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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."
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.
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
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.
But if you care about your sanity, or the sanity of your users, you are shit out of luck with Access. There is a mass exodus occurring with Access Runtime developers to .NET. Join them and be free to code your own way, in your favourite language. With SQL and .NET Express, there is really no excuse for writing apps that way anymore.
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.
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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.
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