
Developers furious over App Store “Line Cutting” - nickb
http://macenstein.com/default/archives/1494
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astrec
So they trim non-alphanumeric chars - how long before we see _AAAJirbo Break_.
They should disable alphanumeric sorting and instead sort by date (newest),
rating (popular) etc. Good faceted navigation would likely remove the desire
to sort by name.

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cstejerean
You're right, little reason to sort by name. I can use search to locate an app
if I know the name, and when I'm just browsing sorting by popularity or
reviews would be more helpful.

On the other hand when I see "!! asdfasdf" and "AAAasdfasdf" I know it's
likely a terrible app so I don't even have to bother checking it out.

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witten
Reminds me of game companies that distributed their shareware games with
similar tactics via BBSs. You can even see vestigial evidence of this today.
Check out the Apogee / 3D Realms download page
(<http://www.3drealms.com/downloads.html>), and note the non-insignificant
number of filenames that start with the number 1. This caused the files to
sort first on most BBSs.

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nickb
Pretty shady company... no about us page, no corporate info, no address on the
contact page, no privacy policy, no terms of service and their WHOIS entry is
anonymized by Domains by Proxy.

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henning
It's time for Apple to exercise their proprietary software/benevolent
dictator/gatekeeper abilities and drop all this shit like a bad habit.

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Hexstream
I'd sink them to the bottom of the list, no less. As well as fixing the
problem, of course.

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Tichy
Is that the fantastic marketing Apple promised for iPhone applications - show
them in an alphabetically sorted list?

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tocomment
By the way, can I sign up and make an iPhone app now, or is there still a
waiting list and approval process?

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silencio
there's still an approval process for most steps, but it seems now most people
who've applied are getting acceptance into the program itself.

now, getting your app into the app store and upgrading your apps is a slightly
different process, and it looks like there's a huge backlog there :(

~~~
tocomment
If I just want to write a program for my own iPhone, do I still have to get
them to put it in the store, just for me to be able to install it on my phone?

~~~
silencio
no, there's something called ad hoc distribution that lets you run your app on
up to 100 phones on the standard program...I think more if you purchase
enterprise.

It doesn't have to be on the store for you to install it on your phone. But
you do indeed need to be part of the program.

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pskomoroch
Amazon does the same thing with Mechanical Turk Qualification Tests (Only has
A-Z sorting):

[http://www.mturk.com/mturk/findquals?requestable=false&e...](http://www.mturk.com/mturk/findquals?requestable=false&earned=false)

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devicenull
This has been a problem in every online game with a serverlist that I know
of.. It's quite funny as it's gotten extreme enough that some of the names are
just spaces.

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ALee
Does anyone know if this was a problem for Facebook when the apps were
released, or did it not matter because everything was recommended by your
friends anyway?

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tstegart
I think it's been fixed, at least with respect to spaces. I checked, and many
of their applications don't come up as having spaces anymore.

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davidu
Apple will fix this.

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tlrobinson
appName.trim() or equivalent.

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trezor
I say Apple has done a wonderful job doing input validation on their AppStore
data right here.

I wonder if you can name your Application as a SQL injection as well.

