Well, Apple has already gotten some of our money. We purchased some Macs solely to develop an iPhone application for one of our endeavors. Now, though-- given the lag with even getting approval (so we can get to the stage of installing a test app on test phones), we're rapidly losing excitement about investing in the project.
And then there's this kicker-- once our team spends time developing it, there's a chance it won't even be allowed. Great!
He doesn't really mention in his post the fun fact that you've got to pay a fee so Apple can review/reject your app. Definitely not feeling warm and fuzzy about the investment so far.
"He doesn't really mention in his post the fun fact that you've got to pay a fee so Apple can review/reject your app. Definitely not feeling warm and fuzzy about the investment so far."
You'd rather they get flooded with an absolute ton of crap? The fee isn't _that_ much and it separates the boys from the men, so to speak.
We already are being flooded with absolute crap! The store is full of mostly toys and 'concept' apps. And to think you have to pay for some of those (remember the several incarnations of 'iPhone Flash Light' both paid and unpaid?). I hope Apple fail to dominate this area of the market as they treat both their end users and developers with the utmost disdain.
Nah, I'm not opposed to that, really. Ideally they'd have enough reviewers to handle that, though. A somewhat-non-profit like Mozilla handles it for Firefox extensions.
For us, the annoyance is just that we have to wait on them for multiple steps in the process when there's no guarantee they'll even post a produced app to the store.
We'll hedge our bets, though, and make a slightly useful app to see how annoying the process is, and wait for our larger app afterwards.
So far, we've been waiting over a week just to get into the program far enough to be able to legitimately put the app on our test iPhones. The app we're working on is worthless in the simulator, so to even debug it we need to get it on the phone itself. Waiting a few weeks to even debug your app is a bit demotivating. I whine here partly as a word of caution to anyone on a tight schedule.
Why not jailbreak? It's trivial, pretty much risk-free (you can always fully restore) and you are doing it only for testing this app -- and only until Apple approves you. You can at least make sure you get your app all debugged by the time other things fall in place!
Wow, that's really dissapointing to hear, that you have to get approval for an app before you can even test it on your own phone.
Do you get the impression that this is actually a stage for them to keep out what they consider bad products or is it just a bandwith problem with their approval process?
The problem is they are denying apps that aren't crap and accepting ones that are. On top of that the App Store is the only way to sell your app, so if they deny your app you have no chance at success. If the app store were more like the music store and was a non-exclusive sales channel it wouldn't be that big of a deal.
Apple WILL change their tune, and the more users and developers complain and pressure them, the faster they will change their tune.
We know Apple's excuses ("we can't let you have open access, because someone might bad apps and we need to protect our users from themselves") are bullshit. Their competitors have had more open SDKs for years and none of Apple's doomsday scenarios have come to pass.
I'm personally hoping that when Adroid comes out with its own app store and open platform, it will finally convince people to stop excusing Apple's behaviour.
As for me, I hope somebody builds a spectacular killer app for jailbroken iPhones so that part of the economy gets opened up. I love my iPhone and programming for it way too much.
Also, this dude seems to belong to the typical "elitist" Mac people group. "crapware written by hobbyist students" -- WTF! A student won the official Apple competition for best Mac / iPhone app or something like it.
A friend who played with the new Android device say that there's no way it's comparable to the iPhone... but yes, this one device isn't what Android is about.
Android looks like a serious threat. The big question is how will google treat the Android developers.
Phone vendors don't like developers massing around with their devices, users do like it.
The vendor that will reach the finish line first will be the one that will produce a stable product with a solid API where 3rd party software won't damage the phone performance.
If my theory is correct at the moment RIM (Blackberry) are in front.
Palm's products were stable, with a good developer environment, but the hardware itself started to look ancient compared to the PDAs that HP and others were offering at the time.
Seems like Palm did the software part great, and failed majorly on keeping the hardware up to date (they missed the boat or were late to the party on flash memory cards, color screens, and wireless, that I can remember anyway).
