Apple's Schiller Defends iPhone App Approval Process | Hacker News Reader

Apple's Schiller Defends iPhone App Approval Process

businessweek.com

27 pointsbillclerico14 comments

"But today, with smartphones permeating our lives and going everywhere we go, it makes a good deal of sense to have someone keeping a close eye on what those apps do."

No it doesn't. To use their words from two paragraphs up: "The software market for personal computing has existed in this way for nearly three decades, and while there have certainly been some problems along the way, I'd argue that overall we're better off without Microsoft or Apple or some other organization approving software applications before they're released to the market."

So it doesn't make sense now, it never made sense, and I don't see how it could make sense in the future.

I'd probably be just as pissed off or more pissed off if a malicious app screwed up my macbook pro, lost my data, and emailed everyone porn. Both run the same complex operating system. You do not see us regulating those apps. Oh, because there's a 3g connection attached? Not sure I can buy that one.

We IT people look at smartphones as computers with phone capabilities but I think the average consumer sees them as phones with other stuff added on. This is an important distinction.

Over the past 30 years people have come to accept that computers do not work at times, whether it is due to hardware failures, software bugs, or viruses. There is no such history of acceptable failure with the telephone, it has always just worked - even in a power outage!

I can see why Apple is being paranoid with making sure the phone just works, it would be a product-killing public relations nightmare to have a bug or virus break a phone's core functionality.

Finally someone gets it. The model Apple uses at the moment does scale, though. In a point in future you could approve not for a single app but for a whole app store.

You're dead on - it should be as simple as an appliance. Turn it on and it works. I think one of the biggest reasons for being paranoid about bugs/virus problems is that when something happens to your phone (or "social appliance" as I think the iPhone is) - you aren't damaging the device you're damaging the social connections.

Customers don't want to buy/own something that will make them look bad or worse, hurt their standing with their friends. If I have a device that gets a virus and makes voice calls to my address book and plays a pre-recorded marketing message, that is going to really suck for me when none of my friends will answer the phone when I really do call.

Apple sells the phone. It's working 100%. User installs app, breaks phone. Apple takes blame?

The trick here is see that: 1. If Apple is very paranoid and must approve every single app, then it should rightly take the blame.

2. If Apple says it's free for all and users should realize that some apps are not that great, then it would rightly remove any blame thrown its way.

Which is why I think the whole app approval process is absurd: Apple should stop approving apps and remove any associated blame. The path it's on right now is never going to scale or end well for Apple - all it would take is one bad slip and it's pretty much over.

On the flip side is what Google does with Android: they're collecting tons of feedback every time someone uninstalls an app, including an option that says "this is a malicious app". Care to wager that this will be used in some kind of automated way to keep the app store clean?

Not just that, they're empowering the user to make an informed decision. The Android app store tells you how many downloads the app gets, its star rating (out of 5 stars) and user comments. Before installing any app I read all this info and decide "hey, with 10,000 downloads and 4.5 stars, how bad can it be?"

But then one more thing happens: the app store tells you what the application requests permission to do like access your location or full internet access or whatnot. You still can decide not to install if you see something fishy. I've seen many games request access to my contacts and they didn't get installed.

So please tell me, how is Apple's way better in any regard?

An anecdote:

Two colleagues from different industries (one insurance, one technology) were Palm Treo users. After installing various 3rd party apps (not malicious but related to productivity things like emails, note taking etc), both of them started experiencing sporadic crashes of the phone, for example when attempting to answer incoming calls. One blamed Palm for his problems, the other blamed one of the app vendors. Neither wanted to live without those apps. Today both of them are iPhone users.

That's quite funny. IMHO, that's a failure of Palm to market/position the Treo properly. The marketing message I think would work well for smartphones is that they allow you to do anything you want. There is an app for everything, all conveniently located in one place. Actually there is more than one. See which one works for you.

Apple in all its marketing genius can pull this off. Honestly, I think they're the only company who can pull this off. My Google Android example above is certainly not part any marketing message I've heard - it's just there working in the background without anyone noting it.

The interview is targetted at the mainstream audience (not developers) and they've done a good job of explaining some of the benefits of the review process.

Unfortunately, the interview doesn't address two key points.

1. The lack of transparency into the review process (where the app is in the queue, is the review process going to take one week or ten weeks, will the app be approved or not, lack of response to developer emails etc.)

2. The number of incorrect rejections (i.e. app rejected for a bogus reason)

The second issue is an understandable limitation that can be mitigated, but perhaps never eliminated. However, imo Apple needs to do a lot better with the first problem - "lack of transparency" problem and related developer-relations problem.

I can't agree more. The lack of transparency is the real killer in the approval process. They added a "transparency" feature to the approval process site, but it is so vague that it is mostly worthless. They added a "in review", "awaiting appstore reviewer" and a few other states to the app management area.

For anybody outside of the situation, this article may seem to explain everything. After all, the explanation seems reasonable, the retail-store metaphor is one that most people intuitively grasp. What's the big deal?

Well, the real issue is that Apple still does not pro-actively and directly address the problems that developers have with the app store. Fluffy interviews with Schiller don't cut it in my opinon.

I did actually have thoughts of making iPhone apps at one point. Now; there is no chance I'd ever make anything if it means dealing with a tight-arse bueracracy like that.

Absolutely - at the end of the day there are only two parties that can make the App Store successful - app users and app developers. Developers overwhelmingly have many misgivings about the way things are being done now, and a "there is nothing wrong, move along" interview with the head honcho at Apple is doing Apple zero favours.

Even a "we understand some problems exist and we are looking into them" is a much, much better way to handle this than an outright denial that problems exist.

I was a little confused about why they had to reject gambling cheating apps, given that I could use safari to create an app with identical functionality. However, Apple is also selling the app and charging the customers credit card, which must make them more liable for something like that.

Given that, it seems like reviews are a necessity, at least for the top tier of the App Store. Right now there are basically two tiers, App Store apps and Safari apps. The gulf between them is so huge that almost everyone is ignoring Safari apps. What they need is a middle tier of native apps that can be installed from the web that live outside the App Store ecosystem. Obviously Apple wouldn't be able to get a 30% cut of all sales, but the experience of installing these apps (finding the app manually, putting in credit card information, and manually upgrading the app) would still leave most users using the App Store. Apple would have to give up other benefits as well, such as being able to keep out competitors to the built-in apps and enforce the private API rules, so they probably are not going to do it unless absolutely forced to.

The only real reason I see for the approval process is safety - your phone has direct access to your money, unlike your computer. Maybe Apple could make a "safe mode" which would not allow an app to be destructive, and only require approval process if you the developer want to use some non-"safe mode" features. That would significantly decrease the load on their approval teams.

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