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I disagree. The unprofitable applications will be unprofitable on other phones too. The profitable applications will be profitable on other phones too. The developers who migrate away from the platform are the ones getting rejections from Apple. These are the most unique, edgy, or innovative applications, or ones that compete with the built-in Apple functionality.

Therefore, I conclude that this will not increase the quality of programs on the iPhone. It will decrease the diversity, while increasing the diversity and quality on other phones. But that was going to happen no matter what Apple did: When you are at the top, the only direction to go is down.

When any app can be rejected for any reason at any time by someone who is for practical purposes anonymous and answerable to nobody and the process has a reputation for being capricious and arbitrary, nobody wants to risk a significant development cost on AppStore acceptance.

Economically, the most likely to turn a profit are a series of $0.99 throwaways that might become the next "pet rock". If it's rejected by some guy because his corn flakes got soggy that morning, little is lost. Statistically, some of them will certainly be accepted.

Add in that Apple has ALSO gained a reputation for rejecting anything more useful or more polished than their own iPhone apps and you create a huge disincentive to spending a lot of time and energy on an iPhone app.

Developers who want to spend a lot of time and energy on a killer app will tend to target a platform where they are certain to be able to market the result. If successful there, they *might* decide to risk the cost of porting to the iPhone. In making the decision, they will consider that the more "killer" the app is, the more likely Apple is to decide it threatens their platform dominance and kill it.

Speaking as somebody currently living on the proceeds of a software company I sold, this is a naive view.

It's not enough to have an app people want. You have to (a) sell it for enough money to make a profit and (b) keep support costs down enough so your sales profit doesn't disappear.

Right off the bat, when you sell software, it's not a matter of "a lot of people wanting" your product; it's how many want it at the price you set. Let's say you have a product that nobody would be willing to spend much money for, but you could sell it for about the price of a cup of coffee. Let's suppose the product is cheap to make and after you sell it your customers never call you. You can make money with that.

Suppose you come up with a ringtone. It takes you a week to get it into whereever you are selling it, then 5000 customers download it at $1.99, of which you clear $1.00 after the store gets its cut. $5000 for a week of work isn't going to make you rich, but it's a respectable payday. You can live off of that kind of project.

Is this something that people "want"? Well, sure, so long as its priced cheap. The key is that of those 5000 customers, you'll hear from maybe one or two, and you can just pay them $2.00 to go away.

Now suppose you (like I did) develop some kind of mobile data collection app that drives important enterprise decisions. That's pretty damned valuable. You can easily convince a company to pay you $500 *per seat*. The problem is that even if you could wish the software into existence, the customers need more than $500 per seat of support. In fact that's why an open source model works very well for critical systems -- you give the software away and charge for the real expensive parts. In any case, my calculations showed that we broke even on a $10,000 sale, after all was said and done, so we might as *well* have given the software away. We typically sold consulting services at anywhere from $20,000 to $50,000 a pop, which was where we made our money. Believe me, when you've got a team of six engineers, a $20,000 project doesn't look so big.

The point is that the "build a better mousetrap" theory is simply wrong.

Your ringtones and iFarts are bottom feeders in the world of app development. They are profitable for their developers precisely because users don't care very much about them. Price a product like that low enough and you can make money.

The kind of apps that developers garner respect and admiration for developing are a different kettle of fish. It's *hard* to make a profit selling apps that people really care about, because customers demand a relationship with you. That's expensive.

The last thing you need is a third party inserting itself into that expensive and delicate process -- especially an opaque, unpredictable one. You work with your customers and discover they really need some extra functionality. You build it, then have to wait to find out whether you can sell it? That's nuts. You need that like you need a hole in the head.

And this is even worse: you make a portfolio of apps, and then you can't sell them to a different developer? That's a critical exit strategy for many small developers. They have the vision and brains to create an app, but don't have the size to support it. So they develop and market it, and sell it to somebody who is already supporting apps for the main customer base. That's what I did when I sold *my* business. When I had more customers that I could know personally, it wasn't fun anymore so I told one company that if they didn't buy the software I'd sell it their competitor.

Basically, what Apple is telling is that the iPhone is *still* not a platform. It's a music playing phone that can also run toys like iFart.

Could you point it out to the rest of us? Last time I checked, there was no approval process for FB apps, and the FB API requires no NDA. So I'm having a pretty tough time finding any irony here.

Do you have a citation for your Vlingo complaint? Vlingo is available on the iPhone and can dial numbers, search, bring up maps and update social networking status. It can't take dictation, but it seems Vlingo has also stopped selling free dictation on the Blackberry (it now costs $17.99) so it may simply be that they haven't written it for iPhone yet. I wasn't able to find anything about Vlingo getting rejected from the app store. The ability for applications to send e-mail is a fully supported feature in iPhone OS 3.0+.

According to TFA, his leaving the iPhone has nothing to do with Three20.

Personally, I understand completely why developers are leaving. Apple is aggressively anti-developer with the iPhone. I was initially very excited by the platform, registered as a developer and started planning projects. After looking at the process, I began to get nervous. After watching how Apple runs things, my fears proved founded.

There is no possible way that I'd waste my time continuing to use the iPhone, let alone developing for the platform.

Boss: How was your trip.

Reporter: Mostly uneventful, although I spotted Joe Biden on the Amtrak before he got off at the next stop.

Boss: "RESPECTED POLITICIANS BEGIN FLEEING MASS TRANSIT!"

Reporter: Uh, I don't think he was fleeing mass transit per se, nor did it seem to be the start of any trend...

Boss: He left, didn't he?

Reporter: ...also, I'm not sure he counts as "respected."

FTFA, Rogue Amoeba's issue was with a rejection to an update to their existing application, though the rejection itself had nothing to do with the proposed change. Instead, Apple decided that features in its existing, approved version are now a problem.

Apple's problem is that they have put a guard on the gate to enter their walled garden, except there are thousands of gates each with their own, different guard, and apparently only the vaguest of ideals are guiding their decision-making.

I was sort of with you until there. Why does this guy have an obligation to help everyone who can't figure it out themselves? Why is the developer community entitled to his knowledge and experience? If he was upset at how Apple is controlling things then he has every right to take his toys and go home, and complain about it all the way home. Developers who can't do things themselves have no automatic entitlement to anyone else's expertise, his guidance is given purely on a volunteer basis, and he's completely allowed to stop volunteering his expertise whenever he wants to, for any reason.

If I was a knowledgeable member of an extremely locked-down development community where everyone else felt entitled to my knowledge, I would probably leave also and find people who appreciate what I do a little bit more.

Except, of course, sell any software to Americans [cnn.com]

There is no money to be made if Apple decides to reject your app.

Only to the degree that the iPhone app store is a free market.