I disagree with almost every point. Palm had flash memory, color screens, and wireless before, or with, everyone else. (I do concede that they made incremental hardware "improvements" with every new Treo, instead of researching and adding innovative features.)
On the other hand, Palm did not add features to their operating system for what must be 7 years now. They did go up a version by adding 320x320 resolution support, but it was more of a hack than anything else. Each individual component (app, database) was still limited to 64k in size from what I recall. Palm was run by business people (more so than Android and the iPhone have since) who thought incremental updates of screen and camera resolution and doubling the onboard memory from 32MB to 64MB were good enough improvements each year.
Palm also did not have a Blackberry-like push e-mail app until maybe two years ago (and even that was because of a third party e-mail app; the default app that Palm owned and installed with every Treo did not even support IMAP.) But around the same time as adding IMAP support by purchasing the rights to a 3rd party e-mail client, they decided to start supporting Microsoft Exchange and running Windows Mobile on half of their new devices every year.
What happened? Apple fans originally loved PalmOS because it wasn't Microsoft. It was based on Apple's Newton. Secondly, the Palms worked better with Apple computers than Microsoft's devices did. Third, supporting the Palm could prevent Microsoft from dominating the mobile world on top of the PC world. Finally, Palm "sold out" and went with Windows Mobile, instead of improving or rewriting their aging operating system.
With the iPhone, Mac lovers could now get a real, current Apple product. I think that was the greatest gift to Mac users and Palm fans who were getting sick of Palm's insignificant incremental improvements.
Now if by software you mean the freedom anyone has to write and distribute a 3rd party app for a Palm device, then yes, they are still the easiest to release apps for. A developer doesn't need anybody's permission except that of the user themselves. But as far as the software PalmOS created and owned--such as the operating system and mail client--only minor improvements were made over the past seven years.
If I remember correctly there was a great deal of hope that Palm would turn-around when it acquired Be. They royally messed up the next-gen OS that they created using the BeOS/BeIA properties they acquired in a move that reminded me of Apple's Copeland fiasco.
Reminds me of Apple's early days, when they didn't have an easy way for third parties to license their apps, their OS ended up without quality applications, and then Windows 3.1 ate their lunch... Anyone remember AmiPro?
> Loudly and conspicuously hire an App Store Evangelist
I agree, but I'd be surprised if we see it happen. Evangelists are needed all over the place and yet so few companies bother to hire any or attempt any serious relationships on social media and the like. Apple are also not known for their openness in situations like this. A lack of information gives them some sort of advantage, I guess.
Apple has other evangelists on the payroll already. Some examples: User Interface, Graphics and Media, Developer Tools, Frameworks.
These evangelists have often helped developers shed more light on bugs against Mac OS X which are blocking the shipping of apps. Also, they're often a great first-line contact at Apple for getting help from Apple's engineers outside of WWDC.
To get an additional App Store contact that could field developers' questions about apps that have been rejected with little or no explanation would be nice.
The small group of evangelists Apple already has on the payroll is spread quite thinly between their Mac OS X, and now iPhone, responsibilities as it is.
I suspect developers are already talking their ears off about App Store issues, and I bet Fraser's wish could likely come true eventually. Whether it's in the form of a separate App Store evangelist, or a new iPhone-specific team of evangelists that can also help with shedding light on the App Store process, it'd be a huge improvement.
I know of applications that have been rejected not because they sucked, but because they were similar to ones that already existed.
It's bad for long-term innovation, but maybe it's good for the platform by not confusing users. I personally feel it's legitimate for open platforms to arbitrarily restrict default visibility, but not for them to restrict distribution.
Wow, I wasn't aware that they were denying apps that are "similar" to other apps already approved. That eliminates the evolution that comes with capitalism. Very bad.
Anytime your work needs approval to be live, you are in big trouble.
The problem is not Apple. The issue is the mobile industry. Everyone screams the Iphone is an open platform, but if you truly look at it, it is not significantly different.
