company to pay you $500 *per seat*. The problem is that even if you could wish the software into existence, the customers need more than $500 per seat of support. In fact that's why an open source model works very well for critical systems -- you give the software away and charge for the real expensive parts. In any case, my calculations showed that we broke even on a $10,000 sale, after all was said and done, so we might as *well* have given the software away. We typically sold consulting services at anywhere from $20,000 to $50,000 a pop, which was where we made our money. Believe me, when you've got a team of six engineers, a $20,000 project doesn't look so big.
The point is that the "build a better mousetrap" theory is simply wrong.
Your ringtones and iFarts are bottom feeders in the world of app development. They are profitable for their developers precisely because users don't care very much about them. Price a product like that low enough and you can make money.
The kind of apps that developers garner respect and admiration for developing are a different kettle of fish. It's *hard* to make a profit selling apps that people really care about, because customers demand a relationship with you. That's expensive.
The last thing you need is a third party inserting itself into that expensive and delicate process -- especially an opaque, unpredictable one. You work with your customers and discover they really need some extra functionality. You build it, then have to wait to find out whether you can sell it? That's nuts. You need that like you need a hole in the head.
And this is even worse: you make a portfolio of apps, and then you can't sell them to a different developer? That's a critical exit strategy for many small developers. They have the vision and brains to create an app, but don't have the size to support it. So they develop and market it, and sell it to somebody who is already supporting apps for the main customer base. That's what I did when I sold *my* business. When I had more customers that I could know personally, it wasn't fun anymore so I told one company that if they didn't buy the software I'd sell it their competitor.
Basically, what Apple is telling is that the iPhone is *still* not a platform. It's a music playing phone that can also run toys like iFart.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
> "...continued migration away from iPhone development will most likely result in lower quality software."
Either that or a rise of quality software in Cydia. xGPS, Google Voice, and lots of other stuff are already there after being shot down by the app store. I use xGPS at least 3x a week and experience none of the problems reported by Tom-Tom users who didn't buy the TT hardware mount. Google voice has personally revolutionized my calling services.
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.
While this may be a disappointing loss it is not part of a "continued migration away from iPhone development." A handful of high profile prima dona's are leaving out of frustration with problems that, while legitimate, are ultimately solvable for the most part. Unless someone starts polling the iPhone development community and finds that this is consistent, then you can call it a migration. Until then it's annecdote from a vocal minority.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
But that was going to happen no matter what Apple did: When you are at the top, the only direction to go is down.
I'm sure someone said the same thing back in early 2006 when "all" they had out was the widely successful iPod line (including the Nano which had only just arrived) and iTunes was already a market force. Of course, that was also around the time when they had just started launching Intel Macs, and the iPhone was not on most people's radars.
The US market is sewn up they (US telcos) aren't going to be shipping them any time soon.
Everywhere else should be though.
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If you call [eclipse] a 220MB one time download, and 2MB updates harder than 2GB updates, no tabbed windows, Obj-C, and plist file edits superior.....
View -> Layout -> Show favorites bar (the closest thing to tabs though more like a dock)
Or use the list on the side.
Or quickly type a partial name using Cmd-Shift-D (the answer I find fastest of all)
The 2GB updates are a little hefty, for a short while they had a good thing going with 200 MB updates that just sat on top of the base XCode environment... but I think having the components separate was sometimes more of a pain.
I used Eclipse (and other editors) quite a bit before I moved to Objective-C, and once I learned to use XCode well I don't really miss other editors - much. I do have a hotkey set to open a file in Emacs (which is also what I use for plist manipulation since you can use any good XML editor for that).
But from an IDE standpoint, I don't mind using XCode over Eclipse at all.
And Obj-C is superior - on the iPhone. It's best to use the native language of a platform to do your work since it embodies the philosophy of the platform. It has some nice strengths as well that I appreciate over Java (and other languages I have used in the past).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I don't really consider the Facebook app all that innovative but it does a great job presenting a web site in a touch phone.
