JWZ ported XScreenSaver to iOS - keeps getting rejected by Apple | Hacker News Reader

JWZ ported XScreenSaver to iOS - keeps getting rejected by Apple

jwz.org

58 pointsrwos69 comments

Does it even matter whether Apple is wrong, unreasonable or irrational? Just like I reserve the rights of admission to my house, Apple reserves the right to accept or reject applications from the app store.

If you really want Apple to change, how about NOT developing for iOS? Articles like this aren't really going to make them change their policies.

If you really want Apple to change, how about NOT developing for iOS? Articles like this aren't really going to make them change their policies.

Certainly convincing other people not to develop for iOS would have more of an impact than just swearing off it personally. More generally, I dislike the idea that we shouldn't write this sort of thing because "the market will sort it out anyway". This sort of post is the market sorting it out.

Apple reserves the right to accept or reject applications from the app store.

Sure, they're probably legally entitled to do almost anything. That doesn't mean they can't (or shouldn't) be criticised for it, though, and it doesn't mean that criticism of them can't have any impact on anyone's behaviour.

I agree wholeheartedly with you. However, there is no shortage of articles detailing Apple's arbitrary App store approval process. Yet, the number of applications on the App store keeps on increasing and increasing.

What is striking is none (or I haven't come across one) of these articles end with the developer washing their hands off the App store and vowing never to develop another iOS app. Instead, most of them seem to be aiming to generate publicity so that Apple takes notice and hopefully approves the app.

I'm going to take a guess here and say the posts that were notorious enough so that you found them were all done by app developers with a heavy investment in the App Store, so they couldn't just ignore what happened, and chose to try to fix their problem with publicity.

To protect their investment, "bending over" may have been the most sensible, if painful, option.

If you're a new developer choosing whether to target Android, iOS, or both, your perspective may be different. But people won't care about your blog posts.

> What is striking is none (or I haven't come across one) of these articles end with the developer washing their hands off the App store and vowing never to develop another iOS app.

Probably because that's a foolish approach as a developer. If your app is worth a damn, then preventing it's use by potential customers simply because of your personal opinion is fairly inconsiderate. Should someone be deprived the use of an app simply because they bought a different phone then the one I approve of?

That's a hard line to take, I understand, and realize not everyone will agree with that. =) I just feel that from the customer perspective, the only thing that matters is the developer. And if the developer choose not to release on the platform I am using, then the developer is essentially telling me I do not matter.

If someone doesn't release on Android because the money they get from sales isn't worth the time it takes to port, that seems a perfectly reasonable approach to take.

If someone doesn't release on iOS because the money they get from sales isn't worth the various negative aspects (e.g. frustration of dealing with reviewers, giving support to a business model they disapprove of), that also seems a perfectly reasonable approach to take.

I don't own a Windows box, or an Xbox or PS3. If I said I was being deprived of video games because Call of Duty doesn't run on "linux on a netbook from 2008", I don't imagine I would get much sympathy.

I was careful to specify: "simply [a] personal opinion". A business decision not to support a platform is not that.

I was also careful to specify: "If your app is worth a damn". Call of Duty is not worth a damn. I'm talking about meaningful apps that actually making a difference.

I was specific, because the opinion is specific. If your app isn't worth a damn, then it doesn't really matter, does it? It's a toy, nothing more.

It's more like the guy who built your house and sold it to you reserving the right to decide who can come into it.

I think you meant that as a hypothetical, but actually it's not uncommon -- Google "restrictive covenant." If you don't want to be restricted in what you can do with your house then don't buy one that has restrictions.

Apple should indeed be free to offer only the products they want to in their store.

The problem is: the store is mandatory. Side loading is the OS equivalent of net neutrality.

This is like car companies deciding which supermarkets you may shop at, and then suggesting only their own.

Unfortunately, Mircosft and Amazon are going to do, or are already doing, the same thing.

