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I think the essential point is this, "There’s a bigger story here, however. It’s one that’s been told before, but until things change, it needs to keep being t

I think the essential point is this, "There’s a bigger story here, however. It’s one that’s been told before, but until things change, it needs to keep being told. Simply put, the App Store is broken."

bcl 17y ago
More specifically it is the review process. You dump your app into a black hole and get very little feedback. They need to have a dialog with the developer and a tighter feedback loop. Submit app, assign reviewer (who will also get priority for reviewing any updates), and then you have a dialog with the reviewer. I've got a couple small apps that I'm preparing to submit, but I don't think I'll spend the time to write anything serious until they fix this.
- megaduck 17y ago
  Why is there a review process at all? There's no review process for OS X, and that seems like a decent consumer experience. For that matter, there's never been a review process for UNIX, Windows, or the Web. Those platforms all seem to do okay. Seriously, what advantage does the review process offer? Can it be seriously argued that "review" benefits anybody?
  - tedunangst 17y ago
    There is very much a review process for software sold on store.apple.com, as evidenced by the fact that there's a lot of software not sold there. The problem is there is no outlet for rejected software, but I don't think you are any more entitled to sell via the App Store than you are to demand that your product be sold in Apple Stores.
  - lukifer 17y ago
    To play devil's advocate: - Users require a higher level of reliability from their phone than their computer, and keeping out trojans and buggy apps improves the overall experience. - Apple is able to maintain a more consistent UI by only allowing apps that conform to certain standards. - Some apps need to be kept out for legal reasons (BitTorrent) or to make parents more comfortable giving a device to their kids (porn). I don't mind a review process inherently, but Apple has mismanaged the whole thing in about every conceivable way. If I had my druthers, all apps would be instantly approved, with malware/etc yanked remotely as needed. Failing that, a community review process might also work well.
    - holman 17y ago
      I appreciate that you're devil's advocating it, and I'm still personally undecided on what direction Apple should be taking, but I'll just point out that all of those aspects could also be applied to OS X: - Reliability is still important on your desktop, and, though a mobile platform is more constrained by processing limits, it's up to the developer to respect those constraints. You don't get carte blanche to load forty terabyte files on a desktop app; you realize that your success depends on your ability to deliver a reliable app. - Apple's HIG is actually pretty well-applied on OS X; from a strictly UI point of view I don't think they need to mandate you follow their stringent guidelines. Besides which, after the year or so of the AppStore in play, people have a good idea of what an "iPhone app" should look and feel like, which helps reinforce this. - You can load up all kinds of filth, theoretically, on OS X. It happens. But it's not a big deal. That said, I probably agree with your final point. I suspect Apple's throwing around a lot of solutions to the "AppStore problem", but since Apple tends never to leak anything until release, it's frustrating to be in the dark in the meantime.
    - natch 17y ago
      People love to criticize Apple and their "mismanagement" of their business. I would like to see anyone do it better than Apple has. The old cliche applies: It's very easy to criticize. Not so easy to do what they have done.
      - lukifer 17y ago
        I give them a lot of leeway because of this principle. But there's a lot of low-hanging fruit they've failed to grab: - No way for small bug fixes to jump the queue. - No way to pre-screen app concepts, so that the developer can get a rejection notice before doing the work. - AFAIK, future releases are not routed through the same reviewer as previous versions, resulting in nonsensical rejections for previously existing characteristics. - Again, AFAIK: No second pass for rejected apps, with an eye to the P.R. impact of the decision. I'm all for employee empowerment, but anecdotally, reviewers seem to make a lot of arbitrary decisions which the company backs with little examination. - No feedback mechanism on your place in line. The wait would be a lot of more tolerable if I knew I knew how many days or weeks it should take, on average. Simply put, Apple hasn't made developer relations a high priority, which is unfortunate; failure to do so in the 80s and 90s is part of what kept Macs in single-digit market share. iPhone may be king of the market now, but pissing off devs is not a good way to stay there.
