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Apple Finally Approves Google+ App For iPhone
CWmike writes "Apple approved the Google+ app for the iPhone on Tuesday, and posted it to the App Store. It's unclear whether Google has created an iPad-specific app. Two weeks ago, a Google employee said that the company had submitted Google+ to the App Store ... on July 4. According to that timeline, Google's app took twice as long as the majority of submitted apps to win Apple's approval."
Seriously, how is this even remotely news? Why would Apple not approve Google+ app when there are Facebook app and tons of other social networks apps? Why would it be important to note that it took twice as long as statistically approval process takes, especially when there were major holidays during that timeframe? Please explain me. It's not like Apple has any kind of relationship with Facebook. Microsoft does, and I would still be fairly certain that even Microsoft would accept it to Windows Phone 7 app store.
Oh, it's ComputerWorld and I guess they needed some visitors from slashdot again.
I understand Apple's philosophy of only allowing the best apps in their istore. However, what they don't realise is that exactly the same can be achieved with decent rating system if it's done relatively well (Slashdot, or download.com though not perfect, spring to mind). That way, people can choose the best, and we don't have a mild form of censorship. It also cuts out the maintenance.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
Does not support or work on iPod Touch or iPad. Makes this app completely worthless to me. The rest of Google's apps support them...why the *$#( doesn't this?
I don't know how big of a factor it is in the US, but July is prime vacation time here in Sweden, probably 70+% of the office I work at is on vacation.. It wouldn't surprise me if something like that cause the delay, probably doesn't have anything to do with policy, Apple doesn't have a competing social network after al...
"It's unclear whether Google has created an iPad-specific app."
Journalism at its best. What's so hard about going into the app store, and searching for it in iPad apps?
"It's unclear whether the pope is Catholic" might well be an equivalent question.
Boo-urns, no iPad/iPod Touch version. Why?
Magic doesn't work in my presence. My power of disbelief is too strong.
We've had several apps awaiting approval the last weeks, and it all seems to average out to around 10-20 days. So it's not some special delay for Google. My guess is that they're swamped with updates for Mac OS apps before Lion hits tomorrow.
I loathe Apple. There's been evidence time and again of their questionable (to put it mildly) business tactics. However, I fail to see why this matters in any way whatsoever. In the end, Apple still approved it. Sure, they took a while. Perhaps there was a reason? They could just pull a Facebook and try to impede G+ by not allowing it at all (though in the end it wouldn't do much). ...or we can all be outraged in typical /. fashion at how evil this corporation is, regardless how pedantic the reason might be.
Yeah, let's go with that.
the author clearly states his bias - the name of the blog is called "Android Power". His bio states he's out to irk apple fans.
there is no information in the article whether the delay is Apple's fault or Google's fault. Yes, you can have delays in the approval process of your own doing, not because of a conspiracy that Apple caused.
And all in all, google+ is not even a service that's available to the majority of people. It's in limited beta, meaning that the affected user base who didn't have access to the "delayed" client is small.
Why would it be important to note that it took twice as long as statistically approval process takes, especially when there were major holidays during that timeframe?
The app was submitted ON the 4th. What "major holidays" were from July 4th to today?
It's not like Apple has any kind of relationship with Facebook. Microsoft does, and I would still be fairly certain that even Microsoft would accept it to Windows Phone 7 app store.
Who said it's about Apple's relationship with Facebook? It's about Apple's antagonistic relationship with Google (historically over patents and Google Voice):
http://google.com/search?q=apple+google+lawsuit
http://google.com/search?q=Apple+google+Voice
Please help metamoderate.
2 people died during the wait... See then it would be news :P
Slashdot must be hard up on money or something to post such an incendiary topic title?
2 weeks from submissions to Apple to release is hardly worthy of a "FINALLY", 2 weeks is about the normal lenth of time for new app review by Apple.
By real computer I assume you mean overpriced POS.
Unless you are going to argue that a $1,000 custom-built gaming pc isn't a real computer.
Just a wild guess, but the often hyped (but very real) rivalry between Google and Apple might have people assuming that Apple would play underhanded in the app approval process. Now, we know that's just silly; Apple only plays dirty when it comes copyright claims.
Maybe it took so long to get through because the Apple people kept having it crash on them.
I experienced my first crash using the Google+ app for 2 min... I mean... I know Google is the "Beta" Company but come on now! Between the few friends I have on Google+ with iPhones, and myself, I think we've racked up maybe 10 to 15 crashes on the first afternoon of use. We've also experienced issues with it properly updating comments and such.
Hopefully they will get crackin and improve the stability quickly.
DEMETRIUS: Villain, what hast thou done?
AARON: Villain, I have done thy mother.
