Very odd to read, after the Android Market has been running for quite some time, that "The result of [app store review] is that Apple can more easily let us use

Very odd to read, after the Android Market has been running for quite some time, that "The result of [app store review] is that Apple can more easily let us use their payment system without scaring their lawyers, devaluing their store’s image, or incurring high fraud and chargeback fees from their payment processors." Google certainly has lawyers, and the (former) try-before-you-buy policy was a much more direct answer to fraud and chargeback than stringent app review. As to reputation, the Android store's poor rep is more due to the absence of particular good apps (or the difficulty finding them) than the presence of crud (which Apple's store has in abundance) --- and I don't think you can credit the review process with attracting good developers. Most of them hate it. It's also funny that he doesn't mention the one thing that the review process does do for end users --- it makes sure that apps conform to Apple's UI guidelines. They can be obnoxious about this, as in the flat rejection of camera apps that use the volume buttons as shutter controls, but the consistency is probably a net win for users overall. Though for Android, manufacturer reskinning is probably a bigger problem. But it's been used in directly anticompetitive ways (the Google Voice holdup, which let to an FCC investigation; the current Sony reader payments flap) that it's really hard to deny that that's one of the points of the exercise from Apple's perspective. And fanboy rationales which ignore that awkward fact are getting really tedious.