Folks, Facebook has not left the platform. We don't even know why the developer is off the iPhone project (maybe he bitched too much?) -- We DO KNOW the employee at Facebook who happened to develop the Facebook iPhone application wrote a lengthy piece on his displeasure with the App Store.
This does not equal fewer applications.
And this is not droves of developers. Raise your hand if you had heard of Rogue Amoeba before this.
But that was going to happen no matter what Apple did: When you are at the top, the only direction to go is down.
I'm sure someone said the same thing back in early 2006 when "all" they had out thus far was the widely successful iPod line (including the Nano which had only just arrived), and iTunes was already a market force, not to mention their "reasonably" successful line of computers.
Of course, that was also around the time when they had just started launching Intel Macs, and the iPhone was not on most people's radars.
I disagree. The unprofitable applications will be unprofitable on other phones too.
That's not necessarily true. Look at the whole problem with Flash. I understand why Apple doesn't want people deploying virtual machines or interpreters through the App store, because it undermines their monopoly on selling apps to users, but sometimes that's simply the most efficient way to build an app.
I once did a mobile application for humanitarian relief. You wouldn't believe the number of wrinkles involved in something like siting a refugee camp. I would have had *hundreds*, if not *thousands* of screens to test if I did it in the standard VB bound control style. The only way to do it economically was to have a model driven data collection engine. That way I only had fewer than a dozen UI forms to test. It was purely an engineering decision.
Now if I wanted to deploy that app on an iPhone, it very likely would not be allowed. I would have had twenty times the programming and maybe a hundred times the testing to get it working in a way Apple would accept. It would not have been profitable for me to develop an application for the iPhone, even if the result looked exactly the same to the users and every humanitarian relief worker on the planet carried an iPhone.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
"But if you care about your sanity, or the sanity of your users, you are shit out of luck with Access."
Access isn't a great tool, but it is perfectly passable for both users and "developers." Frequently it is the only tool available due to Tech Services / IT restrictions.
I work in a department of about 10 people responsible for maintaining the spare parts inventory integrity at a very large transportation company with 30,000 people and $500,000,000 in spare parts. Now we don't track the actual parts and movements using Access, but we use it to track what we should inventory, how often we should inventory it, what the results were, and reporting the audit results. I'm the only current "developer" of this Access frontend / backend system.
We can't get the IT resources for IT to build us our own system. We can't get IT to let us have a server, or run MSSQL or anything else as a real backend on their servers. We can't even get VB6 installed on my computer so I could develop frontends in something other than Access, due to IT/purchasing and software installation restrictions. I'd like to use VB6 in the short term because we have a couple legacy apps that I'd like to maintain, and I know it better than VB.net right now. Long term they will let me have VB.net express edition and I will eventually work on learning it. But Access still looks like it will have to be the backend.
In light of this, I try to learn and use "best practices" with Access to keep the problems to a dull roar (and I have been able to significantly reduce them). Your disdain for Access seems a little overblown and self-righteous, though I admit to its weaknesses. In my situation, what else would you suggest?
Exactly - I spent a couple of weeks and a reasonable amount of money to develop a small app that I thought was useful. Not million-dollar, but useful.
Many months later, apple rejected it. A nice chap called me up. I'm not breaking any rules, it isn't offensive or bad taste. It's just a utility that they don't want.
He said that he felt bad - but that there it was.
It certainly makes me think twice about investing time or money in any idea that is at all innovative in the way that it uses the platform.
VLC Remote for iPhone and Android
So Windows it is then.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
They were using images obtained from an API on the Mac desktop - not on the phone.
They then sent those images to the app on the phone.
I'm not sure how that changes anything at all.
The whole issue of transference is very grey to me, I can see why they thought it might be OK but can also see why Apple decided in the end they were not.
And that right there is exactly my point. It's unclear and appears arbitrary. It's not as cut-and-dried as many people make it out to be.