They want to be the new cable companies. Extorting content producers, by selling or blocking access to consumers.

> If you really want Apple to change, how about NOT developing for iOS? Articles like this aren't really going to make them change their policies.

Articles like this made me avoid Apple altogether and judging by the general sentiment here on HN at least some other people capable of software development have made a similar decision (to various degrees.) I'd wager this article probably has much more power than jwz quietly dumping iOS development.

Speaking from personal experience, once it becomes clear you and the reviewers are at an impasse but you are still submitting, somebody higher up the app store review chain will give a call to the phone number listed on your developer account and you can have a more reasonable, human conversation.

Otherwise, he should just put up a sign in his club about no cover / free pizza for a member of the iOS team who's willing to put in a good word for xscreensaver. I mean, he _is_ in SF. Even I know several people on the iOS team, at least one of whom has gone there, and I don't even live/work in that area.

"I don't own and don't plan to own any Android devices, because frankly I think it sucks." --jwz

Oh, the deep irony.

Where's the irony?

When he said Android sucks he presumably evaluated a number of attributes of both iOS and Android and concluded that iOS outperforms Android in those he cares about.

He's now finding out the hard way that "openness" may have been an attribute the importance of which he underestimated.

And just like the tens of other iOS developers that came to whine here when the same happened to them: you knew what you were getting into and chose to ignore it at your own peril.

That's all well and good, but there's no irony there. As statictype I believe was suggesting.

It only would have been ironic had jwz elected to develop for iOS because he thought the Android app store policy sucked, to find that the Apple app store policy sucked more. Which is not the case here.

[Edited to include clarification]

There's some level of irony in 2 areas:

1) He disses Android harshly, yet ends up complaining about Apple not that much later. 2) He disses Android for "sucking", yet the area he complains about is one where iOS sucks compared to Android.

I think this qualifies as irony: incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result.

>There's some level of irony in 2 areas: 1) He disses Android harshly, yet ends up complaining about Apple not that much later. 2) He disses Android for "sucking", yet the area he complains about is one where iOS sucks compared to Android.

That a platform sucks doesn't mean that it cannot have some strong points compared to some other platform.

Is it "ironic" if I say: "The North Pole sucks as a place to live", and then move to Miami and get a sun burn? Does that fact suddenly make the North Pole any more habitable?

Nope - as batista points out, it only would have been ironic had jwz elected to develop for iOS because he thought the Android app store policy sucked, to find that the Apple app store policy sucked more. Which is not the case here.

>When he said Android sucks he presumably evaluated a number of attributes of both iOS and Android and concluded that iOS outperforms Android in those he cares about. He's now finding out the hard way that "openness" may have been an attribute the importance of which he underestimated.

No irony.

It would only be ironic if he had said that without knowing that the iPhone "sucks more" in regards to openness --but he made the above statement fully knowing the iOS situation re: openness.

He is no RMS --it's not like he's gonna use a sucky (according to his tastes) mobile OS just because it's open.

Doesn't make much sense to use an inferior (to your tastes) phone platform just because you could add your own apps to it. Except if your primary motivation for having a phone is tinkering with it.

The irony is: That which attracted him is now hurting him.

Only it's a different thing that attracted him (iOS non-suckiness as a mobile OS) than what is hurting him (it's non-openness).

The two issues are completely orthogonal.

It's apt, as long as the locked down nature of iOS and the target hardware made it suck less.

I find it situationally ironic. His arbitrary choices seem to be the source of his frustration.

Apple might be wrong, but jwz is a dick. Just read the comments on that link and see how abusive he is to the other commenters.

Jamie lives a hard life.

I tend to think of him as Zed Shaw's grandfather.

Well, they are pretty terrible responses. And people expect brusqueness from jwz at this point.

Doesn't mean the brusqueness is appropriate or called for. I don't care what jwz has accomplished, basic human decency is something we should all strive for.