  - CamperBob 17y ago
    Why is there a review process at all? There's no review process for OS X Um, you can bet there will be a "review process" if you approach Apple and ask them to distribute your OS X application. There are few if any parallels between independent PC/Mac distribution and iPhone distribution. A better comparison would be with game consoles, where each manufacturer has a strict list of requirements before they'll give you a distribution key. In that light, Apple's policies are downright liberal.
    - Wump 17y ago
      Um, you can bet there will be a "review process" if you approach Apple and ask them to distribute your OS X application. The difference is you don't have a choice for iPhone distribution. You have to distribute through Apple. There may not be many parallels between PC/Mac distribution and iPhone distribution-- but there should be.
      - CamperBob 17y ago
        As far as I know, Apple has yet to sue anyone for jailbreaking an iPhone, or for publishing information on how to do so. So it's not correct to say you don't have a choice of distribution channels. I'm mostly playing devil's advocate here, because I agree that as long as a device is marketed as a general-purpose computing platform, it needs to be open to succeed in the long term. Still, Apple is under no obligation to distribute anything and everything that people throw at them.
  - indranil 17y ago
    The current review process offers nothing at all. Nothing. If there had been a streamlined review process, and there should be, it'd need to be automated, running the program through a test to see if private APIs were being used or traces remained in the background, which is stuff Apple should really check about.
there 17y ago
It’s one that’s been told before, but until things change, it needs to keep being told. no, iphone developers need to take more drastic action to boycott apple's actions than just "telling" the story. apple needs developers to keep the app store and platform popular and, so far, all of the big developers are singing their tune and continuing to publish new apps and updates, even if they are complaining on their weblogs. i think if the top iphone developers got together and had the petitioned support of dozens or hundreds of smaller developers, and took some serious action like going to apple headquarters and sitting down with those in charge, they could work to change things.
- mattmaroon 17y ago
  Two problems. #1 The biggest developers don't deal with this. You really think EA has to put up with this crap? The Google Voice thing was a highly publicized fiasco, but I'd be willing to bet that sort of treatment of other publicly-traded companies is rare, and even that story probably has much more behind it than we know. #2. There's so much money to be made that if half the small developers quit, the rest will simply fill the void. It's the same game theory concept that ensures the tuna will be fished into extinction. It would be in everyone's long term best interest to band together and make Apple fix their policies, but in each individual's short term interest to take the money and run. *Totally did not notice when I said that that the very next article on the list was about the extinction of the Bluefin Tuna. Scary.
  - rjurney 17y ago
    Probably not a coincidence. There's noticing, and then there's noticing ;)
    - mattmaroon 17y ago
      Actually my thought was more along the game theoretical lines than that article. The Bluefin Tuna is screwed because each country's long-term incentive is to sustain its population and severely curtail fishing. Unless every country but one does that, of course, leaving the country that crosses the picket line to make billions of dollars at the expense of the others.
natch 17y ago
The App Store is evolving constantly, as far as I can tell. It's improving over time, and not just in small ways. They have made huge improvements. But, as with any evolving ecosystem, it will always be broken. This is not strictly a bad thing; it's just the nature of evolving systems that they are always finding new states of equilibrium. What they are doing is not easy. And the results so far are amazing. There is the odd horror story, but overall it's pretty good, and getting better. Personally I would prefer an open system. But for a closed system they are doing it pretty well.
- fauigerzigerk 17y ago
  But, as with any evolving ecosystem, it will always be broken. This is not strictly a bad thing; it's just the nature of evolving systems that they are always finding new states of equilibrium So evolving systems can never be broken or bad? And even though the AppStore is not an ecosystem but rather a hierarchical social system, it should be mentioned that the equilibrium state of some ecosystems is death :-)

