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Comments: 152 +- Apple: iPhone App Store Rejects Find a New Home on Sunday November 29, @02:03AM
Posted
by
kdawson
on Sunday November 29, @02:03AM
from the huddled-masses dept.
from the huddled-masses dept.
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cellphones
background: url(//a.fsdn.com/sd/topics/topicapple.gif); width:52px; height:64px;
apple
eldavojohn writes "A new site called App Rejections (somewhat slashdotted already) aims to provide a home for misfit apps. With Apple offering no documents or discussions on the matter of application rejections, this site might become a popular place to pick forbidden fruit. Could a third party horn in on Apple's monopoly in the iPhone application market?"
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there's an app for finding a new home? (Score:5, Funny)
oh, wait...
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Yeah thats what I thought when I read the title, that someone had written an app for 'finding a new home' and that apple had rejected it, maybe because of pressure from real etate companies.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
And it sounds like it would be a really cool app, too... combine realty listings with Google map overlays. Integrate everything nicely with the GPS... mmm, metadata. *drools*
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
oh, wait...
Pop Quiz:
1.) a: "Store" b: "Rejects" c: "Find"
Which one is the verb?
2.) Discuss why putting all three together in a headline is a bad idea.
[I would have gotten an iPhone for the "Find a New Home" app.]
No (Score:5, Informative)
Not that the linked site appears to have much if anything to do with breaking the monopoly. The vast majority of iPhone apps are very inexpensive, so the only hope of making anything above hobby money as a developer is to be part of the Apple marketplace that offers tens of millions of potential customers. Not to mention the suspicion that people who jailbreak phones are likely to know how to pirate software as well, making them a less desirable market as well.
The site provides another forum to attempt to get Apple to reform its ways and to try to help each other figure out the sometimes murky meaning of the rejections. There's no revolution there. Until someone provides a real threat to Apple's hardware/software iPhone platform, it has no real motivation to mend its relationship with developers.
That said, karmic payoff may just bite them once there's that alternative.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Not to mention the suspicion that people who jailbreak phones are likely to know how to pirate software as well, making them a less desirable market as well.
Please don't lump us jailbreakers in with pirates, Having the power to pirate and doing it are two different things. I take your point, But I just don't see most people going to all that trouble just to dodge a small fee.
Re:No (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:No (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
For the platform owner, sure. For the consumer, yes, it is.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If having a much bigger market share (e.g., Nokia at 40%, to Apple's few per cent) does not count as a "real threat", I am curious to hear what does?
In the US (yes, /. is international but the iPhone is a bit US-centric) smartphone market, Nokia is close to a non-player.
http://www.boygeniusreport.com/2009/10/28/rim-and-apple-top-u-s-smartphone-market-share/ [boygeniusreport.com]
RIM has 40%, Apple has 30%, Palm has 7%.
Worldwide Nokia had 40% of the smartphone market in Q4 2008 but that was with a 10% drop from the previous quarte
Article title correction (Score:5, Informative)
"iPhone App Store Reject Stories Find a Home". Actual rejected apps are not available there, nor necessarily anywhere else.
A serious black eye (Score:4, Insightful)
You know that old phrase about those who don't know their history being doomed to repeat it?
I don't know what Apple is thinking. Up until now, it's all been good for them because of the lack of serious competition. With Android-based phones cranking up, how long will it be before Apple loses their market share due to these shenanigans?
The scary thing is that Apple has been in this EXACT situation before. They owned a large market share of the PC market way back when IBM PCs were too expensive for the common consumer to afford. They kept all of their hardware all locked up tight, with proprietary everything. As the cost of PCs came down as the hardware moved to commodity parts and the PC "clone wars" cranked up, Apple took a beating and damn near went out of business.
I already have friend who refuse to buy an iPhone because it's locked down so tightly. The two most common complaints I hear, in order, are: "I refuse to sign up for AT&T's service," and "I keep reading about how they won't let people publish their apps." The more they press this issue, the more they are setting themselves up for a spectacular failure. (And yes, I know people who have bought Android-based phones specifically because they don't like a company telling them what they can and can't run on hardware they paid good money for.)
