Apple now rejecting iPhone Apps for "limited utility."
macrumors.com
macrumors.com
Yes, I know Apple pulled it anyway, but they potentially set themselves up for a lawsuit by some other scumbag down the road if they don't find a way to cover themselves for pulling down apps that are technically legal, but are solely designed to "fool the gullible".
I'm sure Apple's decision was inspired by "I am Rich" -- but for publicity reasons, not legal ones.
Will developers go into any real risk in developing for the iPhone, or will they just abort the attempt?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walled_garden_(media)
"A walled garden, with regards to media content, refers to a closed set or exclusive set of information services provided for users (a method of creating a monopoly or securing an information system)."
This is Apple's system, not yours. No surprise here.
(Notice how the parenthesized "media" within the url is not included within the link?)
That's like Amazon saying "we won't sell your book, because it isn't of interest to the broad Amazon.com customer community."
They need to do something with the App Store so that it feeds off the "long tail" instead of fighting against it. (UI improvements? try-before-you-buy? some other browsing/search/tryout enhancements?)
I'm surprised that they've even allowed as many apps as they have.
Like many other people, I kept my 1st gen iPhone jailbroken from the day I bought it. I absolutely loved Installer.app and the huge community of developers and their applications that I had access to. A lot of the apps in Installer.app were pretty worthless though, or had little utility. They frequently cluttered up the categories of things that I really wanted to review.
However, it was much harder for developers to create jailbroken apps than it is now with the official SDK. This caused the overall number of available apps to be much smaller than what we have available through the official channel. If Apple were to not attempt to manage all of the apps that people are submitting, it would quickly become nearly impossible to find anything useful. That would also open up the possibility of nefarious apps that are trying to get your personal info, etc.
However, so that I don't sound like a complete Apple flunky, I also admit the App Store on iTunes and on the iPhone itself has a lot to be desired. There are interface issues which annoy me (like navigating into an app description, going back to the category but being at the freaking top of the list instead of where the app appears in the list). They need to improve the App Store application itself. It would be really great if someone could write a new App Store as a 3rd party app that would interface and manage all of the apps you have access to. This most certainly could be done on the old jailbroken systems using something like Summerboard.
The nefarious apps argument is not really valid, because the number of apps on the Apps Store has, or will very soon, exceed the number of things humans can keep track of anyways, so even if crap apps are eliminated, there will still be too many apps to keep track of.
This is really a problem of taste, and Apple has messed up here. Some people like silly apps, just like some people like really bad music. The solution is not to insert yourself into the middle and become an arbiter of taste, the solution is to make it easier for the crowd to sort the good from the bad and let each app appeal to its niche while not eliminating innovation or silliness.
You're right - Apple relies on music publishers to do that for them. The analogy between music store and appstore is not exact.
The last time I checked, "Silence" by Guster was still on iTunes. If that isn't the functional equivalent of a "limited utility" app then I don't know what is. But its there, I'm even sure a Guster fan has bought it. The fact is, Apple can do a lot of things about limited utility apps without shutting them down completely.
I am by no means an Apple zealot. In fact, I think the iPhone is pretty lousy. But why is it that so many people feel like they have a right to have their application sold in the iPhone App Store? Store owners do get to pick and choose what they're going to sell. You can't just come up with whatever lame product, show up at Best Buy or Amazon headquarters and demand that they start selling it in their stores. What in the world makes this guy or anyone else think the App Store is somehow an exception?
They weren't jerks about it either. They tactfully told this guy that his app was worthless and explained how he could distribute it to friends and family. He's lucky an application called "Pull My Finger" was even reviewed in the first place.
If people are unhappy with App Store policies then maybe the conditions are right for a competitor to come along and open a store. Of course, there's the whole issue of lock-in, but that's a whole different topic. The last thing we should be doing is feeling some sense of entitlement. It's Apple's store and they can choose what products to carry. As consumers we can choose whether or not to buy their products.
Well, the problem is that Apple has made so that theirs is the only store in the world. If your store doesn't want to stock my book, it's not a problem, I can always go to the bookstore across the street and cut a deal with them. But if I write an app for the iPhone, the only place that I can sell it is the App Store.
That being the case, developers are going to see Apple being fickle about what apps are accepted/rejected, and they are going to start asking themselves is it worth the risk to spend 6 months developing an app just to discover that it can never even be put on the market.
Apple risks losing developers if they continue with this, and that doesn't help their cause.