

Joe Hewitt's take on the iphone App Store - geeko
http://joehewitt.com/post/innocent-until-proven-guilty/

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ryanwaggoner
_Besides, when I have a problem with a friend, I don't threaten to boycott our
friendship until they change, so I'm not going to do that to Apple either._

Apple is not your friend. Friends are people, not organizations.

Good post otherwise. Though I do wonder if Apple is legally obligated in some
way to at least show that they have made a good faith effort to review
applications that they are distributing. If there was no review process and
people were distributing kiddie porn apps, could Apple be held legally
responsible?

~~~
unalone
Not to get into corporate personage, but corporations can still be benevolent
or malevolent, friendly or hostile. I don't know if I'd call _Apple_ friendly
- they're a bit aloof to be friends - but a company like Pixar I'd readily
call a friend.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
"Friendly" is distinctly different from "a friend."

 _a company like Pixar I'd readily call a friend._

I love Pixar, but they're not my friend, and they're not your friend, for at
least three reasons:

1\. Pixar, like all public companies, exists for one purpose: to make a
profit. In fact, they have a fiduciary responsibility to their owners to
pursue this purpose and if they don't, they can be sued.

2\. Pixar is an organization made up of thousands of people. It's impossible
for a group that's made up of thousands of conscious and self-determinant
humans to be your friend. You might as well say that North Dakota is your
friend.

3\. Pixar does not know who you are. They do not know your name, what kind of
ice cream you like, or why you enjoy riding a bicycle built for two. And to
the extent that they do have any of this knowledge, it's referred to as data
and is used in pursuit of the goals described in #1.

Pixar is not your friend.

~~~
unalone
Touché.

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jsankey
_No matter how annoyed I get, I will not stop developing for Apple's platforms
or using Apple's products as long as they continue to produce the best stuff
on the market._

And if all developers take this attitude, why would Apple listen to the very
sort of complaints this post makes? At some point you have to stand up for
yourself if you want to be heard.

~~~
colinplamondon
This is capitalism, not Developer's Rights Day. We don't like how Apple
conducts their marketplace so we're porting to other platforms while
continuing to profit off the iPhone and update our apps on it.

This shit's not rocket science- Apple is evil, their platform is profitable,
plan accordingly.

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jawngee
The problem is when you publish to the app store, you are - in essence -
partnering with Apple and I'd imagine you would examine any partnership before
consenting to it.

Furthermore, there are real liability issues here for Apple. To assume they
blindly publish anything that comes their way puts them at pretty serious
risk.

Due to the way the app store is structured, the review process is required.
That said, judging for content versus judging for bad code are entirely
different things and I personally don't think Apple should be incorporating
content vetting into their process.

Finally, Apple should provide the ability for third parties to supply
applications outside of the App Store ecosphere. I've said it before, but it
makes no sense to me that the iPhone is treated any differently than a laptop
when the only massive difference between the two is the 3G chip and access to
the cellular network. Could you imagine your laptop locked down in that way?
It wouldn't sell. So why the disconnect with the iPhone? I don't know.

~~~
ghshephard
"only massive difference between the two is the 3G chip and..."

[http://www.teknobites.com/2009/08/24/nokia-launches-
booklet-...](http://www.teknobites.com/2009/08/24/nokia-launches-
booklet-3g-mini-laptop/)

------
oldgregg
This has nothing to do with liability-- they take on much MORE liability by
reviewing than just being an open platform. It has more to do with stopping
any applications that threaten revenue in any way-- and while you could have
some kind of app recall process for violaters, since there is no standard it
gets even more messy. They made their bed and now they can die in it for all I
care. Someday, in our rocking chairs, we'll fondly remember the "good ol days"
of open software under microsoft. Phhht.

Thank goodness for android... really good devices are only now hitting the
market and honestly android apps will catch up very quickly. The reality is
that probably only 100 apps account for 95% of all ihpone app usage. In the
long tail there are a lot more java developers out there than OjC.

HTC Hero drops in a couple weeks. Nice.

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timdorr
Apple's never going to get rid of the review process. Their corporate culture
demands complete control of their system too much for that to ever happen.
Thanks, Steve Jobs....

However, what I would like to see (and I'd love some comments on this, since I
know I haven't thought it through completely) is Apple allow one to sell their
app through the store, but not list it in iTunes or the App Store app. That
would leave the marketing solely up to the developer, and Apple could keep
their sanitized image to the public. Joe's right about apps being sandboxed,
so it would be unlikely that any malware app would make it into there. As it
is, if someone found an exploit right now they could simply timebomb it and
submit to Apple to wait for it after they've reviewed it. So, safety isn't
really a concern here. It's more of a PR issue.

Thoughts?

(P.S. Commenting at 4am is not recommended. Sorry if none of this makes any
sense.)

~~~
mosburger
Another alternative might be to support a sort-of "two tier" system, where
users could see whether or not an app got the Apple "seal of approval" before
downloading it.

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maxklein
The problem is that if the review process is removed, there will be NO MORE
DEVELOPERS on the platform. You know why? Because spammers will overrun the
store and make earning money from the store next to impossible.

~~~
probablycorey
Yeah, that's the same reason why nobody makes money or develops for the
internet.

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movix
I really agree with the points raised in the article, but as most of the other
replies state, you are entering into a business relatioship with them , so yes
they do have to review what you submit - fair enough.

What I've never understood is how they intend to scale the review process.
With about 50,000 apps so far, and 40 reviewers (I believe that's how many
there are) already, it must be a pretty intense task. How are they going to
deal with this when they're getting ten or a hundred times as many submissions
as they are now? In terms of business, they have to scale and grow the App
Store continuously, so obviously they just employ more reviewers, but is this
a viable and logical route?

Surely at some point they'll have to stop the review process.

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st3fan
Good article. Sounds like he is getting annoyed that the Facebook 3.0 app is
still in review after two weeks.