Apple has been a cool company the past few years. I have an iPhone and a Mac (which I'm typing this comment from now, in fact). Still, if I owned stock in Apple, I'd be selling it about right now because they are moving in the exact opposite direction that the market is.
Re: (Score:2)
So you think Apple should just accept every fart-app hack, poorly written, buggy piece of scrap code a developer ships their way?
They have to have /some/ quality control. Opening the floodgates wouldn't do them any good at all.
He speaks about 50/50% market share times (Score:2, Interesting)
Apple once owned 50% desktop market. If you read the history, even from sources like Wikipedia, you will see it isn't exactly "evil Microsoft" put them in bad position, it is their bad treatment to developers, especially tiny ones.
From that site, I was led to that portable .NET game engine community and reading the legimate developer's comments, I really felt sad. There were guys who have just 60 days worth of living money and if some idiot intern rejects their application, they will be financially doomed.
Re:He speaks about 50/50% market share times (Score:5, Insightful)
There were guys who have just 60 days worth of living money and if some idiot intern rejects their application, they will be financially doomed.
This is what I would call "poor risk assessment skills". If you're depending on a capricious entity for your livelihood, I'd suggest a change of employment cause you sure as hell ain't gonna change Apple.
*Ahem* game releases became _fewer_. Countable and non-countable nouns. The more you know!
Parent
Re:He speaks about 50/50% market share times (Score:4, Insightful)
There were guys who have just 60 days worth of living money and if some idiot intern rejects their application, they will be financially doomed.
This is what I would call "poor risk assessment skills". If you're depending on a capricious entity for your livelihood, I'd suggest a change of employment cause you sure as hell ain't gonna change Apple.
I think that was the point. They thought Apple could be relied on. Now they know better...
Hint to Apple: you want exactly those people who are good SW guys but perhaps not the smartest as business people to do software for you. They're usually at least as interested in the software as the money they make off it, if not more. So they'll crank out cheap software for those who might buy Apple phones, thus providing Apple very cheap software base. You don't want to drive them to Android and later Maemo.
Though Maemo promises to be wicked cool from developer point of view, if you ask me :-)
Parent
Re:A serious black eye (Score:5, Insightful)
No. I think Apple should allow developers to distribute Apps without going through Apple's store.
There are two advantages:
Apple's customers can choose to only visit Apple's Store or they can download from elsewhere when Apple chooses not to publish something (and accept some risk).
Parent
Re:A serious black eye (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple decide, and some disadvantages for them are that:
1) Apple will get blamed by the press and blogosphere for any malware. Just as Microsoft gets blamed for Windows malware. But malware on a mobile phone can be much worse. It can cost you a lot of money on your phone bill.
2) Apple doesn't receive 30% of revenue if it's not sold through the App Store. Why would a company voluntarily give up revenue?
A disadvantage for the consumer is that life gets more complicated. A low price one stop shop such as the App Store is convenient. They are relieved of the concern that a better cheaper app is available elsewhere.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This also allows Apple to prune it's App Store and get rid of all the crap and make discoverability easier.
I already have problems finding applications because when I look for say, a grocery list app, there's not 1 or 2 or 20. there's like 100, and it's hard to find a big difference between them. Of the say 100, 40-60 of them are either free or free demo, and so I download a dozen or so among them and try them out. If I don't find one I like, I have to go back to the store and find another dozen to try o
Re:A serious black eye (Score:4, Insightful)
You are right. Having a completely open platform has never worked before. *rolls eyes *
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
You are conflating the definition of "open". Here we are discussing the ability to run applications, without corporate approval. You can do that on Linux. You can do that on Windows. Hell, Apple even allow you to do that on OS X, so evidently they don't have a problem with "quality control" there!
And if you want to talk about market share and being open, 95+% of mobile phones let you run "apps" from anywhere, and under 5% of them don't.
Note that the games consoles work like that because the hardware company
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A serious black eye (Score:5, Insightful)
So you think Apple should just accept every fart-app hack, poorly written, buggy piece of scrap code a developer ships their way?