I 'am pc and I cost $1000 less with a much better video card, and x2 the ram also I can run your same os with a few hacks.
If I were writing an app like that for the iPhone, I would want the ability to rapidly change the application, which an installed app just doesn't provide. Instead, I'd write it as a web app and save it to the home screen. That sort of application doesn't need any real access to the iPhone hardware anyway, so why bother writing a native app? More to the point, by writing it as a web app, you could load different stylesheets on different mobile devices, laptops, etc, making the incremental cost of deploying on iPhone versus Crackberry versus WebOS pretty negligible.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I'm not sure how that changes anything at all.
Because use of an API on a specific device is different than taking images and using them for other purposes. Would you be so sure they would also be allowed to print them out and use them in a flyer? Or what about in a PDF output from the application? Why is there any assumption that if an API feeds you an image you can use that image outside of the application that called that API?
It changes is from "totally clear you can use" being a documented API, to the state of "is that OK outside the application". It's a totally different state as far as images and use of them is concerned, since the API docs say nothing about allowing redistribution outside the app.
And that right there is exactly my point. It's unclear and appears arbitrary.
Unclear, yes (initially, now t is quite clear). Arbitrary - no. If it were arbitrary they would have been allowed to use it, as the App Store reviewer wanted to let them use it. The fact they could not indicates the exact opposite of arbitrary - Apple will simply not allow these images to be used in this way, even though an App Store reviewer wanted to allow them to do so (read all the details on the RA site).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
iPhone is a consumer trend and not an essential item, you can easily buy another Smartphone. Does anyone remember Hypercard? a million 'stacks' available, about 10 of them were really useful. Apple has limited development on a platform that always had a finite life. They made their money, what do they care?
There was an unknown error in the submission.
And yours implies (states, actually) that the best developers remain instead of moving to more open and potentially profitable platforms.
Mine implies that the best stay on the platform while the weak run at the first sign of hardship. This is exactly what we are seeing. It's easy to just throw in the towel, a lot harder to stay with something and work through issues.
It says nothing about supporting other platforms (I am doing some Android explorations and Blackberry work too). Why do you have to ONLY support one? To a good developer, using only one language or platform seems absurd - as absurd as abandoning a whole platform because of one squabble. If you really want to change a platform you do it from the inside, but pushing the edge of what it can do and push the platform maker for new capabilities.
So yes, "moving" does not seem like the action of the "best developers" because they would stay and improve things while investigating other options, instead of simply running away.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Economically, the most likely to turn a profit are a series of $0.99 throwaways that might become the next "pet rock". If it's rejected by some guy because his corn flakes got soggy that morning, little is lost. Statistically, some of them will certainly be accepted.
To be fair, soggy corn flakes suck.
To put in in context, it usually takes a hell of a lot of interruption to prevent you from eating your corn flakes before the sogginess sets in.
I fail to see how that obliges him to do anything.
Personal and professional responsibility demands it in my mind. All I can say is, this is not what I would have done if it were my own library as I could not abdicate responsibility for something I had brought into the world so easily. I have for example done things for clients, where some emergency came up shortly after I left and I came back to resolve that issue, often unpaid because I felt responsible for the work I had done.
Would it be a better situation, in your opinion, if he kept it to himself the whole time?
On the balance, I am tempted to say yes because he caused a lot of pain and again, to me if you are not willing to be responsible for something you put out to the world I'm not sure everyone else is better off being led on by the promises inherently made in publishing a project.
Frankly after this I am not using it for future projects because I lack trust in it now, and am planning to write a replacement for some of the more useful portions that I am going to open source as well. I'm not sure how many people are using much of the framework outside of a few key areas.
So I'm really on the fence about which way to go with my answer.
If his API is either the best or only one available then, again, the users should feel lucky that he even decided to release it at all, because they're still benefiting from his work.