bcl 17y ago

More specifically it is the review process. You dump your app into a black hole and get very little feedback. They need to have a dialog with the developer and a tighter feedback loop. Submit app, assign reviewer (who will also get priority for reviewing any updates), and then you have a dialog with the reviewer. I've got a couple small apps that I'm preparing to submit, but I don't think I'll spend the time to write anything serious until they fix this.

megaduck 17y ago
Why is there a review process at all? There's no review process for OS X, and that seems like a decent consumer experience. For that matter, there's never been a review process for UNIX, Windows, or the Web. Those platforms all seem to do okay. Seriously, what advantage does the review process offer? Can it be seriously argued that "review" benefits anybody?
- tedunangst 17y ago
  There is very much a review process for software sold on store.apple.com, as evidenced by the fact that there's a lot of software not sold there. The problem is there is no outlet for rejected software, but I don't think you are any more entitled to sell via the App Store than you are to demand that your product be sold in Apple Stores.
- lukifer 17y ago
  To play devil's advocate: - Users require a higher level of reliability from their phone than their computer, and keeping out trojans and buggy apps improves the overall experience. - Apple is able to maintain a more consistent UI by only allowing apps that conform to certain standards. - Some apps need to be kept out for legal reasons (BitTorrent) or to make parents more comfortable giving a device to their kids (porn). I don't mind a review process inherently, but Apple has mismanaged the whole thing in about every conceivable way. If I had my druthers, all apps would be instantly approved, with malware/etc yanked remotely as needed. Failing that, a community review process might also work well.
  - holman 17y ago
    I appreciate that you're devil's advocating it, and I'm still personally undecided on what direction Apple should be taking, but I'll just point out that all of those aspects could also be applied to OS X: - Reliability is still important on your desktop, and, though a mobile platform is more constrained by processing limits, it's up to the developer to respect those constraints. You don't get carte blanche to load forty terabyte files on a desktop app; you realize that your success depends on your ability to deliver a reliable app. - Apple's HIG is actually pretty well-applied on OS X; from a strictly UI point of view I don't think they need to mandate you follow their stringent guidelines. Besides which, after the year or so of the AppStore in play, people have a good idea of what an "iPhone app" should look and feel like, which helps reinforce this. - You can load up all kinds of filth, theoretically, on OS X. It happens. But it's not a big deal. That said, I probably agree with your final point. I suspect Apple's throwing around a lot of solutions to the "AppStore problem", but since Apple tends never to leak anything until release, it's frustrating to be in the dark in the meantime.
  - natch 17y ago
    People love to criticize Apple and their "mismanagement" of their business. I would like to see anyone do it better than Apple has. The old cliche applies: It's very easy to criticize. Not so easy to do what they have done.
    - lukifer 17y ago
      I give them a lot of leeway because of this principle. But there's a lot of low-hanging fruit they've failed to grab: - No way for small bug fixes to jump the queue. - No way to pre-screen app concepts, so that the developer can get a rejection notice before doing the work. - AFAIK, future releases are not routed through the same reviewer as previous versions, resulting in nonsensical rejections for previously existing characteristics. - Again, AFAIK: No second pass for rejected apps, with an eye to the P.R. impact of the decision. I'm all for employee empowerment, but anecdotally, reviewers seem to make a lot of arbitrary decisions which the company backs with little examination. - No feedback mechanism on your place in line. The wait would be a lot of more tolerable if I knew I knew how many days or weeks it should take, on average. Simply put, Apple hasn't made developer relations a high priority, which is unfortunate; failure to do so in the 80s and 90s is part of what kept Macs in single-digit market share. iPhone may be king of the market now, but pissing off devs is not a good way to stay there.
- CamperBob 17y ago
  Why is there a review process at all? There's no review process for OS X Um, you can bet there will be a "review process" if you approach Apple and ask them to distribute your OS X application. There are few if any parallels between independent PC/Mac distribution and iPhone distribution. A better comparison would be with game consoles, where each manufacturer has a strict list of requirements before they'll give you a distribution key. In that light, Apple's policies are downright liberal.
  - Wump 17y ago
    Um, you can bet there will be a "review process" if you approach Apple and ask them to distribute your OS X application. The difference is you don't have a choice for iPhone distribution. You have to distribute through Apple. There may not be many parallels between PC/Mac distribution and iPhone distribution-- but there should be.
    - CamperBob 17y ago
      As far as I know, Apple has yet to sue anyone for jailbreaking an iPhone, or for publishing information on how to do so. So it's not correct to say you don't have a choice of distribution channels. I'm mostly playing devil's advocate here, because I agree that as long as a device is marketed as a general-purpose computing platform, it needs to be open to succeed in the long term. Still, Apple is under no obligation to distribute anything and everything that people throw at them.
- indranil 17y ago
  The current review process offers nothing at all. Nothing. If there had been a streamlined review process, and there should be, it'd need to be automated, running the program through a test to see if private APIs were being used or traces remained in the background, which is stuff Apple should really check about.

there 17y ago

It’s one that’s been told before, but until things change, it needs to keep being told. no, iphone developers need to take more drastic action to boycott apple's actions than just "telling" the story. apple needs developers to keep the app store and platform popular and, so far, all of the big developers are singing their tune and continuing to publish new apps and updates, even if they are complaining on their weblogs. i think if the top iphone developers got together and had the petitioned support of dozens or hundreds of smaller developers, and took some serious action like going to apple headquarters and sitting down with those in charge, they could work to change things.

mattmaroon 17y ago
Two problems. #1 The biggest developers don't deal with this. You really think EA has to put up with this crap? The Google Voice thing was a highly publicized fiasco, but I'd be willing to bet that sort of treatment of other publicly-traded companies is rare, and even that story probably has much more behind it than we know. #2. There's so much money to be made that if half the small developers quit, the rest will simply fill the void. It's the same game theory concept that ensures the tuna will be fished into extinction. It would be in everyone's long term best interest to band together and make Apple fix their policies, but in each individual's short term interest to take the money and run. *Totally did not notice when I said that that the very next article on the list was about the extinction of the Bluefin Tuna. Scary.
- rjurney 17y ago
  Probably not a coincidence. There's noticing, and then there's noticing ;)
  - mattmaroon 17y ago
    Actually my thought was more along the game theoretical lines than that article. The Bluefin Tuna is screwed because each country's long-term incentive is to sustain its population and severely curtail fishing. Unless every country but one does that, of course, leaving the country that crosses the picket line to make billions of dollars at the expense of the others.

natch 17y ago

The App Store is evolving constantly, as far as I can tell. It's improving over time, and not just in small ways. They have made huge improvements. But, as with any evolving ecosystem, it will always be broken. This is not strictly a bad thing; it's just the nature of evolving systems that they are always finding new states of equilibrium. What they are doing is not easy. And the results so far are amazing. There is the odd horror story, but overall it's pretty good, and getting better. Personally I would prefer an open system. But for a closed system they are doing it pretty well.

fauigerzigerk 17y ago
But, as with any evolving ecosystem, it will always be broken. This is not strictly a bad thing; it's just the nature of evolving systems that they are always finding new states of equilibrium So evolving systems can never be broken or bad? And even though the AppStore is not an ecosystem but rather a hierarchical social system, it should be mentioned that the equilibrium state of some ecosystems is death :-)