They currently do accept such crap, so what is your point?
I submit to you as evidence the hundreds of flashlight apps which simply light up the screen, the copies of Apple demo apps, iFart Mobile and the many copies, IAmRich (only removed after customer complaints), the appalling UI of 'TripLog/1040', etc etc. There are thousands of apps which can in no sense be rated as quality apps on the store right now.
The app store vetting is not about quality (as evidenced by all the crap-ware on the store), it is about control of competitors like Google and the purse-strings for the platform. They want to collect money on each transaction, and exclude any apps which they feel compete too closely with Apple products, and if that wastes months of time/money for third-party developers, or even their close partners like Google, well that's just too bad. The current policy certainly won't lead to more quality apps on the store - quite the reverse.
Apple are of course legally within their rights to restrict competition on their platform, whether it is in the interests of their customers, or indeed Apple long term, is debatable.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Except now "PC" is called "Android."
Insightful? I beg your pardon? (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's say Android is deployed on every smartphone in the world that isn't an iPhone. Some are large and fragile, some are gold-plated, some with touchscreens, some without, some with keyboards, et cetera et cetera. To do this, every manufacturer and carrier needs to write custom firmware, apps, and UI elements to work with their handsets, on top of Android, ... so let's just say they did, and they work just fine, and here we are.
How does this in any way constitute a threat to the iPhone?
Here's another scenario: Let's take every computer in the world, from the toughest HP rig to the crappiest mini-ATX, and make them all run the same OS. Let's call this rival OS something suitably generic, like, "windows". By sheer numbers alone, it will totally crush Apple and their puny OS X! Except it hasn't.
What magic sauce does Android promise that will counteract the crushing weight of a zillion competing handsets and their chump code monkeys clamoring to distinguish themselves with blingy but utterly unusable interfaces?
I'd really like to know.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Because using your proprietary control of the platform to play hardball with 3rd party software creators doesn't work so well when a viable alternative exists.
If Apple keep on artificially limiting what the iPhone can do, they're going to drive away developers. The risk is that one day soon, there is going to emerge an Android based phone with a killer set of cool apps, which are composed largely of all the stuff that Apple didn't allow on the i
Re:Insightful? I beg your pardon? (Score:4, Insightful)
Awesome! I can see it now! Sixteen icons on the home screen:
1. MAME r106, Really Hard To Control Edition
2. "Let's Bounce," With Russian ""Actress"" Yulia Nova
3. Telnet
4. Official Chase Bank App (actually released by phr0z3n crew, but who can tell?)
5. Captain Redb34rd's Totally Safe And Not Backdoored Personal Info Storage App
6. Flash Player (clocked down to 1fps for battery life)
7. I Am Rich
8. Baseband Burner
9. Firefox Mobile
10. Mozilla Mobile
11. Opera Mobile
12. Lynx Mobile
13. Internet Explorer Mobile
14. Internet Explorer Mobile Security Update Manager
15. WinAMP
16. Norton AV
Clearly, Apple sees short term commercial advantage in inconveniencing their customers, by not dropping each and every one of these apps into their next firmware update.
Parent
Re:A serious black eye (Score:5, Interesting)
With Android-based phones cranking up, how long will it be before Apple loses their market share due to these shenanigans?
Android was first released in October 2008, with the first device being available the same month - thats over a year ago. According to Apple, the iPhone sold more than 4 million units in the first 200 days, so wheres the equivalent Android sales explosion? Analysts are expecting Android sales to outstrip iPhone sales by 2012, but why is it going to take that long if Android is such a good competitor? It didn't take the iPhone anywhere near two and a half years to take a significant chunk of the market from competitors.
I'm not an Android hater, I haven't used it so I don't hold an opinion on it, but it seems to be held as the ultimate saviour on /., and I'm struggling to see why. Its not the iPhone I am worried about, its the Android series of phones...
Parent
Re:A serious black eye (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Re:A serious black eye (Score:5, Interesting)
With Android-based phones cranking up, how long will it be before Apple loses their market share due to these shenanigans?
