Steve Jobs intervenes, approves Knocking streaming video app | Hacker News Reader

Steve Jobs intervenes, approves Knocking streaming video app

arstechnica.com

29 pointsjohns22 comments

Having had an application approved and then later rejected for use of private APIs (WiFinder), this really pisses me off. Inconsistency sucks, as I told the AppStore reviewer I talked to on the phone. I'm fine with either nobody or everybody being able to use private APIs.

But maybe I'm just not hipster enough - I'm certainly not a "life-long user of all Apple products."

yes, a consistent policy will help. At the very least, I hope Apple makes this particular api public.

More importantly, I wish Apple improved their overall review process and transparency (e.g. with a queue number for app store reviews) and clear rules on what will be approved, what will be rejected etc.

This triumph of the developer over Evil Apple would be a lot more compelling if the app can get past the splash screen without crashing.

It does that to me too. My guess is that the app is trying to connect to their(knocking vid's) "master" server to setup a session and the app was not coded to gracefully handle the situation of getting arstechnica'd and it is unable to respond to the requests in a timely fashion and some killswitch gets triggered. Now they have to wait another 2 weeks and (maybe) another email to steve to fix it or wait until the equilibrium point is met where there are enough dissatisfied people quitting that will allow the other people on.

Or they just programmed it too bloated and it chewed through too much memory in the outset and the iPhone killed the process.

Who knows.

Every iPhone developer has to deal with emails and reviews of this exact nature.

The Apple apps/background processes eat tons of memory up over time and the phone can get in a state where it has an absurdly small amount left to run apps. Restarting fixes this.

Try restarting your phone, and if that doesn't fix it, then yeah, the app sucks.

You can also kill Safari, Mail and Phone by activating the app, holding Power until the shutdown screen shows, then holding home until the app quits.

In the Mac community, emailing Steve Jobs is widely understood as an effective way to resolve the most grievous of grievances with Apple. I'm not sure if it has ever been the harbinger of company-wide process change though.

Weird, I had assumed he'd be almost impossible to reach unless you're Somebody(tm).

Nope, you just have to know his email address, which is kind of common folk knowledge. I sent him a fanboyish email when I was like 13 or 14 or so talking about how much I was looking forward to Mac OS X and he was like, "Thanks for the feedback".

What sucks is... they'll probably NEVER be able to push an update since it's still going to ring all the private API bells every time it's published. Here's to hoping things start changing soon...

It would surprise me if updates get rejected. I'd hate to be the reviewer who rejected the one app for which Steve Jobs personally said the API rules don't apply, forcing the developer to write a second e-mail.

Quick question, why does the iPhone dev environment seem to have so many "private" APIs? Wouldn't it just be better to make them "non-private"? It sounds like, given the kinds of apps I've heard rejected over this problem, that they seem to offer a significant set of capabilities to app developers.

The moment Apple makes an API method public, they make a commitment that the API will be supported, unchanged, and maintained in the future. Any API creator must make careful decisions in that regard. You don't want to support something that you might want to change.

Other factors that might affect such a decision:

- Is the API method potentially volatile, from a hardware usage standpoint? Will it appropriately use the system's resources? (Or the cell network's?)

- Is this method hackish? Is "this" the way we want to expose such an interface to developers for years to come?

And, of course, Apple probably wants to keep the magic to themselves for some tasks. They want the upper hand, and generally speaking, there's nothing legally wrong with that.

Someone once wondered, "Why doesn't Apple just let us use private APIs with the understanding that they might change?" For one, apps might break. And then Apple would have to decide whether they want to continue selling a broken app in the store, or instead keep the API and the potential burdens/other issues associated with it.

Is it just me or does this seem part of the famed reality-distortion field?

I wish SJ would intervene with me. I've had two BS rejections in the last few months--one where the reviewers flat-out LIED about my application behavior, one where I wasn't even notified / given a reason.

I knew when I started that both apps would be kinda sketchy from Apple's end (nothing illegal, no private APIs, nothing against the contract, just something Apple wouldn't like). I walked into it knowing I ran a significant risk of rejection, but the apps were so cool I simply couldn't resist building them.

Needless to say, I've been focusing on contract work lately. I'm done bearing any sort of risk for the immediate future.

What were the apps?

I am in a similar boat. I built an app that is somewhat "cheeky." It breaks no rules, no private APIs, etc. It's been in the review queue for 5 weeks now!

Kind of funny when you compare it against this rejection, also done by Steve Jobs: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=950735

This is just going to be used for porn.

And pornographic pranking.

This is just going to be used for porn.

Thereby guaranteeing iPhone (?iPorn?) supremacy, at least until it's ported to Droid.

is this situation good or bad?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com