These people are attacking not only the independence of our profession but their consumers' human faculty for tinkering. IMHO the gloves should come farther off than they have.

Oh, you meant the peanut gallery on jwz's blog, not the app store asshats. Yeah, I wouldn't act like that, OTOH I don't have what it takes to write enough insightful and entertaining rants to become net.famous.

Actually I meant jwz himself. He's always so self righteous and pompous, which in my book is never something to strive for.

Get a helmet.

well yeah but ... those comments he's abusing are dumb as fuck. he just spent a month porting thousands of lines of low-level system code to a novel architecture. which is pretty hackerly. and the doofuses commenting about it can't be bothered to scroll up a few lines to read why their deep thought has already been completely discredited? it's the failure to abuse that level of moron thinking in the first place that's led to so much of that level of moron thinking.

It is named ScreenSaver, when it clearly does not function as "screen saver" on iOS device. Apple is right.

No, Apple is definitely wrong.

"Wrong" how? Morally wrong? Against their rules?

They have clause about not misleading users and they are enforcing it.

Wrong, as in unreasonable and irrational.

I'm glad that my very non-techie friends won't come across this app in the App Store and start having anxiety over whether they need a screen saver for their iPhone. Or, worse yet, start opening it up every time they're not going to be using their phones for a while.

How are they right? I really want to understand your point of view.

Do you mean they are not right because the app does not save a screen from anything? What if you are using your iPhone to project something on an plasma screen where a screen saver can save a screen from "burn ins".

I am really interested in your thoughts.

The app cannot function as you'd expect a screen saver to do: it won't start running after a period of inactivity. That is outside the scope of functionality available to apps.

As such, yeah the name is a little misleading.

United States of America is a misleading name. It is not united.

My point is that XScreenSaver is a proper name, and by now should be considered to have earned its name.

Last time I checked, I lived in a country composed of 50 states, united into one nation.

iOS does not support screensavers. The app's name is misleading. It seems pretty cut and dry to me.

Hm. But you can still use it for the purpose screen savers were originally designed to do: save screens from getting burn ins. But agreed: it can't run automatically after a period of inactivity.

Off topic: As a child I loved to look at screen savers that I manually started for hours wondering how they work and how long it took to build them...

The Fart App doesn't fart. It is not possible to make an iOS device produce flatulence. Therefore, it is misnamed and the name is confusing to users.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-fart-app/id370742001?mt=8

Other computing devices have screen savers, so it's why many would be "mislead" to think it's an actual screen saver app that magically enables their iDevice to show screen savers.

The subset of iOS users who would consider an instance of iOS hardware to be "a computing device" is quite small, particularly given the app store policies which discourage apps which allow iOS devices to be used for general purpose computing.

And in any event, the App Store contains products of similar functionality, e.g. live wallpaper.

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/live-wallpapers-pro/id4994091...

Yes, and look at the reviews. All of them were deceived, they think it's a scam, they demand a refund, they probably feel less safe about buying anything from App Store again, and other iOS developers pay (only slightly) the price of this "scammy" app. Apple should get rid of all such apps – it's better for the business (of Apple themselves and other iOS developers).

Why they approved "live wallpapers", but not "xScreenSaver"? I don't know. It sucks, it seems that their reviews are not consistent.

But just because they made a mistake (like approving "live wallpapers", which IMO is a misleading app created solely for the purpose of milking a few hundred dollars from naïve App Store customers) does not mean that it's okay to do it again.

Edit: look at the other apps created by the same developer: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/color-texting-for-message/id4... and http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/color-keyboard-pro-pimp-color... and http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/icon-skins-with-builder/id429... - all of them are misleading, making you believe you can do things on the iOS that you actually can't.

If Apple was seriously concerned about the quality of apps, there would not be 650,000 of them. Incidentally, your post supports that thesis.

It doesn't work as a "screen saver" on most devices, as the risk of phosphor burn in is pretty low nowadays. Isn't it still called that in OS X regardless of display type?

