Slashdot Mirror
iPhone App Store Rejects Find a New Home
eldavojohn writes "A new site called App Rejections (somewhat slashdotted already) aims to provide a home for misfit apps. With Apple offering no documents or discussions on the matter of application rejections, this site might become a popular place to pick forbidden fruit. Could a third party horn in on Apple's monopoly in the iPhone application market?"
oh, wait...
Not that the linked site appears to have much if anything to do with breaking the monopoly. The vast majority of iPhone apps are very inexpensive, so the only hope of making anything above hobby money as a developer is to be part of the Apple marketplace that offers tens of millions of potential customers. Not to mention the suspicion that people who jailbreak phones are likely to know how to pirate software as well, making them a less desirable market as well.
The site provides another forum to attempt to get Apple to reform its ways and to try to help each other figure out the sometimes murky meaning of the rejections. There's no revolution there. Until someone provides a real threat to Apple's hardware/software iPhone platform, it has no real motivation to mend its relationship with developers.
That said, karmic payoff may just bite them once there's that alternative.
"iPhone App Store Reject Stories Find a Home". Actual rejected apps are not available there, nor necessarily anywhere else.
You know that old phrase about those who don't know their history being doomed to repeat it?
I don't know what Apple is thinking. Up until now, it's all been good for them because of the lack of serious competition. With Android-based phones cranking up, how long will it be before Apple loses their market share due to these shenanigans?
The scary thing is that Apple has been in this EXACT situation before. They owned a large market share of the PC market way back when IBM PCs were too expensive for the common consumer to afford. They kept all of their hardware all locked up tight, with proprietary everything. As the cost of PCs came down as the hardware moved to commodity parts and the PC "clone wars" cranked up, Apple took a beating and damn near went out of business.
I already have friend who refuse to buy an iPhone because it's locked down so tightly. The two most common complaints I hear, in order, are: "I refuse to sign up for AT&T's service," and "I keep reading about how they won't let people publish their apps." The more they press this issue, the more they are setting themselves up for a spectacular failure. (And yes, I know people who have bought Android-based phones specifically because they don't like a company telling them what they can and can't run on hardware they paid good money for.)
Apple has been a cool company the past few years. I have an iPhone and a Mac (which I'm typing this comment from now, in fact). Still, if I owned stock in Apple, I'd be selling it about right now because they are moving in the exact opposite direction that the market is.
The summary implies that the website is going to be a home for rejected apps.
TFA shows that the site is there to collect information about why Apple rejected apps.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
There were guys who have just 60 days worth of living money and if some idiot intern rejects their application, they will be financially doomed.
This is what I would call "poor risk assessment skills". If you're depending on a capricious entity for your livelihood, I'd suggest a change of employment cause you sure as hell ain't gonna change Apple.
*Ahem* game releases became _fewer_. Countable and non-countable nouns. The more you know!
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
So who will be Google Guy? I mean, they have an actor who basically looks like his only sexual experience has been with his mom's pantyhose for Windows Guy. I'm thinking a flamboyant show-tune singing cross dresser or, even better, a guy in a trenchcoat with a heavy German accent who insists he's from Argentina.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
But isn't it UNamerican to circumvent the intentions of Apple Inc and do whatever you want for yourself?
I mean, by exactly doing this you are UNfriending yourself. Apple Inc will lose dollar$ because of this and will have less influence to set the desired norms, values, regulations, etc.
All of this might even be illegal. Yes, you are going against the will of the owner of the platform and you might be breaking certain laws while going this route.
Has this world become an area with revolutionarists?
Let's say Android is deployed on every smartphone in the world that isn't an iPhone. Some are large and fragile, some are gold-plated, some with touchscreens, some without, some with keyboards, et cetera et cetera. To do this, every manufacturer and carrier needs to write custom firmware, apps, and UI elements to work with their handsets, on top of Android, ... so let's just say they did, and they work just fine, and here we are.
How does this in any way constitute a threat to the iPhone?