But they are also hurt by him as well, because again they chose that API knowing he was working for a prominent company (Facebook) and a very experienced developer who knew how to do things "right" as opposed to someone just starting out. He traded on his reputation to promote the framework (Three20 from the developer of Facebook!) and I don't think it's fair to say it's not a two way street where adverse effects from using his published framework should not fall back upon him just as praises did for him publishing it in the first place. The fact he published this framework slowed works on other frameworks because hey, there's already the Facebook one and that must be solid, right? That's what lots of people thought, they thought they were taking the least risky option.
In the end that is why I am upset, because I consider the use of these private frameworks deep in the core of the library to be a betrayal of those who trusted him to provide a sound library and the presence of it sucked air out of other projects that might have served jsut as well, but had no ticking time-bombs of this magnitude. I think that's why I am also unhappy he is not the one fixing this core mistake and making things right for those who trusted him.
It sounds more to me like he was so dissatisfied with Apple and the difficulties surrounding development that continuing to support it wasn't even an option for him
I actually have no problem with that at all. I totally respect someone stepping back and saying "I dislike the policies here and refuse to support them".
However the timing of the whole thing makes it look a a lot more like (as another poster said elsewhere) "ragequitting", where he was rejected for using these symbols, that in his mind he had every right to use because he had been using them for a while and he was Facebook dammit. That last part is perhaps a little unfair but it's hard not to get a little sense of entitlement at work out this thing. And also as I said even quitting using those principals, to my mind he has the responsibility to fix what was broken from the beginning by his core choices in creation of the framework. I totally don't see any need on his part to maintain it through future version changes or anything, just to fix the single fundamentally bad choice he made earlier - then he could let it go with a clean conscious to live on its own as it will.
The fact there is no one person caring for the framework means it's essentially dead anyhow, just a matter of time without someone who really cares at the helm and a corporation dictating future enhancements.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Webapps don't work if you are going into a disaster zone. You can't count on any infrastructure other than a sat phone, which you can't lug around with you. I've worked with guys tracking emerging diseases in the bush; they have to lug in everything using native porters -- just like in the old Tarzan movies -- and run their diagnostic machinery and serves on solar power.
Believe me, I know what I'm doing with this stuff, at least. You can't assume anything; paper would be ideal in this respect but you want to get the information out faster than it can be faxed and reentered. A team with handhelds sharing a couple of sat phones in a protected place works. Seriously, these guys *literally* have to navigate minefields.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Re: RedLaser you said:
"That's not a good example because some apps slipped through but all of them are being denied now."
This is simply not true. Witness the just released (Nov. 17) ShopSavvy app which uses the same banned RedLaser API that people are being rejected for.
Re: the API skirting
You are right, it was a view composition change and even in that case Apple would arbitrarily reject some apps doing it while approving others.
Call it what you want, rejection/allowance, the basic issue is Apple being arbitrary and essentially unreliable. You can't work with so much uncertainty.
Run a PC in a corner somewhere with a recent copy of PostgreSQL and do regular backup dumps to whatever network location you are currently using to store your Access database. Next, design a database, which you can even prototype in Access or OO.o's BASE for quick user feedback if you want. But as soon as possible (i.e. as soon as you understand >XX% of your user requirements) move the backend to PostgreSQL so that you can get proper ACID compliance.
I'm quite sure he wasn't complaining when FB got an update approved in less than 48 hours.
pff.
--- Worst tagline ever.
Sturgeons law still applies,
90% of everything is crap, therefore 90% of those fleeing are crap and only 10% of the remaining apps are decent/useful. This does mean that there is a smaller volume of useful apps, but also a smaller volume of crap.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Actually, with the iPhone, you can write an offline web app that gets stored entirely on the device and will work without infrastructure, but still retains the ability to update itself when you are connected to infrastructure. You can then use HTML5 local storage or SQL storage to store the data on the device, and upload it when you have access to infrastructure. I'd expect other web-enabled devices to start supporting this functionality in the near future if they don't already, since it's part of the HTML5 standardization effort.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
We can't get the IT resources for IT to build us our own system. We can't get IT to let us have a server, or run MSSQL or anything else as a real backend on their servers. We can't even get VB6 installed on my computer so I could develop frontends in something other than Access, due to IT/purchasing and software installation restrictions. I'd like to use VB6 in the short term because we have a couple legacy apps that I'd like to maintain, and I know it better than VB.net right now. Long term they will let me have VB.net express edition and I will eventually work on learning it. But Access still looks like it will have to be the backend.
