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Apple Extends Non-Disclosure to App Store Rejection Letters
- thehigherlife 18y agoThey sure are getting harder and harder to defend in this whole debacle.
- dfranke 18y agoNo kidding. In the past ~1 year, between Microsoft and Apple, Microsoft has been on significantly better behavior.
- mattmaroon 18y agoIt's been a lot more than 1 year. It began with the iPod DRM. It's just been smacking everyone in the face for that long.
- unalone 18y agoApple had no control over the DRM: they needed it to get the companies. And they've been slowly reducing the DRM thanks to iTunes Plus. A few more of my albums converted themselves today, and they sound a bit better too. This behavior is inexplicable, though. I can't recall Apple doing something so bullheaded in quite a little while.
- natrius 18y ago"Apple had no control over the DRM: they needed it to get the companies." True and false. Apple needed some sort of DRM. However, they didn't have to refuse to license their DRM. They had a competitive advantage and they leveraged it in a consumer-unfriendly manner. It's what they do now.
- unalone 18y agoWhat did their refusing to license their DRM have to do with impacting the customers? I'm not being sarcastic: I don't quite understand what effect that had on users.
- dfranke 18y agoIt makes it impossible to legally play Fairplay-encrypted files on non-Apple devices.
- axod 18y agoHow many people actually use DRM on the iPod/iPhone? I'd say a negligible amount.
- mattmaroon 18y agoWhat percentage of people buy songs from iTunes? Probably more than half. Certainly not a negligible amount.
- axod 18y agoI think we're both taking this to extremes now :) Maybe 10-20% I'll give you that.
- mattmaroon 18y ago
- abl 18y agoIt seems like it was such from the very start. Apple had many restrictions on third party apps for the early Mac, meanwhile Microsoft embraced developers, and with the likes of AmiPro, Windows 3.1 flourished. I believe this is one of the major reasons why the Mac lost market share. Although probably better positioned than before, Apple may be making the same mistake.
- SCVirus 18y agoAll companies begin to act evil after they have a certain amount of control. No exceptions, some are just slower or have greater thresholds then others (google).
- mechanical_fish 18y agoIf I were a soulless lawyer, I might point out that this position is entirely consistent with Apple's strategy of disallowing apps that are similar to Apple's own apps. Inevitably, some of Apple's apps have been written but aren't yet released to the public. If Apple is planning to release, say, an official accounting app for the phone, they not only have an incentive to stifle your accounting app for the phone, but they also have an incentive to avoid tipping off the market too early by publicly rejecting your accounting app for the phone. Fortunately, I'm not a soulless lawyer, so I'm also free to point out that this argument isn't so much a defense as an explanation, to opine that this sucks, and to observe that Apple's control-freak nature has now officially gone overboard. Of course, Microsoft acted like this for years, and it didn't hurt them much, so I guess it's not surprising that a company would try it again...
- mattmaroon 18y agoMicrosoft didn't act like this at all. If they had, Windows would never have reached the market share it has today. You don't have to ask Microsoft for permission to develop an app for Windows. You don't have to pay them to do so or sign an NDA. They don't have a kill switch to remove it. They may include a free competitor in the next OS, and you can argue that that is an unfair abuse of a monopoly, but they at least allowed you to try. And Firefox's immense success shows that if your product provides enough value, you can still compete.
- mechanical_fish 18y agoNot only has Microsoft acted like this, they're doing it right now. From the Wikipedia page for "XBox Development Kit": Only developers that are licensed by Microsoft may compile code and release binaries (.XBEs)of their software with the XDK, any software released using the XDK by developers that aren't licensed is illegal. Nintendo and Sony do this as well, yes? There's nothing particularly unusual about this model, alas. Yeah, Microsoft never did this for Windows. I believe that much is true. Perhaps it's a testimony to the enduring influence of the early PC hackers, like Wozniak and the Homebrew Computer Club guys, that I don't think anybody ever really tried this trick in the PC industry. Though I'm probably forgetting several examples because they're, um, so forgettable. I'm pretty sure that old mainframe hands would recognize this game, though.
- orib 18y agoThey haven't been very easy to defend for about 4 or so years now. I've been saying that although Apple's products are technically nicer than Microsoft's at the moment, I'd rather see MS in a position of dominance than Apple, just based on the way that the companies have been behaving in relatively recent history.