You still have to go to an approval process and your application cannot compete with any Apple applications or future applications.
You're wrong, it is Apple. And not only are you wrong, you are provably wrong.
Go ahead and write a pull-my-finger app for one of Apple's competitors (Blackberry or WinMo) and no one will stop you from releasing it on your target devices.
The problem is not apple. The problem is the entire mobile industry
About 5 years ago I set out to do my first mobile startup. Using RSS to SMS to provide near real time traffic updates. In the beginning the problem was to get a shortcode and SMS gateway provider. No possible way for a startup with little money to directly hook to the carrier gateway.
Then I said forget it, let's morphe it a bit and distribute games for small time developers. Cool. I already knew about 6 or 7 games developers who committed to let the startup distribute their games, but we quickly found the pain because some carriers did not allow downloads unless you went thorugh their certification program.
I also built a mobile marketing tool to help merchants geo-target their offerings. Cool. But qucikly enough you find that you have to continuously pay for each SMS, hence there was no sealing (at least not at the stage I was in) and you had to depend on a third party that can shut you down at any given time. Heck even Twitter had its service turned down by T-mobile for a short amount of time.
Anyway you go in the mobile industry, save one, you are dealing with restrictions. That is why I am saying the problem is not JUST Apple. It is the industry in general. If you create apps you will sooner or later hit a barrier. In one case the barrier will be Apple, in an other it will be your SMS gateway provider, in an other it will be T-Mobile, in another it will be BlackBerry certificates.
That is not to say there is no way around. There are applications that are truly independent of carrier rules or mobile platforms. Applications that you write once and they work on every cell phones, every carrier. It is just that developers want to bet on their apps being approved all the way to the top, or they think that if they hit a tiny 1% of the market they will make it big.
This is a critical point that too many people here miss. If Apple wants its phone to be a "smartphone" and compete against another smartphones, then it will be compared to its current peers, NOT against cheapo feature phones and definitely not feature phones from 5 years ago.
When you do start comparing the iPhone to its current competitors, none of what you said makes sense. To go over it quickly.
-You can use SMS gateways that charge about 4cents a text.
-You don't have to use SMS at all. You can make an app that either polls a server or listens for pushed data.
- "Blackberry certificates" are an $20 ID, which you only need to use internal APIs. At no point will RIM place any restrictions on what you can do with its powerful SDK.
If you set out to develop a BB app, and no point will you have to worry about your app making through some byzantine bureaucracy and whether or not it can be brought to market. It'll be a good day when you can say the same of the iPhone.
In simple words. There is no standard in the mobile industry for application developers. You have to tackle iphone and bb differetnly. You have to tackle ATT and Verizon differently.
My point is not that Apple is more open than others. That still does not make it standard.
Yes you can build apps that polls a server etc..., but again when building apps, there is no standard. Iphone apps do not work on Symbian phones. What kind of open is that?
BB is not truly open either. Maybe this has changed by now, but we could not get to collect SMS. How open is that?
The point I am trying to make is that developers should not be suprised where there apps are shut down by the SMS gateway provider, or the carrier, or Apple, or BB, or ......
Developers should focus on applications that they can write once and can deploy everywhere.
That's kinda like complaining that there is no standard in the desktop software industry, because you know.. UNIX developers and Windows developers don't have the same API. That's rather silly.
Quite simply, there are two tiers in the mobile industry now: smartphones and feature phones. On the feature phone tier, having to jump through bullshit hoops was and still is standard - getting certificates from the carrier, worrying about SMS, etc. On the smartphone, there are far, far fewer limitations - companies like Palm and RIM don't shutdown apps, and the carrier's control does not extend beyond perhaps discriminating types of data traffic (ie, email vs 3rd party data).
Apple's SDK policies make the iPhone far closer to the restrictions feature phones have than to smartphones the iPhone is actually sold against (ie BB Bold).
You cannot compare developing for desktop with developing for mobile.
Saying it is simple shows me that you do not have much experience creating mobile applications.