Android was first released in October 2008, with the first device being available the same month - thats over a year ago. According to Apple, the iPhone sold more than 4 million units in the first 200 days, so wheres the equivalent Android sales explosion? Analysts are expecting Android sales to outstrip iPhone sales by 2012, but why is it going to take that long if Android is such a good competitor? It didn't take the iPhone anywhere near two and a half years to take a significant chunk of the market from competitors.
I'm not an Android hater, I haven't used it so I don't hold an opinion on it, but it seems to be held as the ultimate saviour on /., and I'm struggling to see why. Its not the iPhone I am worried about, its the Android series of phones...
There is an analysis here, not entirely without flaws, that explains some of the problems Android is facing.
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/11/21/inside_googles_android_and_apples_iphone_os_as_software_markets.html [appleinsider.com]
One of the biggest ones is hardware: limited flash on board castrates applications.
And leaving some of control of the firmware to the handset makers is the single, biggest mistake you can do. One of the main reasons the software scene on Symbian is lo lousy. You end up with too many different versions of the OS in use at the same time, and in some cases updating will be very, very difficult (did it never happen that a give FW update was NOT available for your specific Nokia handset - and thus you were unable to use some applications? IN Europe this is very common).
And TOO different HW characteristics. Some people complain that Apple's 480x320 screen is no longer the coolest around.
Of course Apple is already working on updates to the display - but in such a way that applications and icons won't look like rubbish (like scaling on the Motorola Droid). I need non insider info to know they are: they would be dumb if they didn't - and they may be evil, but not stupid.
I expect an exact doubling of resolution in both axes, and this will of course happen a bit later than on the Android platform (854x480 current on Droid), and with some _very_ simple software support (developers will have to check if such a screen is available, otherwise apps will be scaled, I guess).
Roberto
Parent
Google Guy vs. Mac Guy (Score:4, Funny)
So who will be Google Guy? I mean, they have an actor who basically looks like his only sexual experience has been with his mom's pantyhose for Windows Guy. I'm thinking a flamboyant show-tune singing cross dresser or, even better, a guy in a trenchcoat with a heavy German accent who insists he's from Argentina.
Parent
I beg your pardon? (Score:4, Insightful)
Android was not something built on hype like the iphone.
The iPhone was not built on hype, though it benefitted from it. It was built on damned strong innovation.
Google, HTC and the other OHA members planed for Android to have a slow release and ramp up which is exactly what has happened. Many tech products use this approach, creating a small market of early adopters, using this market to refine the product and come back with an R2. Also this has the added advantage of creating a support network as well as word of mouth campaigns as opposed to Apple's "blanket of hype" marketing.
There you go again with that "hype" word. Actually Apple is so respected for their ability to innovate that they benefit strongly from the word-of-mouth you speak of. The iPhone made the cover of Time magazine, as the "best invention of the year", total cost to Apple: Zero. The Steve was named by Fortune magazine as the CEO of the decade. Cost: Zero. Those represent the top of a mountain of free press coverage that Google simply cannot match. So of course their strategy is different; but not by choice.
The plan with Android is not to flood the market at once with "sales explosions" but to slowly seep in and take market share piecemeal.
Yes, that's "the plan". It's the only strategy that stands a chance in hell of working.
Slow and steady wins the race. Analysts are predicting 2012 for Android to routinely outsell the iphone.
Analyst. The Gartner research firm, last month, to be specific. They did not reveal any details about how they arrived at their numbers. They did not say that Android would eat marketshare away from Apple, either. They claimed that, three years from now, about 14% of smartphones would run the Android OS, and that about 13% of smartphones would be sold by Apple.
Don't hang your hat on what one analyst says. Another research firm, Canalys, has already pegged the Apple smartphone marketshare at 17 percent in Q3 2009.
Even if the iPhone marketshare were to SHRINK in three years down to the same level that Gartner promises the Android, Apple would still be making one hell of a lot more money off smartphones than Google would. And do you have any idea how long three and a half years is in this market? The iPhone had not even been released three years ago. What's Apple going to be rolling out three years from NOW? If you think the Android platform is going to destroy or even damage Apple's smartphone business, you still Have Some Splainin' To Do.
