
A zombie keyboard, an app-store rejection, a call from Steve Jobs - harscoat
http://blog.cascadesoft.net/2010/10/31/a-zombie-keyboard-an-app-store-rejection-a-call-from-steve-jobs-and-the-economy-for-ipad-app/
======
viraptor
I don't get it. The summary is that the guy submitted an application, got
rejected, appealed, the appeal process seemed to take too long, he emailed
Jobs, Jobs phoned him and told him and "reiterated" (from the post) the app
store rules until the guy decided he won't achieve anything.

I'm amazed at how Jobs telling the guy the same thing that he already knew
(telling him 2 times actually) somehow made him go to a paragraph about Jobs
with a well deserved opinion of quality products.

He still couldn't release the software, he got a "no go" for fixing the
situation the way he could, he got absolutely no information about whether the
issue will be fixed in the future or not. But that's ok, since Jobs called
him? Seriously?

~~~
huhtenberg
You don't get it :)

Jobs calling a developer amounts to him gifting the dev a chance for a free
and easy PR. And that's exactly what this person is doing - he tells everyone
about the call and gets some eyes to look at his app. So effectively Jobs said
"No, we won't let you work around our bug, but in exchange you can get a
traffic bump for your app."

~~~
viraptor
Yes, to be honest, I didn't think of it from the "free traffic" perspective.
But I wonder how important this actually is. Sure reddit / hn / slashdot crowd
will happily check that kind of news, but are those services significant in
any way in the number of applications bought? I don't see how a random user
from the appstore target would find that post at all. But maybe I'm wrong
here?

~~~
Sam_theAgent
The marketing angle on this is great. It's not big exposure for apple, but it
does completely illuminate a potentially larger conversation around API's.
Steve is the one guy that could stop the conversation and having him make the
5min call changes the conversation for the issue, to how hands on Apple is
with the development community.

Now, there is no way that Steve has time to deal with every problem, but
things that have the potential for becoming bigger conversations I definitely
see him stepping in quickly. He still reviews every.. EVERY single peace of
advertising about the Apple brand and approves it personally...When it comes
to brand, Steve is the most hands on CEO there is.

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maxklein
I once emailed Steve and did not get a reply. A day later, the dude in charge
of iTunesConnect called us, and then everyday till the issue was resolved,
someone was emailing us daily updates.

I'm exchanged 3-4 emails with Phil Schiller back when there were some scammers
on the store. Apple executive is VERY hands on.

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sandGorgon
I am really interested to know the management practices in place at Apple that
enable this kind of a personal reaction to even be possible.

It simply cant be that Steve is a very conscientous person (which I'm sure he
is) - but also that the infrastructure in Apple allows this.

I run a 13 people shop and I know I will get to a point where I will not be
able to look at individual bugs/questions, etc. What kind of triggers, tools
and techniques make it possible for an issue to be filtered up the hierarchy ?

Or is it simply because of the any-employee-can-mail-holy-Steve-but-god-help-
you-if-it-was-unimportant policy?

~~~
ZachPruckowski
Well, don't forget selection bias. We hear about the lucky few who hear back
from Steve Jobs, but not about the hundreds that write to sjobs@apple.com and
never hear back. So it could be as simple as "Steve Jobs spends 15 minutes
every day on answering public emails chosen at random".

~~~
JanezStupar
Well that would imply that Steve has at least the common decency to keep up
appearances of caring about customers/partners. Like others have said this is
so rare nowadays that it might as well be a black swan. And I'm talking from
personal experience as customer and also as a professional who cares about
users perception and who fails to understand why people keep on disrespecting
people who feed them.

The case here is - that Apples contrarian play at basically everything is
drawing insane dividends. And its cheap to do (Apples bottom line is proof).
So if Steve is sincere in his care or not - doesn't really matter. If people
around you perceive your acts as genuine - then its genuine for all intents
and purposes.

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plusbryan
I once got a call from Apple's review team from a man named Steve. This news
for me is like hearing that the lotto's lucky numbers changed and I just threw
away the ticket.

~~~
jonpaul
I did as well. It sounded exactly like Steve Jobs. At the time, I didn't know
what Steve Jobs sounded like so it didn't quite click until I saw one of his
keynotes. He even gave me his direct line to call him back regarding one of my
apps. I called him back and left him a message. I'm half tempted to dig up my
cell phone records and find the number so that I can listen to his answering-
message. But I would think Steve Jobs would have a secretary answering his
phone? Don't you? So maybe it wasn't him.

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lovskogen
Can't help but to think 'What are the odds of Apple PR saw this guy was a
active blogger and made it part of their agenda to call him?'.

~~~
redorb
Even if that is how it went down; the fact that its a positive for both
parties makes it alright with me.

------
ericb
I saw "Zombie Keyboard" and thought "what useless app will they think of
next?" Then I saw that wasn't what their app was and started daydreaming about
how rich I'd be if my "Zombie Keyboard" app took off.

That's the sad part about the app store. The low-price expectations make
creating something simple but fad-ish more appealing than making something
people want because it is useful. _Sigh._

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dinedal
I wish Steve had promised to fix the bug at some point in the future at least.

~~~
mcritz
Steve is so hands-on that I wish he’d fix it personally. Maybe he’d redefine
keyboard modal view class to inherit the proper UIKit methods.

~~~
gcheong
I often wonder why nobody ever asks Steve if he codes when he does an
interview. Maybe I should e-mail him.