If you develop for windows I assume it will work in every country, for every machine that runs windows, regardless of the machine manufacturer and the insternet service provider. Write once deploy nearly everywhere. Try that with mobile apps.
If you develop for Symbian phones, although one app may work on T-mobile UK networks, it may not work for T-mobile in the US.
It is anything and everything but simple.
EDIT: I am saying this after tools we had built using Twitter SMS API, NMS SMS API, Kannel, 41411 SMS API,as well as working on Mobile IM for Symbian, Call Interceptor for Brew, CallBack for all platforms including an Iphone web app, Backup application, Mobile Device Management Servers for Symbian and Brew, Infinite number of mobile games etc....All products being deployed in every continent save Australia. In every single case clients find it to be a pain. I wish writing and deploying mobile apps were as easy as it is for desktop apps.
I was not reffering to this particular case. I was reffering to applications being shut down left and right by Apple, T-Mobile, Blackberry etc...
The mobile industry roadmap is fundamentally hard to comprehend and if you play it in long enough you will not be surprised when Apple shuts down app A or app B because you knew from the get go that this illusion of the Iphone being open is just that.
The difference being you don't have to be on the official carrier deck to sell an app for BlackBerry/Symbian/Windows Mobile. You have to be on the App Store to sell an iPhone app.
You don't need approval for Symbian, Java or Windows Mobile applications. I doubt anyone would develop for Symbian if the only way to install applications was through a "Nokia store".
I'm not saying that what Apple does is bad, because a company can do whatever they want (so long as they're not a de facto monopoly). But it seems to be more of an Apple problem, and not a problem with the mobile industry.
* iPhone completely blocks free software. Developers must pay a tax to Apple, who becomes the sole authority over what can and can't be on everyone's phones.
* iPhone endorses and supports Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) technology.
* iPhone exposes your whereabouts and provides ways for others to track you without your knowledge.
* iPhone won't play patent- and DRM-free formats like Ogg Vorbis and Theora.
* iPhone is not the only option. There are better alternatives on the horizon that respect your freedom, don't spy on you, play free media formats, and let you use free software -- like the FreeRunner.
Personally I dont care about apps! There are a flood of them now and it seems reminiscent of all the Facebook apps that flooded that network - not for the better.
I just want an Internet mobile device that provides the full net experience in the palm of my hands; FLASH & VoiP access!
Has anyone here played with an OpenMoko ? I have examined one, but have so far avoided putting out the cash to buy one.
I have always disliked the cultist and elitist aspects of Job's company. I see Apple as no better, and possibly worse, than Gate's company.
I think, that if you are trying to make money to live the next 3 years comfortably, writing iPhone apps may be the way to go; but if you want there to be a world where your great-grand kids live comfortably writing apps for an open tri-corder from their apartments in a Stanford torus at one of the Earth-Moon Lagrangian points, then you write apps for the OpenMoko and feed yourself with a day job.
You're talking to an audience of people that decide something's win or fail the day it comes out. Good chance being persuasive here, even if your point is accurate.
And comparing these two services is stupid. They're entirely different, they have two different business strategies. Apple and Google are not competing directly, and that'll be reflected in the developers who flock to either side (or to both).
Being on a phone with a dedicated keypad will help more than any software. Android's strength is largely not software. The software only has to be passable, and there's no way the Alliance will let it not be that.
Are you serious? All Android is is software. It just happens to support a lot of different types of hardware, and the first phone has a dedicated keyboard. And saying it will help more than anything is certainly a matter of your opinion.
At the end of the day, the only thing that matters is the experience-- a combination of the software, the hardware, and the network.
It's mostly hardware/network though. People buy phones for many different reasons, which necessitates many different form factors. For instance, someone who actually used their phone as a phone would be ill-served by an iPhone, but not by some Android units. Same with people who do a lot of emailing/texting.
This is getting a little boring. Obviously Apple are going to reject apps that are a little too close to their existing apps, or might cause offense, or dumb down their product.