In light of this,...
This is like saying you work as a carpenter, and you put nails into things with a coffee mug because you can't get your boss to approve purchasing a hammer due to budget constraints, the fact that your approved vendor is a starbucks instead of a tool company, and the fact that someone somewhere has his head up his ass. And then 'in light of this' you've reinforced your mug as best you can and made do...
In my situation, what else would you suggest?
Explain it to someone at your company with the authority to fix it the same way I just explained it to you, and keep on it until it get fixed or you get let go. Ok, ok, nobody wants to get let go, especially right now... so bide your time a bit until you can assure yourself a new job, but utlimately do you really want to work for a company that makes you use a coffee mug when you need a hammer?
=)
As someone who has also been there and done that, I can say no different than that you have hit the nail on the head and I completely agree.
As I have also had dealings in mobile applications, I will add that in the mobile world, it's nigh impossible to sell the really interesting apps as the more interesting they are, the higher the support costs (usually) become. Combine that with that the normal users have grown accustomed to $0.99 per app, this has pretty much destroyed the market for apps that do interesting things. Against the odds I've had reasonable success with this, but it is becoming harder and harder as more and more people start to believe that (a) any app, no matter what it does, or the complexity, is $0.99 and (b) you can buy unlimited support for $0.99, and they do ask the silliest completely unrelated questions.
You get what you pay for, and these days people only want to pay crap. So they get crap. Quality is rare in the mobile world these days, as it's just not profitable to make anything interesting. And even if you do make something really interesting, the mobile OEMs will just rip you off and leave you with nothing. Been there too, missed out on a lot of money. Right now, the ideal mobile application is:
- Wanted
- Really simple / little complexity, easy enough that no support is needed and development time is short
- Interesting enough to catch the eye of a nice percentage of the users
- Not interesting enough to catch the eye of the OEMs
- Priced at $0.99
This is hard to come by, and even if you do figure something out that fits, it'll be really boring to work on and make you want to commit seppuku.
I'm now happily returning to B2B dealings with pretty much free software and pay-for support. Oh the relief! The mobile market? Perhaps if MS gets their shit together, WM actually seems to be the only viable platform for software that actually does things, aside from looking pretty and making farting noises. But then again, MS seems to be making a grand fiasco of their new Marketplace as well as actually updating the OS, so I guess it's the end of mobile, at least for me.
Your points are all taken. When we have brought it up, IT in the nicest way possible, says basically you can't use our tools, but we'd be happy to put you on our project schedule for us to build a "robust" solution.
Given the heavy demands on our IT department right now to get revenue enhancing, or substantial cost reducing projects out the door, if we got on the schedule at best it'd be +2 years. The other issue is if we do this, our group loses all flexibility to solve our own problems and enhance the product we use daily.
As far as the company goes, and aside from the backwardness with IT, it really is a great place with an awesome culture, unique benefits, and I have virtually no fear of getting laid off unless I screw something up bad. The only drawback is so-so pay. I'd have a hard time convincing myself to leave unless I was getting paid a good bit more. And I'm not sure I have the resume to get that much in the quasi-IT field (though I could go back into Purchasing and possibly get a big raise elsewhere).
"But again Apple has only been really unpredictable with what they have allowed - not with what they have denied"
WTF??? Did you actually read what you typed???
You are saying the same thing as the AC only in a different way, but telling him he's wrong.
Is the glass half full or half empty?
Same meaning, different wording.