~~~
steveklabnik
Isn't it fairly well known that Steve used to code, but hasn't since like the
80s? He dabbled with it, but decided that it wasn't his strong point?

Or am I just making that up entirely? Sounds like something buried in
folklore.org somewhere...

~~~
oofoe
Well, he did say that he'd read all of Knuth's books...

(See
[http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story...](http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&story=Close_Encounters_of_the_Steve_Kind.txt&sortOrder=Sort%20by%20Date&detail=medium&search=knuth))

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cshenoy
It looks like Ram sort-of capitulated. Granted it was to a request from Steve
Jobs and granted he agreed to the no private API policy when he registered as
an iOS developer, but it seems like he didn't get Steve to understand his
point. I'm glad Steve took the time out to call him to explain (which is
pretty awesome) but it seems like it was done just to get Ram to submit his
app without too much fuss.

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mattmaroon
Jobs is cleverly using sample bias in Apple's favor for PR reasons here
(though perhaps unintentionally). If someone emails Steve and doesn't hear
back, they presumably don't write a blog post about it. Yet I suspect you're
highly likely to hear about it when someone does get a reply, especially a
phone call.

As a CEO you could probably make your customers think you care just by
responding to .01% of emails or something like that. If all you have to do is
call one guy every few weeks and tell him the same thing your underlings
already told him to get this sort of coverage it's probably well worth the
time.

~~~
ecuzzillo
This is not the only evidence that he cares.

------
va_coder
I'm not an apple fanboy but that's freakin cool.

At work I unfortunately work with some Oracle products. No way in hell would
Ellison ever call me up ;)

~~~
iuguy
All you need to do is stand in front of a mirror after midnight, chant 'Oracle
support contract renewal' three times and he'll appear behind you.

~~~
va_coder
and you stand there afraid, not knowing whether he is offering your project
life or death

~~~
iuguy
Both. He is the database Shiva, simultaneously creating and destroying the
dreams of project managers.

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wccrawford
I also get why you shouldn't use private APIs, but when there's a bug this big
with no workaround (other than to code everything yourself, apparently) then I
think it's a big mistake to reject apps over it... Unless you can promise a
bugfix with a timeline.

~~~
there
on the other hand, what if every application using that private API call was
broken by a new firmware update that fixed the bug they were trying to work
around? then the users suffer and that's the whole point of rejecting
applications in the first place.

~~~
shadowmatter
Agreed. When you make an exception for developers to rely on a private method,
you "promote" an implementation detail to its public interface. Now you can
never remove the method, change its signature, or change its behavior.
Nevermind that when the bug in the public method is fixed, you now have two
methods to accomplish the same task. You've introduced cruft, or legacy code
you need to maintain. Ick.

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fragmede
Wait, so there _was_ a workaround (by not using a modal form), and yet we're
here after a round in the app store, a call from the messiah and a blog post.

~~~
jws
_… I would replace the modal form sheet with alternative UI. Removing the form
sheet (and therefore its bug) would eliminate the need for the private API._

I read that to say he went with his second choice for a user interface that is
probably not quite as good and experience.

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brown9-2
The blog post doesn't say, but I wonder if at any point the author submitted a
bug report about this to whatever bug-reporting tool Apple publishes for iOS
developers (assuming they have a public bug reporting tool).

~~~
alanh
They do, it’s called Radar, and if you ever see a URL beginning rdar:// it has
to due with their issue tracker. (Outside devs can submit to Radar, but not
read it; if you want other devs to see it, submit it to third-party-run
OpenRadar as well.)

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lepht
A bit OT, but I'm wondering about this sentence/typo:

> The caller-id, the caller saying “Ram, this is Steve” and that he was
> calling from Apple did suggest that it could really be Steve Jobs.

At first I interpreted this to mean that if you get a call from Steve or Apple
that they have a custom caller ID display on any iPhone which would be kind of
cool and would help validate to the receiver that it is indeed an official
Steve/Apple call.

Now I realize this is probably just a typo, but I'm still wondering how the
author knew that the call was actually from Apple as he implies.

------
chr15
Is anyone else utterly surprised that Steve Jobs actually calls developers and
responds to emails? Is this a PR stunt, or is Steve genuinely interested in
being that hands on? Or both?

~~~
rahoulb
I've read that all Apple executives are supposed to be totally hands on (which
is why that bloke got fired earlier in the year, despite Apple having waited a
year for his non-compete to run out)

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tomjen3
So thanks to the guidelines that was supposed to ensure quality in the app
store, his users should either deal with a buggy app, or make due without the
feature?

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bdotdub
Bummer, the middle phrase is short one syllable that would make it a 5-7-5
haiku

~~~
sukuriant
A zombie keyboard, one apple store rejection down, a call from Steve Jobs

~~~
brudgers
A warm and fuzzy, Apple-is-greater-than-I, when Steve says "F U"

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RK
I think that they have a "most fascinating submission story among all our
apps" is more a symptom of the larger problems of the App Store than anything
else.

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lwhi
I wonder if Steve calls people who don't have a blog?

~~~
pig
If Steve calls and there is no blog to talk about it, did Steve really call?

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confuzatron
Steve Jobs appeared one stormy night on my father's farm and helped deliver a
breach lamb. He was gone as quickly as he arrived.

Of course there's no email trail...