Here's another scenario: Let's take every computer in the world, from the toughest HP rig to the crappiest mini-ATX, and make them all run the same OS. Let's call this rival OS something suitably generic, like, "windows". By sheer numbers alone, it will totally crush Apple and their puny OS X! Except it hasn't.
What magic sauce does Android promise that will counteract the crushing weight of a zillion competing handsets and their chump code monkeys clamoring to distinguish themselves with blingy but utterly unusable interfaces?
I'd really like to know.
Android was not something built on hype like the iphone.
The iPhone was not built on hype, though it benefitted from it. It was built on damned strong innovation.
Google, HTC and the other OHA members planed for Android to have a slow release and ramp up which is exactly what has happened. Many tech products use this approach, creating a small market of early adopters, using this market to refine the product and come back with an R2. Also this has the added advantage of creating a support network as well as word of mouth campaigns as opposed to Apple's "blanket of hype" marketing.
There you go again with that "hype" word. Actually Apple is so respected for their ability to innovate that they benefit strongly from the word-of-mouth you speak of. The iPhone made the cover of Time magazine, as the "best invention of the year", total cost to Apple: Zero. The Steve was named by Fortune magazine as the CEO of the decade. Cost: Zero. Those represent the top of a mountain of free press coverage that Google simply cannot match. So of course their strategy is different; but not by choice.
The plan with Android is not to flood the market at once with "sales explosions" but to slowly seep in and take market share piecemeal.
Yes, that's "the plan". It's the only strategy that stands a chance in hell of working.
Slow and steady wins the race. Analysts are predicting 2012 for Android to routinely outsell the iphone.
Analyst. The Gartner research firm, last month, to be specific. They did not reveal any details about how they arrived at their numbers. They did not say that Android would eat marketshare away from Apple, either. They claimed that, three years from now, about 14% of smartphones would run the Android OS, and that about 13% of smartphones would be sold by Apple.
Don't hang your hat on what one analyst says. Another research firm, Canalys, has already pegged the Apple smartphone marketshare at 17 percent in Q3 2009.
Even if the iPhone marketshare were to SHRINK in three years down to the same level that Gartner promises the Android, Apple would still be making one hell of a lot more money off smartphones than Google would. And do you have any idea how long three and a half years is in this market? The iPhone had not even been released three years ago. What's Apple going to be rolling out three years from NOW? If you think the Android platform is going to destroy or even damage Apple's smartphone business, you still Have Some Splainin' To Do.
For those playing along at home Apple's sales ebb and flow with the level of marketing Apple produces, right now the level of iphone marketing is low so iphones are not selling much
7.4 million units sold in Q3 2009. That is roughly twice the number of units sold running Windows Mobile, and dangerously close to the number of BlackBerries sold in the same time frame. Explain your usage of the phrase "not selling much".
as of July 2010 it will have been released in every western nation for two years which is the standard plan length in our nations. This is going to affect iphone sales a lot.
Explain how.
the iphone didn't take that much away from competitors, certainly the likes of RIM and NOKIA aren't hurting, the iphone hasn't taken much from the smart phone market, most of the iphones market share comes from the consumer phone market.
... Which is where the smartphone market gets its growth from. And this is exactly why RIM and Nokia _are_ worried. The majority of the customers newly attracted to the smartphone market are being diverted to iPhones. Nokia's smartphone sales figures have been flat for the last three years. That is what we in the biz call "hurting".
There were guys who have just 60 days worth of living money and if some idiot intern rejects their application, they will be financially doomed.
This is what I would call "poor risk assessment skills". If you're depending on a capricious entity for your livelihood, I'd suggest a change of employment cause you sure as hell ain't gonna change Apple.
I think that was the point. They thought Apple could be relied on. Now they know better...
Hint to Apple: you want exactly those people who are good SW guys but perhaps not the smartest as business people to do software for you. They're usually at least as interested in the software as the money they make off it, if not more. So they'll crank out cheap software for those who might buy Apple phones, thus providing Apple very cheap software base. You don't want to drive them to Android and later Maemo.
Though Maemo promises to be wicked cool from developer point of view, if you ask me :-)