This is simply not true. Witness the just released (Nov. 17) ShopSavvy app which uses the same banned RedLaser API that people are being rejected for.
As I told you, Red Laser issued an emergency fix. However, as also noted some reviewers miss things so I would not be surprised if a few things cleared even using the API's they are not scanning for...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Call it what you want, rejection/allowance, the basic issue is Apple being arbitrary and essentially unreliable. You can't work with so much uncertainty.
I can and I do, because there for me there is zero uncertainty. Since I don't break the rules, I have absolutely no fear of rejection of my app based on them - and to date that has not happened.
That's what I think is unfair, is calling Apple arbitrary because it trie to enforce rules but the enforcers let some things slip through. It's not like Apples has my code for review, to them the app is a black box so of course some things are going to get through testing. So the only "uncertainty" to be had is if I choose to break the rules and gamble no-one notices. I brought the uncertainty down on myself in that case.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
iPhone has fart apps?! I gotta get me an iPhone!
.... that there are people actually trying to justify application approval.
Jobs does it, it is fine and dandy.
If Microsoft did it, their monopolistic abusing ass would be kicked by everyone and his dog, including government regulatory agencies.
The iPhone is just a highly connected micro computer, it is immoral and against the best traditions in the IT industry that people need to get permission in order to develop applications for the device.
I wish people would stop defending this unethical behaviour.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I've noticed the opposite. There was a dearth of useful apps early on. Stupid crap like "I Am Rich" abounded. Now, there's more and more awesome titles like "Call of Duty: World at War: Zombies" and "Settlers". Sure, there's still a lot of crap around, but the number of quality titles is increasing.
If you look at the list of top grossing apps, most of them cost more than $0.99 -- it's definitely a case of the best and most useful app wins. You gotta think quality, not quantity. If you slave away on making a great app and then price it at $0.99, you're basically just throwing time and money away. I think the smart developers realise this.
Or don't. If it works for you guys, then why the hell would someone recommend switching to something else?
Bark less. Wag more.
Learn to write better business cases for upgrading your database? The Standard Edition of SQL Server will only run you $6,000. That's chump change at a company as big as you're describing.
I could probably get it purchased, though our company is well known for being very frugal and efficient with our cash. I have also suggested PostgreSQL or MySQL, which are plenty robust for this important, though not business critical function.
Before I came into the department, they had one catastrophic crash of the Access database we were able to restore from backup, losing only 1 day of data entry, and I worked for a day helping them make the Access database (which at that time didn't even have frontends/backend) more robust.
The problem would be what to install a real SQL server on after I had it. IT won't give us our own server playground, and they won't install software onto their servers unless it has gone through their build/deploy process.
Respected Readers Begin Fleeing Slashdot . . .
. . . because of the scare headlines and FUD.
What a ridiculous article and headline.
-- My apologies if the above facts contain any opinions, or vice versa! --
You are right, but as soon as the average Mac user works out you've just insulted their intelligence because Apple have to choose for them, expect your app to be rejected.
Rhyme or reason or even basic karma ?, Apple just couldn't give a fuck.
...but I make up for that with a cheap, tacky case, and other inferior or totally missing equivalent hardware if I'm really $1000 less than equivalent machines.
Don't forget to factor in your own time cost, and the cost of any warranty if you bought me whitebox and built it yourself! Also the cost of a retail copy of OS X!
$1500 is high end retail pc space as well and you think the that gt120 is a good video card in A $2500 SYSTEM THAT only has 3gb of ram?
The amount of whining going on about Apple's review process is mind boggling. For all it's perceived problems, the app store is a money generating machine. If a few developers can't find common ground with Apple in order to make a shed-load of money, then good riddance - less competition for the rest of us.
The simple reality is that the App Store is a tightly controlled distribution channel, not so different from traditional distribution channels. You can't just go plopping your products on Walmart's shelves wihtout jumping through dozens of hoops. Ever try selling content though a wireless carrier? Why should one expect zero control by Apple when it comes to what is sold though THEIR STORE? At lest Apple doesn't tell you what the price has to be.
