Apple has been working overtime recently to right some of the App Store wrongs, led by none other than Senior VP Phil Schiller. And having exposed some App Store approval process secrets in its letter to the FCC, everything should be all hunky dory in the App Store now, right? Wrong.
It’s hard to remember an app in recent memory that has been anticipated more than Facebook’s new 3.0 version of its iPhone app. How do I know? You should see my Facebook inbox from people who have hunted me down knowing that I have it since I reviewed it. Unfortunately, I can’t give it to anyone because it’s a version tied specifically to my iPhone (so stop emailing!). It’s been a week and a half since Facebook engineer Joe Hewitt submitted the app to the App Store, and the wait time frustration is not only getting to the users, but to Hewitt himself, as he made clear in a blog post tonight.
Simply put, Hewitt’s post is a must-read because he makes a range of excellent points in a fairly condensed space. We’ll simply highlight some of the larger ones.
Now, to be clear, Apple considers a typical wait time for approval to be 14 days, so Facebook 3.0 isn’t there yet. And Hewitt notes that he wouldn’t mind waiting for that, were it not for the reasoning behind the wait time, which he describes as “guilty until proven innocent.” And while there is definitely something to be said for Apple wanting to control the experience of using the iPhone, it rings true that the App Store and its 40 or so full-time reviewers (a number we learned from the FCC docs) simply cannot give most apps a meaningful review. Instead, it’s the developers who should, and in most cases, do, make these meaningful reviews before submission. What app reviewers are really looking for most of the time are violations of the SDK terms of service, as Hewitt notes.
But Hewitt goes much deeper. He calls for Apple to remove the app approval process entirely. While Apple’s argument against this would undoubtedly be that because apps can access core functions of the phone, they need to protect consumers. But Hewitt, who built the original excellent web version of the Facebook app for the iPhone back before there were native third party apps, and has done extensive work on both the Netscape and Firefox web browsers (and built the excellent Firebug debugging utility for Firefox, among other things), knows his stuff. And so when he says something like:
Oh, but you say that iPhone apps are different, because they run native code and can do scary things that web pages can’t? Again, you’re wrong, because iPhone apps are sandboxed and have scarcely any more privileges than a web app. About the only scary thing they can do outside the sandbox is access your address book, but Apple can easily fix that by requiring they ask permission first, just like they must do to track your location.
Apple may do well to listen.
The reality is that while native app development on the iPhone is a relatively new system, it’s not all that different in theory from some of the robust web app development going on out there. And things like HTML 5, which can do things like access certain system elements for running tasks, will only further blur this line. Apple has started making Google create web apps for many of its apps (since they have stopped approving the native ones), and we are sure to soon see just how far they can go.
Just imagine an App Store with no gates (just a registration process). Sure, there would be spammers, but why not let Apple catch the guilty ones and ban them? That seems like a much more reasonable way for app reviewers to spend their time. Users would send it reports of suspicious activity, and reviewers would look into it. Remember also that for anyone to use these apps, they still have to install them. And so if someone is tricking users into installing a bad one, ban that developer.
Think that won’t work? Look at the Android Market. There is no pre-approval process for apps, yet Google has only had to ban 1% of apps coming in. Sure, it’s not nearly as popular as the Apple App Store, but again, users have control over what they install. And they’re proving to be reliable app reviewers themselves by flagging bad apps.
The point of all of this is that an app approval process is simply not scalable. Apple may have bolstered it recently, but if it continues to grow at its crazy rate, we’re going to see the same issues pop up again and again. Apple would have to keep hiring more and more people to review these apps. It’s not a tenable system. Instead, wouldn’t it just be easier to let everything in and then go after the bad ones? I expect the calls for this to continue to get louder.
[photo: White House Photo, Public domain]
How long did it take for Apple to offer DRM free music? This could very well happen with enough vocal developers and consumers.
It was nice to know there was a facebook app 3.0 once…
Yur absolutely right MG! They should do it how everyone else operates on the internet…assume by default people are GOOD then let your users be the police force for you with a way to flag bad apps.
This is how everyone does it on the internet, from craiglist, to ebay, to Google (report spam button), to Flickr, etc. Crowd sourced data is always going to be more reliable (and much cheaper to Apple) than 40 paid reviewers sitting in a room. They should know that…
The difference is how Apple tries to hang its reputation on User Experience. Its a pretty shitty (in apples eyes) to make the users get screwed because of a crappy app that they paid for and THEN ban the dev/app.
In an ideal world apples method is probably best (and if they were not little bitches about it and just let google apps in). But I think they will eventually have to let all apps in. They could have a beta section where devs would have to leave their app a couple of weeks and let anyone who wants to try it out have a go at it knowing it could suck.
