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Are you secretly Steve Jobs? :) Because your post does a lot to explain why Apple's initial position on third-party apps was "no, thank you". I don't think the

Are you secretly Steve Jobs? :) Because your post does a lot to explain why Apple's initial position on third-party apps was "no, thank you". I don't think the gatekeepers' primary role is to keep apps out of the store. It's to make sure there's an easy way to yank apps back off the market, and issue a recall notice to every single affected user, after trouble strikes. Kind of like what's happening to this app right now. If Apple weren't just rubber-stamping applications, the process would be even slower, and we'd be hearing even more complaints from the long list of people who are still waiting for their applications to go live. As for the "horrible engrish descriptions"... can you imagine the firestorm if Apple were to reject apps on the basis of the quality of their ad copy? Not every iPhone developer writes fluent English, after all. It is annoying that approved apps appear and disappear more than once. What other examples of this are there, besides the tethering app? (I can well imagine why the tethering app might appear and disappear... it raises the question of whether Apple is allowed to sell an app which is explicitly disallowed by some customers' service contracts, but perhaps not by all of them. They've probably got AT&T lobbying on one side, the app's authors, Apple's marketing department, and every self-respecting developer lobbying on the other, and lawyers from several countries in the middle. Perhaps the availability of the app depends on which of these parties is shouting the loudest on any given day.)

wvenable 18y ago
If the gatekeepers aren't keeping apps out of the store, then they're not offering a useful service for users or developers. Instead, all they're doing is preventing users from getting at applications they might want and preventing developers from getting their applications (and updates) out. If they'd have a better approval process, they wouldn't have to yank applications at all. It's one thing to simply not allow an application that nobody has ever seen and it's entirely another to make them just disappear after they've been bought. Which do you think is better for PR? "can you imagine the firestorm if Apple were to reject apps on the basis of the quality of their ad copy?" Firestorm? From who? Apple is vetting the applications, so I expect a higher quality experience. The ad copy might be written by the developer but it's part of the store. You don't expect bad ad copy on Amazon or Dell and you shouldn't expect it on Apple's store either. I'm expecting Apple to reject applications based on their quality. If users and developers have to jump through hoops, there should be a real tangible benefit.
- mechanical_fish 18y ago
  You don't expect bad ad copy on Amazon or Dell You've never read bad ad copy on Amazon? You fortunate soul. It's true, Apple could choose to run their platform more like Dell runs its third-party outlet, or Sony runs Playstation: With a relative handful of very strictly quality-controlled apps. We know they could do that if they wanted to, because they did so all last year... and they were met by an army of jailbreakers and lots of complaints from developers and advanced users. So now Apple is trying something else. Having said that, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple's approval policy tightens up in the future. Right now I believe they're still working through an enormous backlog. The easiest way to get through the backlog is to release apps unless there's an obvious reason not to. In the meantime, why not develop a third-party rating service to pick out quality iPhone apps? If such a service is as valuable as you believe it is, and Apple's leaving that money on the table, why not pick it up?
  - wvenable 18y ago
    "We know they could do that if they wanted to, because they did so all last year..." How is Apple not allowing any 3rd party applications like how Sony runs the Playstation? "they were met by an army of jailbreakers and lots of complaints from developers and advanced users. So now Apple is trying something else." ...And they're still met with an army of jailbreakers and lots of complaints from developers and advanced users. What we have now is the worst the both worlds: a closed platform without any closed platform benefits. I'd be just as happy if they opened the whole thing up. Or providing a tighter app store while opening the whole thing up. And yes, they have enormous backlog but it's never going to go away because every update of every application also needs to go through the process. Every app that has been approved today will have to be approved again and again and again.

wvenable 18y ago

If the gatekeepers aren't keeping apps out of the store, then they're not offering a useful service for users or developers. Instead, all they're doing is preventing users from getting at applications they might want and preventing developers from getting their applications (and updates) out. If they'd have a better approval process, they wouldn't have to yank applications at all. It's one thing to simply not allow an application that nobody has ever seen and it's entirely another to make them just disappear after they've been bought. Which do you think is better for PR? "can you imagine the firestorm if Apple were to reject apps on the basis of the quality of their ad copy?" Firestorm? From who? Apple is vetting the applications, so I expect a higher quality experience. The ad copy might be written by the developer but it's part of the store. You don't expect bad ad copy on Amazon or Dell and you shouldn't expect it on Apple's store either. I'm expecting Apple to reject applications based on their quality. If users and developers have to jump through hoops, there should be a real tangible benefit.

mechanical_fish 18y ago
You don't expect bad ad copy on Amazon or Dell You've never read bad ad copy on Amazon? You fortunate soul. It's true, Apple could choose to run their platform more like Dell runs its third-party outlet, or Sony runs Playstation: With a relative handful of very strictly quality-controlled apps. We know they could do that if they wanted to, because they did so all last year... and they were met by an army of jailbreakers and lots of complaints from developers and advanced users. So now Apple is trying something else. Having said that, I wouldn't be surprised if Apple's approval policy tightens up in the future. Right now I believe they're still working through an enormous backlog. The easiest way to get through the backlog is to release apps unless there's an obvious reason not to. In the meantime, why not develop a third-party rating service to pick out quality iPhone apps? If such a service is as valuable as you believe it is, and Apple's leaving that money on the table, why not pick it up?
- wvenable 18y ago
  "We know they could do that if they wanted to, because they did so all last year..." How is Apple not allowing any 3rd party applications like how Sony runs the Playstation? "they were met by an army of jailbreakers and lots of complaints from developers and advanced users. So now Apple is trying something else." ...And they're still met with an army of jailbreakers and lots of complaints from developers and advanced users. What we have now is the worst the both worlds: a closed platform without any closed platform benefits. I'd be just as happy if they opened the whole thing up. Or providing a tighter app store while opening the whole thing up. And yes, they have enormous backlog but it's never going to go away because every update of every application also needs to go through the process. Every app that has been approved today will have to be approved again and again and again.