scunnered's Profile

Member since September 25, 2008

  • Name

    scunnered

  • Location:

Favorite Files

Recent Posts

  1. Comment - Spurned iPhone developer's complaints mysteriously disappear

    (Sep 25, 2008 - 2:17 PM)

    Thank you for sharing your well-articulated thoughts. Unsurprisingly you missed the point.

    Care to enlighten us as to how we figure out the new rules BEFORE we spend weeks and months developing an application?

  2. Comment - Spurned iPhone developer's complaints mysteriously disappear

    (Sep 25, 2008 - 10:13 AM)

    What many of you don't seem to understand is that three of the applications that have been removed (Pull My Finger, MailWrangler, and Podcaster) followed the terms and conditions as set out by Apple. They were not in breach of any "rules". They didn't make use of Apple's private frameworks.

    Pull My Finger was nixxed because it was deemed to be "of limited functionality for the community". Is Pull My Finger any less useful than say, the many flashlight apps? It's a subjective statement - who are they to decide what's useful and what's not? There is no such stipulation (or was not, when I last read the terms) that states that applications submitted to the app store must have a minimum level of usefulness to the community. The customers themselves will tell a developer if their app is useful or not by the number of purchases/downloads it receieves.

    In the cases of MailWrangler and Podcaster, the decision here is more troubling. There is absolutely nothing in the terms and conditions which state that your application cannot duplicate the functionality of Apple's software already on the device OR desktop, other than the obvious cases where such an application would have to make use of certain frameworks that are off limits.

    This is NOT about restricting the download of files to the device - there are many applications which do this already. As long as the files are kept within the application's sandbox or the user's documents folder there is no issue with downloading files.

    What this appears to be about is Apple's defence of its own software from potential competition. Apple's reason for rejecting MailWrangler was :

    "Your application duplicates the functionality of the built-in iPhone application Mail without providing sufficient differentiation or added functionality, which will lead to user confusion." (text copied from gizmodo)

    This is utter nonsense. Apple's Mail app supports Gmail, but not some of Gmail's functionality. MailWrangler allowed you to manage multiple Gmail accounts in a similar fashion to the Mail app and use all of the web functionality from its mobile interface, something which Mail couldn't. Mail comes with the device. MailWrangler had to be downloaded. Surely the people who download an application know why they're downloading it?

    The reason for nixxing Podcaster is more insidious. It duplicated functionality from a DESKTOP application. One of Apple's development documents even has guidelines on porting a desktop app over to the iPhone/Touch. Podcaster was a surefire hit. Manage your podcasts on-the-go and get the latest casts when you're away from your desktop machine. Was the real reason for the app's rejection that Apple feared that people wouldn't use iTunes to manage podcasts? Did they even consider the revenue stream they'd have from sales of Podcaster?

    It seems that while developers are encouraged to port desktop apps to the iPhone, they just can't touch Apple's desktop apps.

    People have argued that there are many applications out there which do the same thing - tip calculator, Sudoku, task management etc - why haven't they been rejected? Competition amongst apps is fine, as long as you're not competing with Apple's apps. At last count there were over 50 poker games on the App Store, one of which was Apple's Texas Hold'em. There were poker apps on the store BEFORE Apple delivered their's. Hypocrisy?

    I wonder what would happen if someone developed an app which improved on the iTunes Remote...

    Many developers are concerned that the hours of development, design, and testing can be for nothing if Apple rejects their application at the 11th hour. I'm sure most developers (myself included) would be happy to play within the new rules if we knew what those rules were. We'd be even happier if we knew that the approval process was consistent and not subject to the whims of some anonymous Apple reviewer spinning the "Wheel of Rejection" in Cupertino.