Jim
I don’t get Apples “User Experience” argument. I can pay for and download a crappy application on my Mac Book Pro, and if I have a crappy experience, I don’t go blaming Apple.
But they do blame Apple. I don’t know how many people I’ve talked to that downloaded a crappy application from a suspect site only to bad-mouth Microsoft for the results. Apple understands this dynamic.
As an iPhone user I like having a gatekeeper. I don’t know if the current process is the best process but it seems focused — inconsistently — on the user, where Hewitt seems to be suggesting a model that puts developers first. Not certain that I can get behind that idea.
Definitely .. I agree with your important and I think it is important to know what ppl thinks of it .. this is best way .. as far as a user is concerned
Who writes these headlines?
The Maroon patrol. As in Maroon Cartoon. LOL
Oh I agree. Remove that app approval process completely and allow some schmuck to develop something which will look attractive on the surface and underneath will suck every bit of private info from your phone and then brick it for you.
Thanks, but no thanks. The app approval process is there to protect the greater majority of users from just that. It’s also meant to keep a consistent user experience which is something Apple prides itself on.
The only ones really complaining are those that want to step outside the lines because they think they’re something special. If they were that special they’d be hired by Steve or Phil or others to work for Apple and not left out in the cold.
But they’re not. So they need to follow the app guidelines and develop an app that does not attempt to circumvent something, which a few do and when they do they have no reason to gripe about being held up in the process.
It’s a process for a reason and so far you don’t hear of anyone complaining that their phone was screwed up because of some renegade app now do you.
Can’t really say the same thing about a Windows Mobile phone. In fact they’re susceptible to the same viruses that Windows machines are. Fancy that.
Sheesh. Stop crying in your beer over facebook 3.0, it will make it out when it’s compliant.
We now return you to a more conscious discussion.
Love,
Mike
as hewitt clearly notes, some current open calls would have to be protected (just like location services are now), doesn’t seem like it would be that big of a deal. at some point, consumers are going to have to protect themselves, the system will not keep growing out this way.
Yes. And while we’re at it, let’s vote to lock down all desktop PC’s as well! Make it so that you can only install Windows software from the Windows Store. You can only install Mac software from the Mac Store. And developers can’t distribute trial versions via their own webpages.
Dude, get real. The App Store’s draconian rules are BS and have been since the beginning. The community review system will protect 99% users from 99% of bad apps, and Apple themselves can kick out the remaining 1%. As MG notes, that’s a far more effective use of their reviewer’s time than having them approve every single good app.
You cannot live your life in fear of that 1%. That path leads only to madness.
Right, only 1 percent. And I suppose only 1 percent of your email is spam?
Phones are not computers. They are different. To act like they aren’t is flat wrong.
The App store has scaling problems now. How in the world will they be able to scale policing it if any dufus can throw an app up on the store?
BTW, Facebook is a warmed-over Web 2.0 version of AOL.
any dufus can throw an app on the app store now, so how would that be any different?
To compare automatically-generated text which costs virtually nothing to spew out in massive quantities (i.e. spam email) to computer programs that take time and effort to write and submit to the App Store (and are then subject to community review) is one of the stupidest straw-man arguments I’ve ever seen.
(Not to mention that you seem to be suggesting a workable spam filter is beyond Apple’s technical capabilities.)
Commenting FAIL, Eric.
@Michael : Clearly you dont know anything about the SDK or how the iPhone app works/written. The SDK itself is a walled room. You cant do anything other than what they want you to do. Please know your facts and then talk.
I think you will still be appreciating Apple even if they control what applications you install on your Mac, claiming they are protecting you, as you are so dumb to protect yourself.
No one is special, and btw Apple is not the only company everyone wants to work and no one is left in the cold if they don’t work for Apple.
Think twice before you make such stupid comments.
But even if the SDK *is* a walled room as you mention, developers could also mess with users through phishing type activity. If you take the gate away from the iPhone app store, a malicious developer can quickly release an app that can trick users into handing over credit card numbers or other types of personal data. All of a sudden, the “trust” in Apple that is a huge part of the app store is gone forever.
Without Apple checking every app, someone *will* get a trojan horse through the gate. I can think of a hundred ways to do it.
The hard truth is that you either decide to have safety or you decide to let a lot of users suffer as you try and control the bad guys.
Does Apple need to lighten up on the draconian, ridiculous “Google Voice” type bad decisions? Yes. Do they need to throw iPhone users to the wild west? Probably not.
How is that different from a website? You should be suspicious anyway, as I doubt Apple runs a trace on how user data is accessed when they review your app (if it’s not obvious anyway).