Shakespeare invents 'your mom'
I was a nice social network we used to have before they let the riff-raff in.
ok to be fair i am using a gen 2 mc model but i am runing ios 4.2.1 so again I say WTF, I really like google+ but since i mainly use my touch for facebook linkedin twitter and wordpress, i really don't want to have to use the mobile web page all the time. but I guess I am just whining.
Get back to your moms basement and fiddle with your clock speed while I fiddle with this hot blonde student I picked up at Starbucks whilst surfing on my Mac Book Pro.
Enjoy your hot blonde student. I'm sure he can make you forget the shame of being one of Steve's good little lemmings. Maybe one day's you'll be able to think for yourself. Nah - not a chance.
Not available on the Canadian app store. Is it only in the US?
This is ridiculous.
has google submitted a ipad app?
So I was looking at the program on my iPhone and ready to download it when it suddenly disappeared from the store. That was about 3 hours ago when 400 users said it seemed OK.
Now it's back at the store and I'm downloading it. About 900 users gave it the same average (3 of 5 stars).
I have no idea what I'll do with it, but I suppose it's a bit of history that I can tell the grandchildren I was a part of. Damn shame I missed Woodstock.
Woohoo, it's here! And it wants a username and password and god knows what else. Do I really want this? I can still tell people that I had it on that first day on the iPhone, without having to actually use it.
OK, you're probably thinking I'm silly. Well f you. You probably do and think very similar things.
...omphaloskepsis often...
Well, just to give you an idea, there are already over 10M G+ users. While I wouldn't put them at the level of FaceBook or Twitter, that is quite the userbase, built in a matter of weeks. There have already been predictions of 20M by next weekend, 100M+ by years end. I wouldn't call the user base small at all, based on these figures and predictions. Hell, my parents are already on Google+, while joining FB just this year.
God, I wish there were an extremely rare +6, Insightful mod for posts like this, something that would automatically promote a voice of reason up to the top of all the other comments. The delays are all about Lion, not some sort of Jobsian conspiracy against Google... but Slashdotters, being Slashdotters, won't let something like a new operating system being released tomorrow stand in the way of a good conspiracy theory about delaying and hindering Google+.
I bet it's cause Apple decided to pick thru the code line by line in a desperate attempt to find something, anything they could use against Google -- either a reason to deny the app or even better, sue them for some patent or copyright infringement.
Cause y'know, if you can't beat 'em, sue 'em.
"Apple approved the Google+ app for the iPhone on Tuesday, and posted it to the App Store. It's unclear whether Google has created an iPad-specific app. Two weeks ago, a Google employee said that the company had submitted Google+ to the App Store ... on July 4. According to that timeline, Google's app took twice as long as the majority of submitted apps to win Apple's approval."
Yea, and if you had even a quarter of a clue you'd know why ... the submission system is backed up with apps being recertified for OS X 10.7.
ALL APPS are taking a long time right now, I also had an app approved yesterday, that was submitted on the 8th of July, and its a trivial silly game thingy with no useful functionality that would require testing.
The submission queue always gets backed up when a new OS release comes out. In a few months, when they start rectifying for iOS 5, you'll see the exact same sort of thing.
Considering even the most trivial of apps now days wait several days to a couple weeks to START the process of being reviewed after submission, then take a minimum of a week on average for a normal review, I'm not entirely sure where any of the statements made in the summary came from ... certainly not from any basis in reality or on fact.
It blows me away how so many people that should be 'in the know' are utterly ignorant of the environment they work in.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
And all in all, google+ is not even a service that's available to the majority of people. It's in limited beta, meaning that the affected user base who didn't have access to the "delayed" client is small.
Invitations are open, anyone of the 950.000+ people who are on there can get you in. That's not what I call limited.
Our app took 142 days to be approved. It's a basic financial data app for a large-ish financial data firm in NYC and does nothing more than allow you to access content and our site via the app when the user is logged in.
When we got rejected, it was for violating a rule that all purchases and subscriptions had to go through the Apple in app purchasing system, which was kind of ridiculous. We sell 10,000 seat licenses to large banks -- nobody is going to pay for that with a Visa through their iTunes account. Plus, you literally couldn't do anything with the app until you logged in through our service, so it was clear we were bringing all the users. But they wouldn't budge.
In the end, they requested we remove any sort of link to pages within our platform (which removed a ton of functionality we were counting on) in order to release it. So, thanks Apple. I love basically everything about that company but their app review policies make zero-point-none sense and the result is that we made a shitty app and are playing catch up to rewrite many of our existing webpages in Objective C.
Any other horror stories out there about this?
We don't actually know how long it too to approve the Google+ app anyway. As apps are not automatically made available when Apple approves them.
And as a matter of fact, there was two versions of the Google+ app inside of a hour. So there is the possibility of them having submitted a second version and waiting for that one to be approved - and then by accident releasing the older version first.
Google also pushed an update for the app the same day it was released and it was approved in a couple hours. Much faster than the typical update approval.