For those playing along at home Apple's sales ebb and flow with the level of marketing Apple produces, right now the level of iphone marketing is low so iphones are not selling much
7.4 million units sold in Q3 2009. That is roughly twice the number of units sold running Windows Mobile, and dangerously close to the number of BlackBerries sold in the same time frame. Explain your usage of the phrase "not selling much".
as of July 2010 it will have been released in every western nation for two years which is the standard plan length in our nations. This is going to affect iphone sales a lot.
Explain how.
the iphone didn't take that much away from competitors, certainly the likes of RIM and NOKIA aren't hurting, the iphone hasn't taken much from the smart phone market, most of the iphones market share comes from the consumer phone market.
... Which is where the smartphone market gets its growth from. And this is exactly why RIM and Nokia _are_ worried. The majority of the customers newly attracted to the smartphone market are being diverted to iPhones. Nokia's smartphone sales figures have been flat for the last three years. That is what we in the biz call "hurting".
Parent
Utter tripe. (Score:3, Informative)
Cas
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
What does "roughly twice" mean on the planet where you're from. The numbers tell an entirely different story [engadget.com] with Winmo outstripping Iphone by 2 to 1.
Hey dumbass: Your link points to an article written almost TWO YEARS AGO, and the statistic it gives is for SIX MONTHS, not a quarter.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Small nitpicking: Nokia has 50% of smartphone market ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smartphone [wikipedia.org] ).
And as a side note - they will grow big time, IMHO. They're pushing Symbian more and more towards the dominant mobile phone platform of this planet, the Nokia S40 (well, ok, they're selling lots of S30 too, perhaps more). They are the only ones with a product for this segment - cheap, reliable candybars, not that much different from what majority of their market is already using. Most smartphone makers even don'
Android is more potentiality for now (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:A serious black eye (Score:5, Insightful)
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Apple took a beating precisely because they chose to dabble in the Mac clone market. That's a mistake that Steve Jobs will never make, hence why you will not see Mac OS X licensed and sold for generic non-Apple x86 PCs.
You'd be a complete fool to sell Apple stock now. Apple is set to get stronger than ever before.
Apple isn't doing anything different than what it has been doing ever since Jobs came back to captain the ship. It's the epitome of Steve Jobs' business strategy: make high quality, premium product
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I do. But Jobs has been at Apple since day one, with an enforced break in the middle when he obviously also took a great personal interest in what Apple was doing. So he DOES know the history. History related to Apple - better than anyone on earth in fact. They HAVEN'T been in exactly the same situation before. Hardware is not the same as software. If YOU look at the history of the console you'll see that having t
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Up until now, it's all been good for them because of the lack of serious competition. With Android-based phones cranking up, how long will it be before Apple loses their market share due to these shenanigans?
The competition from Nokia (40% market share), Samsung, LG, Motorola and RIM, all of whom have larger market share than Apple, isn't "serious competition"? :) I'm sure Apple are enjoying the revenue from the product - you don't need to be one of the biggest in the market to make money.
Don't get me wrong
Hello Editor. Did you RTFA? (Score:5, Insightful)
The summary implies that the website is going to be a home for rejected apps.
TFA shows that the site is there to collect information about why Apple rejected apps.
1000 bucks on (Score:3, Interesting)
UNamerican (Score:4, Funny)
I mean, by exactly doing this you are UNfriending yourself. Apple Inc will lose dollar$ because of this and will have less influence to set the desired norms, values, regulations, etc.
All of this might even be illegal. Yes, you are going against the will of the owner of the platform and you might be breaking certain laws while going this route.
Has this world become an area with revolutionarists?
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There's actually a recent "Misfit" spoof ad bashing iPhone's coverage:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JgrBtn8XdU [youtube.com]
It should be iSummons... (Score:2)
...you insensitive clod!
Re: (Score:2)
I can see the problem with "slashdoted," but "horn in" isn't a typo.