
Apple Extends Non-Disclosure to App Store Rejection Letters - joshwa
http://www.macrumors.com/2008/09/23/apple-extends-non-disclosure-to-app-store-rejection-letters/
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thehigherlife
They sure are getting harder and harder to defend in this whole debacle.

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mechanical_fish
If I were a soulless lawyer, I might point out that this position is entirely
consistent with Apple's strategy of disallowing apps that are similar to
Apple's own apps. Inevitably, some of Apple's apps have been written but
aren't yet released to the public. If Apple is planning to release, say, an
official accounting app for the phone, they not only have an incentive to
stifle _your_ accounting app for the phone, but they also have an incentive to
avoid tipping off the market too early by _publicly_ rejecting your accounting
app for the phone.

Fortunately, I'm not a soulless lawyer, so I'm also free to point out that
this argument isn't so much a _defense_ as an _explanation_ , to opine that
this sucks, and to observe that Apple's control-freak nature has now
officially gone overboard. Of course, Microsoft acted like this for years, and
it didn't hurt them much, so I guess it's not surprising that a company would
try it again...

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mattmaroon
Microsoft didn't act like this at all. If they had, Windows would never have
reached the market share it has today.

You don't have to ask Microsoft for permission to develop an app for Windows.
You don't have to pay them to do so or sign an NDA. They don't have a kill
switch to remove it.

They may include a free competitor in the next OS, and you can argue that that
is an unfair abuse of a monopoly, but they at least allowed you to try. And
Firefox's immense success shows that if your product provides enough value,
you can still compete.

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mechanical_fish
Not only _has_ Microsoft acted like this, they're doing it right now. From the
Wikipedia page for "XBox Development Kit":

 _Only developers that are licensed by Microsoft may compile code and release
binaries (.XBEs)of their software with the XDK, any software released using
the XDK by developers that aren't licensed is illegal._

Nintendo and Sony do this as well, yes? There's nothing particularly unusual
about this model, alas.

Yeah, Microsoft never did this for Windows. I believe that much is true.
Perhaps it's a testimony to the enduring influence of the early PC hackers,
like Wozniak and the Homebrew Computer Club guys, that I don't think _anybody_
ever really tried this trick in the PC industry. Though I'm probably
forgetting several examples because they're, um, so forgettable.

I'm pretty sure that old mainframe hands would recognize this game, though.

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Tichy
That is a completely different case, XBox was never promoted as a universal
device that anybody could program for.

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Retric
Was the iPhone? I always thought they where building the same type of walled
playground but that could have been my inner cynic talking.

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Tichy
The XBox is no playground, I think to be allowed to develop for it you need to
be pre-approved and throw millions of $ in the ring. I haven't checked,
though.

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cstejerean
maybe you should check

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Tichy
OK, so I forgot about the LIVE marketplace. I was thinking about "real" games.

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trickjarrett
Apple is trying to apply the same control to the App store that they did for
so many years to their hardware. This is the mentality which is going to cause
them lots of pain. In Corporate relationships this sort of control is allowed.
But when you have a marketplace you need to be more... peaceful in your
control.

To the user it looks like they're defending and removing the 'bad' apps.

To the developer they're just exerting too much control and not providing for
an adequate system to save the developer the trouble.

The fact is developers would have much less worry or problems with this if it
were an application pre-code rather than an evaluation after coding. Thus
wasting their time with no solution for how to avoid wasting the time.

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lemonysnicket
what users outside of the hacker and/or tech crowd will ever know/realize that
apps are being removed (or in fact being restricted in the first place)?

agree with the policy you or I may not, but let's not kid ourselves and think
that the users will revort (a la facebook) -- when they have not a clue the
process for this phone/OS, nor android nor the typical carrier platforms.

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mtrimpe
Sorry, but do you really think Vista's slow uptake is caused by actual bad
user experience? It's not.

It's because every techie will adamantly proclaim that Vista sucks, even
though they might have never even tried it.

As far as I'm concerned Apple is a straw on the camel's back away from me
doing the same to them.

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mattmaroon
Vista's slow uptake is due to immense corporate inertia and a lack of any
apparent value to overcome it. Has nothing to do with techies.

Corporations keep using the same tech until the incentive to switch overcomes
the considerable cost. Vista just hasn't given enough incentive yet. XP had a
similar problem, though not as bad because the OS (especially once driver
issues were ironed out) offered more relative to the previous one.

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lemonysnicket
they are sacrificing long term strategy for short term gain.

not sure what the margins are now, but for iPhone 1.0 total end-end cost of
the phone was something like $284 for the $600 phone. whatever the fuzzy math
here, with Apple on projection to sell 10million + phones this year, they are
making an absolute killing.

and thus, to the bottom line in the short term, it's not necessary at all to
appease the developers -- they quality of some apps is very very high already,
and will continue to do so while both independent devs and companies are also
making a killing for arguably little work (a few months) and huge roi.

the long-term is that controlling the end-end solution with an iron fist will
be just one of the many restraining factors that keeps them from gaining
market dominance (single carrier, no keyboard, one phone model, et. al).

too bad so sad -- their way or the high way.

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axod
I disagree. I'll bet that the app store doesn't feature in their long term
strategy at all. It's a temporary stop gap measure, until firstly wifi is
everywhere, or at least good connectivity, and secondly, until browsers can do
everything that installable apps can.

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unalone
No. We're not close enough to universal wi-fi for that to make sense. Apple
wants a monopoly over the mobile universe.

But, honestly, they're usually better than this. I don't know why they're
acting like this. It's ridiculous.

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axod
Maybe in the US you're correct. The US is only 1 market though.

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unalone
It's the one Apple has traditionally focused on, it's where Apple is located,
and it just saw 100,000,000 downloads in a matter of months.

Thinking that the app store is just a stopgap is specious thinking. It's a big
thing and its mistreatment is therefore a big matter. I know Hacker News has a
segment of people who want the Internet to replace the desktop, but it simply
isn't happening in the foreseeable future.

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martythemaniak
Its rather ironic that this comes on the same day that Android launched with
its fairly open approach.

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slater
What I don't understand is, why haven't all these clever people, kicked out of
the app store on spurious grounds (Apple: "it kinda sorta almost looks like
something we've already done or are about to unveil"), banded together to make
a simple installer for their apps, something like a jailbreaking wrapper for
their app: You make your "illegal" iPhone app, stuff it thru the wrapper which
then creates a .dmg installer file. Users then double-click the .dmg, the
wrapper searches for your iPhone, if its not jailbroken it asks you whether
you want to jailbreak it (with an option to download the latest jailbreak
version), then installs the app.

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SapphireSun
That would work... but only if you weren't making money off it. Once you start
getting paid to do that, you can be sure Apple will sic their soulless lawyers
on you and rend you unto hades.

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binarray2000
Why bother? Boycott!

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norman
Doesn't seem like this should be very enforcable...

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mechanical_fish
That depends on whether you ever want to be able to write a _second_ iPhone
app after your first one is rejected.

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quasimojo
how much shit will you monkeys take?

gee i wonder how the fanbois are holding out...they cling to the faux cool of
apple products like a bum clings to his malt liquor. what a quandry! now they
have to make this jive with the relentless bad press apple is getting and
deserves over this totalitarian horsehshit

