iPhone App Store Rejects Find a New Home 152
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?"
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...
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. I speak about not being able to buy bread to your home. I feel ashamed on behalf of Apple and I am not linking it directly, one can find it easily if digs enough.
It is the same story on Desktop, they make Developers _hate_ them, not fixing any reported bugs and with 10% approaching market share, companies like EA say "fsck it, lets convert our directx code instead of using their frameworks". Don't you watch application/game scene recently? What ships other than copy/paste windows converted junk? Apple switched to i386, ending the decade old endianness issues/not being able to use same code and game releases became _less_. There must be a reason for it you know.
1000 bucks on (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:there's an app for finding a new home? (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: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
Re:A serious black eye (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 the hardware manufacturer as a gatekeeper who gets to decide which software is published, and takes a cut of the revenue, is not a losing strategy at all. In fact the console games market is now bigger than the PC games market. No doubt you do have friends that refuse to buy an iPhone for whatever reason. But you'll also have friends who have happily bought an iPhone. I certainly have friends in both categories. But anecdotes prove nothing. Statistics do. And the relevant stats are sales figures. iPhone is doing phenomenally well, huge growth with every passing quarter. And that's against other smartphones - Symbian, Windows Mobile, etc, that have had the freedom you want for many years.
Re:A serious black eye (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, I agree with what you write about the risk of people losing interest in the Iphone, and yet more competition from Android - I would never buy a locked down platform either, and it scares me that such a thing might become normal practice in mobile computing. But don't forget there are plenty of alternatives here already, which people are already buying. It's just that the Iphone gets a disproportionate amount of media coverage (especially here on Slashdot - I mean, people start joking about the Daily Iphone Slashvertisement, but it's stopped being funny... Hell, today as well as the obligatory story, we've enough one that mentions the Iphone, with an additional two more Apple stories on top. When was the last time you saw an story for say Nokia?)
But yes, hopefully open solutions will win in the end. It annoys me that many phones are rather locked down - albeit nowhere near to the extent of the Iphone. That's why I'm glad that netbooks have appeared - maybe not replacements for phones, but they allow mobile computing with all the benefits and openness of ordinary PCs.
It's just sad that Slashdot, which was once a place devoted to open systems, now focuses almost solely on the most closed platfom in this market.