They built it, they own the ecosystem, so they get to decide.
That's stupid. If someone makes a better podcatcher than Apple for the iPhone, the iPhone does podcasting better than before which sells more iPhones, which makes Apple richer. I don't see why it's such a threat.
Any time you implement a feature for a product you have to do it in a way that can't possibly please everyone. If you let your developers implement alternative versions, it's conceivable you could get close to pleasing everyone, which makes your product better because it then covers obscure use cases that you can't afford to deal with. It becomes as if third parties are developing the product for you for free.
They've changed their tune ever since the iPod (hmm unintentional pun). A huge industry exists to make iPod compatible products. Apple is never going to make an iDJ.
Someone is always going to bitch about apple. period.
Hypothetical example: What if apple is already working on a better podcasting app that works on the iphone, yet they _don't_ reject any apps?
Then, when their podcasting app comes out and kills off the competitors (usually because it is free--but also because they write damn good apps), then some author is going to bitch about how apple targeted them and killed their app. Sounding like that whiny sandvox guy doesn't do anyone any good.
Maybe... just maybe... this is the better alternative.
Personally, I'm going to write the quickest/smallest app I can that gets the 1.0 beta 1 idea into form. I'll apply with that. If I get accepted, great. I'll pump out a lot of releases getting it to 1.0 final. If not? I didn't lose that much time/effort.
I agree, complaining about it won't change it unless apple has a genuine economic incentive.
personally, I don't see whats particularly troublesome about the current policy. Granted, I'm focusing moreso on cooking up apps that are genuinely distinct in functionality to minimize the need to focus on marketing to begin with.
After the first paragraph of reading this, all I could think of was "holy crap, this person has really just written every excuse in the book NOT to write iPhone apps."
There are a million excuses to not diet and exercise, to not do a startup, and to not do anything in life. Your job as an entrepreneur is to work around the obstacles. Give Apple an app that they can't afford to reject. Don't do anything stupid that would cause your app to get rejected.
Yes, better rules can always be written, but your job is to deliver kick ass apps to the public. GET 'R DONE!
You have a great go-get-'em attitude, but the issue isn't remotely similar to the question of whether or not to diet and exercise. It's more like, "Should I spend huge amounts of time and effort on diet and exercise in order to enter this bodybuilding competition, only to be disqualified at the last minute because I look too much like the competition judge's nephew?"
There is a bit of truth in it. Not necessarily the comparison to a diet, but still.
Becoming indignant & saying 'I'm out' is not useful. There's a potential snag here. It is a man made snag that's unfair, unreasonable or whatever. But that doesn't mean the opportunity isn't there. It's not really more of a reason not to develop then any other reason that isn't unfair: too hard, too much competition, etc. The only difference is emotional.
The difference is that it's unpredictable, based on Apple's whims. If they said "Hey, here is a list of apps we won't accept from third party developers because we consider them to be competitive," that would be one thing. But as it stands, we don't even know where the line in the sand is, because the line is based on Apple's best interests, not those of the developers. Dozens of developers have released apps that duplicate (and improve upon) the functionality of the built-in Notes app, but when someone writes an app for podcast streaming (which the iPhone does not already offer, but which I'm sure they're planning on adding eventually), Apple nixes it. It's not just difficult, it's demoralizing.
You hit it on the head. Players leave rigged markets once they get burned once or twice, and pretty soon the market freezes up altogether.
Withdrawing from iPhone app development is the rational choice. There are other things developers like the author can work on with similar payoffs, but more predictable risks.
just because someone could work around apple's restrictive rules, that doesn't mean that iphone apps are the best use of a developer's time.
it looked like a pretty good deal to me at first. possibly as big of a gold rush as the original dos days. given all the hassles and rules, i'm not nearly so enthusiastic as i once was.
Have you read past the first paragraph though? His point is that Apple's arbirtary rejection of some applications undermines confidence and will lead to there being no serious investment undertaken by third party developer. If you don't control the outcome you might as well not start the work.
