Steven Frank Gets Reply From Phil Schiller on iPhone Boycott | Hacker News Reader

Steven Frank Gets Reply From Phil Schiller on iPhone Boycott

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38 pointsams123 comments

After years of dealing with Apple, I've learned that the only thing that gets their attention is negative press.

It's pretty clear that they're listening.

This is why I find comments disparaging those who complain about the App Store to be remarkably silly and short-sighted. Complaining -- publicly -- is exactly how you get a corporation like Apple to change. Unless you disagree with their aims, why disparage those that voice their negative opinions in an effort to enact change?

I've only been watching the app store from a distance, so maybe I'm missing something from my perspective. But it seems Apple has been getting negative press from the beginning of the app store and made little effort to change, at the expense of both developers and iPhone users (and likely Apple itself). It's good to see them changing now, but I have to wonder what rock they've been under for the last year or more.

Negative tech press and negative popular press are different things. When the tech press disparages you, that will likely have no correlation at all to how either the public or the developers see you. When the popular press say something bad about you, the public's opinion will start to shift, and then the developers will feel justified in changing their minds to a greater extent. To put it another way: the tech press has said bad things about every version of Windows. The popular press only said bad things about Vista.

When the tech press disparages you, that will likely have no correlation at all to how either the public or the developers see you.

I'm not an app developer, but I'd be quite surprised if the tech press Apple has been getting has not discouraged developers or potential developers to some extent.

I personally have no problem with the negative comments I'm just skeptical and bored seeing it repeated over and over again. Especially with all the broad generalizations like "Apple is the new Microsoft" or other non-sense. Makes me think some of these folks are just trying to cash in on a controversial story.

This is very true. Everyone can remember how a year or two ago Greenpeace started going after Apple and their dirty manufacturing processes. Nearly everyone in the techosphere tried defending Apple, but if you look at the new MacBook Pro website, you'll see their improved environmental credentials featured very very prominently.

"This is why I find comments disparaging those who complain about the App Store to be remarkably silly and short-sighted."

Quite a few of the disparaging comments are made solely to create publicity. The Ninjawords application was censored when it was first published, but that was due to a policy that has already been changed with the introduction of OS 3.0. A while ago a Commodore 64 emulator was rejected, along with a notice that the app would be approved after some minor changes. Of course, this wasn't mentioned when the developers wrote about it in their blog.

He went on to say that the rumors of widespread e-book app rejection I’d heard were false — that specifically one e-book app had been rejected because it facilitated iPhone-to-iPhone sharing of (potentially copyrighted) books. But that otherwise, there was no sweeping ban on e-book readers.

That's only true under Apple's tortured reasoning that they're not 'banning' apps by only allowing them rated XXX, even in the period before the rating system was live.

It's great that Apple are listening, but this quote from the article stands out to me:

"Technically, nothing specific has actually visibly changed in the last few days. I said I wouldn’t go back until I could see actual demonstrable progress being made."

Of the legitimate concerns Steven Frank raised, did Phil Schiller commit to anything actionable or measurable?

NEWS FLASH: Corporation gives non-answer, changes jack shit, and expects sympathy and understanding. Typical.

Except for drip with sarcasm, this response does nothing but be less than helpful. Being against corporations because it's cool to be against corporations isn't productive. Most of us would jump through flaming hoops to be a corporation influential enough that people would care about what we did.

The question is whether this is lawyer-like non-commitment or an actual step towards improving relations. It's too soon to tell, but there's no way wrote derision is in order. We should encourage this.

Apple is known for their secrecy and grand announcements. The debacle they have gotten themselves into in this case requires transparency to get out of gracefully. I hope that Phil makes some sort of (grand) summary announcement about their upcoming transparency. And that it actually materializes.

Note to all: Phil Schiller is actually a human being who lives on earth and reads the news. He also sends an email from time to time.

I'm sure he does. But most of the time corporate execs have this 'iron curtain' on communications with the public or media. So when a corporate exec from a large company sends something out it can feel like a big deal...

Apple is trying to do innovative things like the App Store. In trying something new, they made mistakes. And if they want to keep innovating, they have to keep making new mistakes. I hear all the time that we as entrepreneurs need to fail fast and fail often to innovate.

I think this is just the price of innovation. You're not going to hit ever ball out of the park and some foul balls will wind up hitting someone in the stands.

Keep making good reasoned arguments about the flaws but boycotting seems unreasonable.

I've no doubt that many reports of app store horror stories are exaggerated and there are always two sides to every story, but as a dispassionate observer (I don't own an iphone or build apps for any mobile platform), I think boycott is absolutely reasonable.

The fact is if even half of the horror stories are half true, Apple is downright abusive to iPhone developers. Are they within their rights to behave this way? Sure. But they also shouldn't be given a free pass just because they have the best platform from a technical standpoint. End users don't really give a shit, so the burden to put pressure on Apple falls disproportionately to developers.

Given the blackhole nature of official channels to address grievances, I think Apple is just asking for this kind of developer backlash, and they deserve what they get. Schiller's responses so far to me are underwhelming. He has a right to make factual corrections, but Apple needs to take real action instead of just trying to placate big name Apple bloggers. Gruber's response in this regard was fantastic.

What is innovative about the App Store?

An innovation is a new way of doing something. A cell phone maker actually owning the store where applications are sold online was new and successful or we wouldn't be having this discussion.

Really, how many applications would the iphone have if AT&T or Verizon controlled what was allowed to be downloaded there?

Dunno, but for-pay apps not endorsed by the carriers have been around forever. Symbian, Windows Mobile, Blackberry, and Palm have had third-party apps forever.

And nobody used them.

The app store has changed mobile application delivery forever. If you want proof, look at the recent moves by all 4 of the examples given.

I doubt the App Store matters. People loved the iPhone before there were apps, remember?

Palm OS, Windows Mobile, etc., etc., died because they fucking sucked, not because there was no single app store.

There are two things stopping the iPhone from having an impact comparable to the original Macintosh: (1) The closed nature of the App Store and (2) being tied to a single carrier.

Remove those two restrictions, and the iPhone becomes a new geek toy, which will translate into apps which are much better than what we have on the AppStore right now. The barrier to entry into the AppStore is simply too high, which is keeping most developers from taking on more ambitious projects.

This personal approach to the problem by Apple is the best thing they can do at this point. Now they need to follow up not only with words, but with actions -- make the App Store a fun place to develop for again.

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