Apple drives iPhone app developers to the brink | Hacker News Reader

Apple drives iPhone app developers to the brink

theregister.co.uk

35 pointsQuarrelsome29 comments

Is this enough to short Apple?

Probably not yet, but it will be if Apple continues treating its developers like this. This is not a question of being polite or kind to their developers, it is a failure to meet their legal obligations as a corporation. The fact that they see anger over a legal breach on their part as an annoyance, shows that they are starting to think they cannot fail.

The developers are the single biggest part of Apple's competitive advantage in this space. They know this at some level, because the commercials are about all the cool apps you can get for your iPhone. However, I do not think they are in such a dominant position (yet) that they can do anything they want to their developers and not suffer any consequences. This gives their competitors an opportunity to poach the best developers and apps for their systems, and get back in the game. All they have to do is actually pay for the apps that are sold.

We'll see if those competitors are smart and disciplined enough to actually do this, and whether Apple will shake off the complacency evidenced by these actions.

As one more note, this is part of what did in the Mac. Microsoft did a better job catering to Windows developers. Microsoft eventually screwed over their developers, but only when they were on the verge of monopoly and it was too late for developers to go anywhere else. I don't think iPhone is at that point, yet.

a failure to meet their legal obligations

Does the App Store agreement actually put an upper bound on when payment will be made? All of the similar agreements that I've seen (e.g. AdSense) only specify an approximate date.

yes, 45 days

Is this enough to short Apple?

This, and Steve Job's secrecy around his health issues.

Sadly, having been in the mobile industry for the past 6 years, Apple treats its developers much better than any of the previous stores have. This isn't to say that this kind of behavior is right, it just helps to have a little perspective.

Do you guys think that there is getting to be enough backlash about this that developers might start looking at targeting Android / Blackberry / some other smartphone platform?

I know it would make me pretty nervous dedicating all my time to iPhone development if I thought this is how Apple was going to do business.

It would have to be one heck of a backlash

However bad Apple gets a developer is still talking about a couple months payments vs a decrease in their total income if you go to Android/Blackberry/etc... That's why Apple can afford to treat developers badly in the first place.

My only hope is that it might convince some developers the smartphone market needs a strong 2nd place which in turn might give them reason to target one of those platforms in addtion to their iPhone development.

It depends on if you're in it to make a living or if you're just doing it for fun. Few people have an Android phone, and there's no unified app store. The fact is that people are buying iPhone apps in droves. Even the worst development experience on the iPhone will probably make you more money than the best on Android.

Android was probably a bad example to list first. I think there's a huge Blackberry market out there that doesn't get much discussion.

maybe.

but the masses-at-large don't really know about, pay attention to, or care about the plight of the developers. if people keep buying iphones, iphone development will continue to be where the money is.

Developers knew what they were getting into; Apple has a history of opacity and secrecy. Look at the NDA debacle, the seemingly arbitrary app review process, or the way they silence dissent on the forums. Developers wrote apps knowing that Apple development is risky, and so they will continue to write apps; there won't be significant backlash.

The apple backlash is always quiet. People just pick the other option when building stuff and move on.

I knew that getting an app into the store was a bit tricky, and I also knew that the forums were... heavily moderated.

But it is a little shocking to me that huge company like Apple is playing these sorts of games with paying people. That's something I'd expect from a shady backroom sort of company, not a huge corporation like Apple.

I don't think there is an evidence that Apple is "playing games", they're just inexperienced at processing and delivering payments and thus are doing a bad job at it. As they say, never blame malice where incompetence is a sufficient explanation.

I don't personally see much difference between incompetence and malice when they've made it seem like they really don't care all that much about their incompetence.

It depends on how much they value being paid on time. These developers are waiting on money they already made. If they could make as much or more on another platform, wouldn't they have switched already?

That sounds like Apple is really screwing up, but considering the source (The Register) I may as well have read this in a supermarket tabloid. Is there any other source citing problems like this?

They link to Apple dev forums where apparently Apple devs are reporting the issue.

As much as The Reg likes to exaggerate, they are usually pretty accurate. In this case they link developer discussions in forums.

Not getting paid? Wow. I wish I had that problem. I'm stuck under the $250 threshold. sigh

What's your app? Why not put it in your About section

I can't wait until Android becomes a threat.

At least according to (browser usage)/(units sold), it appears there will be more of a market for (at least some kinds of) Android apps:

http://blogs.computerworld.com/android_iphone_apple_google_m...

It doesn't "border harassment", it is harassment. It's also perfectly reasonable that you should be getting harassed when withholding people's livelihoods due to your incompetence. Stop your whinging today; pay up today (through another means, if needs be); then sort your failure of a payment system out. Anything less is a harassable offence.

I don't see how that could be anywhere near harassment. If that's the case we all get harassed daily with hundreds of spam emails. I don't remember any lawsuits against spammers on basis of harassment.

Maybe we have different dictionaries.

From reading the article, the phrase "bordering on harassment" came about when a single individual sent 22 emails within a 2-day timespan. (Perhaps they forgot to take their meds?) It makes no sense to compare this to a collection of spam from various, automated sources. If I were that engineer, I'd have had similar thoughts. I realize the squeaky wheel gets the grease, but at some point you'd think a neuron would fire to make them ask themselves "does sending another email this hour really help?"

Heh, have you ever worked in Sales? This is a highly effective technique for getting what you want from your suppliers or people you are waiting on (obviously not customers). People deal with the issue or have to put up with your frequent interruptions. They usually rush to do the former.

If my family's income depended on getting the money I made from Apple, I'd be doing a lot more than sending 22 e-mails. It might be tricky if you're in Europe, but legal action is certainly appropriate in this case.

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