

The App Store: Quality control without the quality - cmelbye
http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2145-the-app-store-quality-control-without-the-quality

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maxklein
I'm an app store developer, and if Apple opens the doors, let me tell you what
will happen :

First of all, there will be hardcore porn immediately. Boob apps will flood
the store, because that's what makes money. If apple implements a flagging
mechanism, then you will be one click away from opening a website to purchase
hard core porn (I'm looking at you On The Go Girls).

Lots of people will create apps with 5 pictures and call it "Celebrity News".
For example Britney Spears News, etc. Apps will be rereleased every single day
so they are always visible on the app store new releases page. People will
upload apps that do nothing but just have a title people will search for. And
of course, apps that call a pay hotline somewhere.

With the amount of money people are spending on the app store, and the fact
that people are looking for cheap entertainment rather than useful tools, the
app store would be a heaven for spammers and scammers.

If Apple ever unlocked the gates, it would be the absolute end of the app
store.

I have a phone number of a reviewer and I talk to him every now and then. They
get a lot of crap. The gate is not to QC an app, it's to prevent the app store
from being a crapware and spammers paradise.

~~~
mrshoe
Apple shouldn't open the gates to the App Store, but that doesn't mean they
shouldn't open the gates to the iPhone.

If you want to be listed in the App Store and have Apple handle your payment
processing and even a bit of marketing for you, you're going to have to go
through their approval process. Every single store in the world decides which
products it will and won't sell. The App Store isn't, and shouldn't be, any
different.

However, on the Mac platform you can develop an app and sell it on your own
web site or put it on a CD in a box and sell it at Best Buy or any other
store. You can't do that on the iPhone.

I guess opening up the iPhone platform wouldn't really help DHH, since I'm
sure he wants his app listed and sold in the App Store, but I can see why
developers expect more parity between the two platforms (Mac and iPhone).

However, I can also see how it's easier for Apple to provide a better (and
more consistent) customer experience when the App Store is the only way to buy
and install apps. And since Apple cares more about customers, and customers
don't really care about the openness of their phone's OS... that's probably
not going to change any time soon.

~~~
mechanical_fish
_On the Mac platform you can develop an app and sell it on your own web site_

Yes. And you can also develop malware and give it away on your own website.
And then, when customers complain to Apple, they can do... what, exactly?

In other words, DHH is wrong when he suggests that the App Store isn't about
security. Sure, the App Store is not about _prescreening for security holes_
\-- obviously they can't find every hole or every trojan in their pitiful
half-hour code review. But if every app goes through the store, and every
store app can be revoked, and every store app comes attached to a known
submitter with a valid identity and credit card...

You can get a trojan through the system. But you very likely can't do it more
than once, it won't survive long in the wild after it's detected, and the FBI
has a paper trail to your house.

~~~
bad_user
> _Yes. And you can also develop malware and give it away on your own
> website._

Yeah, and doing sex with random strangers is as dangerous ... you never know
what you're going to get.

That's why I'm a proponent of Sex licenses, given by state institutions after
testing your general health, your mental health and the quality of your DNA
... people without a license shouldn't be allowed to have sex, to work in
public institutions (since that's where people fuck around the most), or to
leave town without notifying the proper authorities.

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snprbob86
May I recommend that Apple copy Microsoft for once?

The fine folks on my partner team, XNA Creators Club Online, have developed a
clever solution to the app review problem. The whole process is transparent,
community-driven/crowd-sourced, insulates Microsoft from legal liability, and
has been running effectively for over a year, albeit not at App Store scale.

Read about it here: <http://creators.xna.com/en-US/quickstart_main>

The same technology backend has been white-labeled for other communities:
<http://creators.rockband.com/>

------
endergen
The iPod, iPhone, and soon the iPad are from what I can tell the first time
DRM has been successfully deployed in a non annoying way. I remember when
3DStudios used to require a hardware dongle(A device you had to have plugged
in for the software to run.) The iPhone and co. are like dongles that you
actually want to buy. We are paying for the store and then only buying from it
as well as being held hostage by the fact that we don't actually own what we
purchased as it requires the devices controlled by apple to use our purchases.
It's the ultimate lock-in.

Note: Protecting content can not occur without tight control by apple,
otherwise apps for accessing pirated content would proliferate. I'm starting
to actually think that Apple has found the perfect racket and there is no way
open systems can compete until someone comes along with Apple's design and
manufacturing skills. There platform is just bigger and more consistent than
any other competitor's with better tools and less variation in hardware
designs.

ps. If you think the App approval process is annoying try being a game
developer, it takes months to get your game through the processes required by
Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft. Games love it, it's the rest of you that aren't
used to it, for us it's a welcome improvement plus it's a platform that
extends beyond games into lifestyle applications and communication.

~~~
pyre
> _then only buying from it as well as being held hostage by the fact that we
> don't actually own what we purchased as it requires the devices controlled
> by apple to use our purchases._

Huh? You're saying that iPhone Apps are 'locked-in' because they require an
iPhone to run them. Does MS Windows 'lock you in' because you can only run it
on x86 hardware?

~~~
endergen
You make a good point. I never really thought through what that point sounded
like. (Partly I'm really just pissed I can't pirate as easily)

My only slight rebuttal is that you can't trade or resell your purchases like
you could with console games or regular desktop software.

------
lethargus
"Both platforms are much more open and on a mac you have very little trouble
with stability or malware or even quality. "

I believe there are other factors that can contribute to this. I think the
laptop/desktop portion of Apple still attracts a certain individual that
typically requires things to be well designed and stable. Unfortunately the
cell phone market is not the same way, especially when you factor in free or
extremely cheap applications compared to more expensive OS X counterparts. The
iPhone appealed to a wider audience, including Windows users who arguably put
up with a lot crappier inefficient software.

I think when originally putting the app store in place, it was a fear to have
this crap trickle into the Apple app store.

Also, Apple has a vested interest in the success of applications in the app
store whereas it doesn't have as much direct benefit from applications
released and sold independently for OS X.

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jsz0
_"Do you think the App Store clerks are combing through source code to look
for security issues? Ha!"_

Apple sometimes rejects applications for using private APIs they must be
checking at some level. I'm not sure how much damage you could do using public
APIs. We haven't seen any iPhone App Store malware so whatever they're doing
must be working. It's hard to believe no one has tried to slip something in
over the last 2 years. In my personal experience with the iPhone I cannot
recall a third party App Store application locking up my phone, crashing the
OS, or otherwise preventing me from taking an incoming phone call. Either
iPhone developers are being incredibly careful, Apple's App Store policies are
working, or I'm very lucky.

~~~
maxklein
That's because you pay $100 to get in and if you do this once, you will get
kicked off immediately. There is no profit in malware. It's tough to get the
app in, and should you succeed, the profit will likely be less than the $100
you spent getting in.

~~~
mechanical_fish
Plus, as I pointed out elsewhere in the thread: Apple can remotely disable
your malware app after it's identified, they can publicly shame you, and they
may even be able to sic the cops on you via the paper trail that you used to
register as a developer.

~~~
cmelbye
Oh yeah, they'd easily be able to. They're incredibly strict on the paperwork
when you're registering. My account was frozen until I mailed in personal
identification due to a minor discrepancy in the name that I used for the
billing address.

------
bobbyi
"What’s there to loose except for the feeling of powah?"

30% of every dollar that goes through the App Store.

------
gte910h
The apple review process is not to enforce quality. It is to enforce control.

Apps will look like X, behave like Y, and we will nix anything we wish to.