Also, a "fart button" is not physical object, can we still call it a "button" (Ceci n'est pas une bouton de pet.)?

Hacker News is not "hacker news".

JWZ should offer to change the name, but only if Apple starts selling fruit.

And they never really did specify as to how we should "Think Different".

Their approval process has been so random and stubborn lately. I've been struggling with a submission for 2 months now where they keep rejecting the app cause they want me to change the text on a button.

That's pretty bizarre. Care to elaborate on that?

I've already mentioned it here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4300688

> They rejected the app repeatedly for the following reasons:

> - in-app purchase does not provide a restore button (which I've never seen in any other app btw)

Really?! Every app I use has a restore button. As a user, I'm happy they reject your app. Otherwise, if I buy that "thing" from you (via IAP) on my iPhone, it's not available on my iPad, iPod touch, or even iPhone if I restore it to factory settings. The point of IAP is: you purchase it once, it's available on all your personal devices. But your method is: every new device must purchase it again and again and again. I'm not saying you're scamming, but you're not playing by the rules customers have come to expect.

So, I'm with Apple in this specific case. In my view, your app "deserved" to be rejected. But, a 2 week interval between review results? That really sucks. Shame on them.

Even if the inapp purchase is to remove ads from the free version?

I couldn't find an appropriate reference for that specific case, and besides, I changed the purchase button to check for a restore first, an failing to find that, ask the user to pay. But that still didn't cut it with the reviewers, they wanted an explicit button named restore.

> Even if the inapp purchase is to remove ads from the free version?

I think even in this case, yes, it should be there.

But if you've changed it (to something even more elegant) and they still rejected it, shame on them!

Heh, I've been rejected for 2 weeks because their caching server fucked up and though I uploaded a fixed version of the binary they kept getting the old faulty one.

The reviewer wasn't even capable of telling me the build number of the binary they were reviewing and kept redirecting me to Apple's DTS.

So after using one of my paid DTS inquires for this nonsense the problem got fixed and I had to wait only 2 more weeks for the next review date. The Apple engineer was very capable and friendly though - so no criticism there.

The problem is that the reviewers have no idea of development. They are clueless and I guess Apple hires some low paid college students for these positions. It's like talking to some immature AI or a 5 year old kid. They have their guidelines and rules and aren't capably of any interaction outside of this framework. Wasting our time and money.

"The application which just shows pretty pictures, formerly known as XScreenSaver"

The goal to avoid user confusion and scams is a good goal. Even if there are a few millions XScreenSaver users (wow) on another platforms, there are orders of magnitude more potential new users who should not be mislead. How to avoid confusion is a good question, but accepting the old name doesn't appear to be a provably best solution.

Can't the name be different but the application appear in searches based on the reference to the name of XScreenSaver somewhere in the description?

> changing the name does not solve the problem that people searching for "xscreensaver" in the app store will not find it if it is released under something-that-is-not-its-name.

With the recent App Store search result changes, this may be of little help anyway. If you search for the name of my app, for instance, it comes up near the bottom of the results where nobody looks. I went from averaging multiple downloads per day to just two sales since the changes were put into effect.

This sounds like an argument that using the name Apple will confuse people because it is a famous fruit. What a stupid reason.

The way I see it: one less junk app off the App Store. Thumbs up, Apple!

Is it possible for jwz to be a bigger asshole? We should have a poll. Who's a bigger asshole?

  * Linus Torvalds
  * Daniel J. Bernstein
  * Theo de Raadt
  * Jamie Zawinski

Why would I need a screensaver for an iOS device?

It's not a screensaver it just looks like one :)

Screensavers aren't saving any screens these days - their function is merely to provide pretty pictures. And xscreensaver provides LOTS of pretty, if retro, pictures.

Same reason you need Fart Maker Pro.

I love the URL slug =)

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