App Store: Sentence first — verdict afterwards

So I would say this is only bad for the user in the sense that they might not be able to have all the cool apps they want because (a) they may be pulled before they can purchase them or (b) they may never be developed because it's too risky to make them with Apple's fickle review policies.

Hopefully with the new online store with send-to-phone feature and as Android numbers continue to gain on iPhone, people will realize the Android is a very solid platform to develop for.

That is why it is immature. If I can't sell apps, then what good is it to someone trying to run a business? Some people aren't willing to stoop to selling ads, and ruining the experience.

That's not preserving the user experience or maintaining the flexibility of the platform. That's madness.

Then there is the "wildwest" of the Android market, where you have to watch out for yourself because anyone can do whatever they want and no one is looking over your shoulder and telling you what to do. That sounds like more a more mature environment to me.

Of course, it's easy to link to private APIs on iPhone, but the app submission process has a totally automated system that verifies that you don't.

Methinks the person hasn't actually tried it.

That sounds pretty damn immature to me.

I am at a real loss on this one. It would seem to indicate something coming, but it just seems odd.

It would be like if drinking Coca Cola suddenly became illegal to drink, but the laws were not updated to let citizens know. So you're on a hot summer's day, drinking your cool refreshing Coke like you always do, suddenly you're arrested and the cop won't even explain why (but he says he thought your Coke looked especially delicious). It's a little bit outrageous.

"They refused to be pinned down to an exact reason, simply stating that they were doing a cull of any applications that presented widgets to the user."

And then she says she doesn't understand what she would have to take out of the app to have it re-approved.

So then, she goes on to say, and I quote:

"Our app is a beautiful photo frame with a few nice things you can put over your photos."

I take this as: you can use their app to make your iPad into a digital photo frame. Since the whole screen is taken up by the photo app, I'm sure that as a feature, the developers added the ability to add "nice things" to a layer on top of the frame, such as a clock, or speech balloons, or SOMETHING which Apple may consider the equivalent of a widget.

In no way is this fault of the developer, except that she knew developing for the app store carried this kind of risk. If Apple had said before development "no widgets" (although defining what they meant), then it would be fair and clear. The whole situation is crap, and I honestly don't see how anyone can defend a practice as unfair as this.

Also, calling Godwin's law on a legitimate comparison is just as bad as what Hitler did. :-P

Firstly, the platform vendor - Google - can and does ship competing products for free (turn by turn navigation anyone?).

Secondly even though Android is free you still rely on the manufacturers to ship it on actual phones. They could all jump ship for Windows Phone 7 leaving you with no platform (go with it, it's a thought expermient).

I understand that this is a 7 year old article and that Tim Bray has undergone a road to Damascus conversion to Android Apps over the web, but even if you accept his original conclusion that you are only not a sharecropper if you run your own web stack, it doesn't really afford you much extra security. Google could come along and release a competitor to your product and give it away for free.

In summary: we're almost all sharecroppers because the definition is so wide and even those who aren't face a similarly large but different risk meaning that being a sharecropper isn't necessarily much worse, if worse at all.

Dumb app store rejections still suck mightily though :)