

Wonderful yet purely Hypothetical iTunes App Store Guidelines - DanHulton
http://wilshipley.com/blog/2009/05/welcome-to-itunes-app-store.html

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andreyf
I'm really surprised that a company as PR-smart as Apple isn't concerned with
all the FUD and grumbling regarding the app store approval process. Looking at
their ads, it seems _someone_ in there has realized that third-party apps are
the next big value adders for users, but the people in charge of dealing with
developers sure don't seem to have...

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zimbabwe
Apple's actually not got very good PR at all. Not in this sense of direct
interaction.

When they're distant from the user they can polish up something fierce. They
craft excellent commercials, help guides, online tutorials, keynote speeches,
etc. It doesn't hurt that advertising an Apple product usually consists of
just showing what it can do, no hype necessary. So they also have fanatic fans
who love their work and spread Mac love by word of mouth.

Apple has always fallen apart in their direct user-to-staff interactions.
Excepting the Genius Bar, which I've always seen as a sort of way of focusing
Mac lovers in a place and paying them, they don't work well with people
outside their own company. They've spent so much time cultivating their aloof
status - no blogs, no public emails save Jobs's famously snippy one-sentence
replies, very poor forum - that on the few occasions they need to interact
directly, usually things go very wrong. The App Store is the biggest case yet,
and I'd bet that Apple's solution won't be making the system more friendly,
it'll be changing the system so that Apple no longer has to deal directly with
developers who might get angry with them.