You can argue that Apples insistence to lock out apps not approved by them is gestapo - even anti-competitive, but having years of experience designing and marketing mobile development platforms for the other fruity cell phone company, I can tell you that what they've done here is nothing short of miraculous. The paranoia from wireless operators when it comes to applications on phones is legendary. Just allowing Apple to own the distribution channel and eliminating the need to deal with the operator (or hundreds of operators globally) is a monumental step in the right direction as far as profitability of software vendors is concerned - though I doubt AT&T would admit it... I would bet a good sum of money that the current approval/signature system was put in place to placate the carriers and allow 3rd pary apps *period* just as much as it was put in place to ensure a steady stream of revenue for Apple. I'll go one step further and say that there would be no carriers selling "open" Andriod phones if it was not for the doors the iPhone has opened - and the competition it has created.
Why they lock down iPod Touches, or even many of the more benign APIs in the iPhone, however, is a mystery to me. I can understand the rationale when a cell phone network is involved - but nobody except me is going to care if some app melts my iPod touch.
Well, just going to Dell and speccing an XPS as close as I could get to the Base Mac Pro (quad core, no monitor, 4Gb ram, similar GPU [less memory on the Mac], same basic networking) the price is over $2000 before I've finished looking at things like the 4 internal, independent SATA bays on the Mac compared to the two on the Dell, the FW800 ports compared to FW400,
Or are you talking whitebox, which I addressed in my original point: don;t forget to add all of the cost of your time to build and set it up, including software, and the warranty (which is 2 years as standard on the Dell compared to 1 year for the Mac unless you extend your Applecare, but is in home for the Dell, or RTB for Mac).
A gt120 is good enough for the bulk of the tasks that will be thrown at it in the market the Mac Pro is aimed at, and if it isn't, you can upgrade it to whatever you fancy. It's not a gaming rig after all. If you are doing fancy graphical stuff with it, you tend to have specialised cards (I have a fair few from Decklink in the MPs we run). You could argue that the $2500 (or £ as I pay) "should" ensure you get a better GPU, but it's not only the graphics card you are paying for, it's everything else around it.
Remember, hobbyist, home-gamer is not the target market for a Mac Pro - thus, a cutting edge GPU with a picture of an elf rendered on the overly elaborate heatsink isn't really top of the list of priorities.
Wow, I don't know if you noticed, but a) there's a recession out there, and b)his is certainly not the only company with extreme limits on spending in it and even harsher limits on support staff. I honestly think I wouldn't hire someone like you. An employee who has so little financial savvy doesn't deserve employment.
a g120 at $150 is a ripoff and that is the price that apple wants for one.
And the Mac version of the card is different to the PC version, so they make fewer of them, thus they cost more.
Should just be an easy case of flashing a different firmware onto the card, but it affects the price.
Also, consider that almost any upgrade component from a hardware vendor will cost more than a separate self-purchased upgrade - RAM, HD, GPU, processors, etc.
a) there's a recession out there
So? When your staff wants do something intelligent and innovative you let them. Especially in a recession.
b)his is certainly not the only company with extreme limits on spending in it and even harsher limits on support staff.
The capital cost of getting the tools he needs is ZERO. The support costs of allowing him to do what he needs is NEXT to ZERO. The benefit of allowing him to do what he needs to do is clear. The only "extreme limit" is political and/or bureaucratic in nature.
I honestly think I wouldn't hire someone like you. An employee who has so little financial savvy doesn't deserve employment.
Thanks. I wouldn't want to work for you. I wouldn't want to work for any company that didn't empower its employees to do their job. Besides, I'm much happier owning my own business anyway... its pretty liberating not having to argue with twits about the economy and debate my financial savvy when I want to install a free copy of Visual Studio Express so that I don't have to write software in Access.