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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.
> "...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
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
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 *
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
Shouldn't you be in school?
Rule of Slashdot #0: You and people like you are not representative of the larger population. - A.C.
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
Depends on if the apps are maintained, or any good, for that matter.
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.
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.
People who use the iPhone don't care about things like this.
And I'm going to put forward that the approval process has less to do with developers leaving than the fact that the iPhone app market is quite saturated and the Android market is not.
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
Perhaps they're leaving because there's 100,000 apps in the store, so many of which are out and out horrible that it drowns out any possible quality product unless you have a large marketing budget or can get lucky enough to crack one of the top 10 lists.
Or they might just prefer working in a more open enviroment, which is what it sounds like. As a software engineer, things like the iPhone approval process make me very nervous about investing quite a bit of time and money into a project, especially if the process is overly opaque. I've worked with large corporations on getting software approved before, and usually it is more of a cooperative process.
cellphone
2012 the year Linux accepts it's place in the computer world. Not a troll just a realist. I was an early fan and saw the potential of Linux. For at least ten of those years I have constantly heard that Linux is going to became users friendly and easy to use, install and maintain. I've finally become a realist and accepted Linux has found it's place and it isn't going to change. It's an exceptional server and works great as a workstation in companies large enough to have dedicated support people. It's great for tinkerers and has a lot of power and flexibility for the hobbyist and power users. For the average user it simply isn't going to happen. Unless an Apple sized company embraces it and puts the resources into bringing it mainstream there are simply too many problems for regular people to deal with. Like I say I was an early fan but people waiting for it to take over are kidding themselves. I'm a big fan of the open source model but it also shows it's limitations the fact that there simply aren't enough people contributing to write the drivers needed to support all the hardware out there and software developers are caught in the catch-22 of developing for a platform few people use but could be bigger if there was more software. There will always be support much as Unix never went away and it still has the potential to go mainstream I just wouldn't hold my breath. Ironically as much venom as there tends to be towards Mac it's probably the closest you are likely to see in the mainstream to Linux. I still consider it a risky but critical move when Apple developed OSX. It cost them some customer support early on but there is no way Mac would be as big as it is now without OSX. Linux absolutely could do a Mac like growth but until some one with deep pockets takes it on it's pretty much found it's market share. At least in the US and most of the developed world.
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.
There may be 100,000 apps, but 95% of those are useless crap and of the remaining 5%, 80% of THOSE tend to duplicate each other's functionality. Whether Android or any other phone can compete in sheer numbers isn't really relevant so long as it covers the main types of apps people want.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
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
Yes! I hope they all flock to Maemo to develop for the awesome Nokia N900 and its children and competitors.
-- Cheers!
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.
People who use the iPhone don't care about things like this.
I use an iPhone, and I _do_ care. iPhone started promising, but Apple killed several apps I wanted. Now the good devs are leaving for Android? I may buy a droid or droid++ next year.
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.
While you are doing the math....
A few months back it surfaced that a Pakistani company was submitting a couple apps a DAY... and Apple was approving them. They were $5 apps which were complete garbage, like "WWF News" where they would steal wrestling news off the web, violating copyrights, and package it as an app. With app names designed to draw in customers they could count on at least some sales, and Apple no doubt took a cut, for apps that were complete garbage. Before Apple finally developed a clue and took them down for copyright infringement they had something like 800 apps on the app store. There was another company doing the same thing with something approaching a 1000 apps.
So when everyone throws out that 100,000 apps number, do the math, and realize a large percentage of those are garbage.
The other moral of this tale is that Apple is blocking and frustrating apps trying to do useful things including Google Voice while they were gleefully approving two apps a day, and taking a cut, from a company that was doing NOTHING but ripping people off. That is the definition of "arbitrary".
@de_machina
"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.
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.
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
I was going to attempt an insightful and informed response...
But I am an early fan, and see the potential of paragraphs.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
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.
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
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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
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
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
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.
Ok, whatever, you happen to care. MOST (as in 99%) people don't.
I hate when someone around always chimes in "BUT NOT MEEEEE!", as though anyone on Slashdot is representative of a majority in any population outside of programming, lolcats, and Soviet Russia jokes.
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
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.
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.
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.
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"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
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
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.
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.