- trickjarrett 18y agoApple is trying to apply the same control to the App store that they did for so many years to their hardware. This is the mentality which is going to cause them lots of pain. In Corporate relationships this sort of control is allowed. But when you have a marketplace you need to be more... peaceful in your control. To the user it looks like they're defending and removing the 'bad' apps. To the developer they're just exerting too much control and not providing for an adequate system to save the developer the trouble. The fact is developers would have much less worry or problems with this if it were an application pre-code rather than an evaluation after coding. Thus wasting their time with no solution for how to avoid wasting the time.
- lemonysnicket 18y agowhat users outside of the hacker and/or tech crowd will ever know/realize that apps are being removed (or in fact being restricted in the first place)? agree with the policy you or I may not, but let's not kid ourselves and think that the users will revort (a la facebook) -- when they have not a clue the process for this phone/OS, nor android nor the typical carrier platforms.
- mtrimpe 18y agoSorry, but do you really think Vista's slow uptake is caused by actual bad user experience? It's not. It's because every techie will adamantly proclaim that Vista sucks, even though they might have never even tried it. As far as I'm concerned Apple is a straw on the camel's back away from me doing the same to them.
- mattmaroon 18y agoVista's slow uptake is due to immense corporate inertia and a lack of any apparent value to overcome it. Has nothing to do with techies. Corporations keep using the same tech until the incentive to switch overcomes the considerable cost. Vista just hasn't given enough incentive yet. XP had a similar problem, though not as bad because the OS (especially once driver issues were ironed out) offered more relative to the previous one.
- norman 18y agoDoesn't seem like this should be very enforcable...
- mechanical_fish 18y agoThat depends on whether you ever want to be able to write a second iPhone app after your first one is rejected.
- lemonysnicket 18y agothey are sacrificing long term strategy for short term gain. not sure what the margins are now, but for iPhone 1.0 total end-end cost of the phone was something like $284 for the $600 phone. whatever the fuzzy math here, with Apple on projection to sell 10million + phones this year, they are making an absolute killing. and thus, to the bottom line in the short term, it's not necessary at all to appease the developers -- they quality of some apps is very very high already, and will continue to do so while both independent devs and companies are also making a killing for arguably little work (a few months) and huge roi. the long-term is that controlling the end-end solution with an iron fist will be just one of the many restraining factors that keeps them from gaining market dominance (single carrier, no keyboard, one phone model, et. al). too bad so sad -- their way or the high way.
- axod 18y agoI disagree. I'll bet that the app store doesn't feature in their long term strategy at all. It's a temporary stop gap measure, until firstly wifi is everywhere, or at least good connectivity, and secondly, until browsers can do everything that installable apps can.
- unalone 18y agoNo. We're not close enough to universal wi-fi for that to make sense. Apple wants a monopoly over the mobile universe. But, honestly, they're usually better than this. I don't know why they're acting like this. It's ridiculous.
- axod 18y agoMaybe in the US you're correct. The US is only 1 market though.
- unalone 18y agoIt's the one Apple has traditionally focused on, it's where Apple is located, and it just saw 100,000,000 downloads in a matter of months. Thinking that the app store is just a stopgap is specious thinking. It's a big thing and its mistreatment is therefore a big matter. I know Hacker News has a segment of people who want the Internet to replace the desktop, but it simply isn't happening in the foreseeable future.
- quasimojo 18y agohow much shit will you monkeys take? gee i wonder how the fanbois are holding out...they cling to the faux cool of apple products like a bum clings to his malt liquor. what a quandry! now they have to make this jive with the relentless bad press apple is getting and deserves over this totalitarian horsehshit
- martythemaniak 18y agoIts rather ironic that this comes on the same day that Android launched with its fairly open approach.
- slater 18y agoWhat I don't understand is, why haven't all these clever people, kicked out of the app store on spurious grounds (Apple: "it kinda sorta almost looks like something we've already done or are about to unveil"), banded together to make a simple installer for their apps, something like a jailbreaking wrapper for their app: You make your "illegal" iPhone app, stuff it thru the wrapper which then creates a .dmg installer file. Users then double-click the .dmg, the wrapper searches for your iPhone, if its not jailbroken it asks you whether you want to jailbreak it (with an option to download the latest jailbreak version), then installs the app.
- SapphireSun 18y agoThat would work... but only if you weren't making money off it. Once you start getting paid to do that, you can be sure Apple will sic their soulless lawyers on you and rend you unto hades.
- binarray2000 18y agoWhy bother? Boycott!