Besides, I think that Address Book data should be protected anyway. We’re talking about people’s phone numbers here.
The SDK is actually not sandboxed. Certain core APIs are not documented, but can be accessed by SDK developers if they take the time to discover them. This is the sort of thing the App review process is supposed to catch. Although it is not perfect–Google got their voice search app through even though it was accessing an undocumented API. I suspect it got through on reputation and Apple was embarrassed by that. Now they are taking a hard line on Google apps.
There is no real app approval process, anyway. Scams and hoaxes get through, and the only consistent element in all the rejections is Apple doesn’t want the competition.
Nice to know Apple’s marketing gobbledygook about how the Android market has to be full of malware and shit that’ll kill your phone is still alive, though.
It isn’t, BTW, not that this is likely to believed.
Right, adn you have proof of scams and hoaxes getting through? Or are you just bloviating? Why no examples?
Remember the “I’m Rich application” ?
Or what about the guy who made all the crappy apps? I can’t remember who it was, but he was one of the most prolific app store devs. All his stuff was crap and Apple only pulled it recently.
The story was on techcrunch about a month ago, but I am too lazy to find it.
So yes scams and hoaxs get through even with the approval process.
Apple sucks.
I love your thinking Mike!
I hope Apple continues to walk, with their nose in the sky, upon the backs of their worshipers.
I will enjoy, nay, I will relish watching them reap the seeds they sow as they did when Macintosh was beat like a ginger headed step child by Bill Gates.
Gosh I love Android!
There seems to be a major misconception with regards to this. Most app purchasers (key word: purchase) are NOT readers of TC. They are not geeks or programmers. They just want the app they PAID money for to work – not submit bug reports for developers etc.
Perhaps a more proportionate response would be to try this approach for free apps – at least that way the review pages on iTunes would not be filled with cogent reviews like “WFT APPLE!!!! I WANT MY MONIES BACK!!!!!”.
On the other hand, I suspect Apple will be happy to relinquish control of an app store they didn’t actually want in the first place (remember those days, back before the smug “there’s an app for that” commercials?) just after hell gets an ice rink.
The point of all of this is that an app approval process is simply not scalable.
>>>> Its going to be an universal truth. App Store have thousands of apps in it. The approval process of Apple now completely based on the business alliances it have.
>>>> If it compare the features of submitted apps for approval with approved ones. Some may be in common and no application can be standalone, it may access some functionality of iPhones.
Apple must make things right by reorganizing the approval process. Else it would pay for it.
Do you not face the same fears when you install applications on your computer at home?
How do you deal with it there?
There’s no essential difference as far as I can tell. Take responsibility for your device, install only from trusted developers, report harmful or malicious software. Apple’s current model is paternalistic towards its users and I agree with the writer – is ultimately unsustainable.
Reading between the lines of what people say
“If they were that special they’d be hired by Steve or Phil or others to work for Apple and not left out in the cold.”
That’s a little bit tooooo much Apple love if you ask me, obsession even? There is some plateau these developer’s have no yet reached because Apple has “not yet called upon theeee”? What the hell kind of psychological Apple lust is that?
For the record, I don’t know any developers that would want to work for Apple. Just because “you are in love with the products” does not mean the developers who made them love the work they do. They perfect core essential apps. – Boring!
The most stifling software development jobs can be found in high corporate walls. I’m guessing you don’t code? So let me put what you just said in perspective. “If you really new how to fix a car, you would work for Ford” when I’m sure the guy is just happy working for Michael Andretti’s in house engine performance team. Or “if you were a real good artist, you would work in a museum”, what does one have to do with the other?
“…and not left out in the cold.” You mean “if they were corporate drone developers Steve or Phil would ask them to come join them in the cold”
It probably wouldn’t be a problem if they could get the length of the approval process down, maybe to 3-5 days. Would stop a ton of complaining.
sure, but to do that how many reviewers would apple have to employe? the answer is whatever they have now + a lot + 1. it’s simply not a scalable way to do things.
crowdsource it to people that sign up as beta testers… and then only investigate the critical stuff internally.. leave crashing up to the beta testers
Exactly. What happens if one day there are over 1 million apps in the app store and many are continually being updated/bug fixed?
Definitely not scalable, unless perhaps the process can somehow be automated or crowd sourced (as other have suggested).
At minimum, Apple should clearly spell out the necessary criteria to have an app approved. Then, developers can forgo spending the time & money developing an app that will clearly not meet the criteria.
This makes FAR too much sense for the company that designed the Mighty Mouse to ever implement.
i agree with that
http://www.tech...-please-fix-it/
music to my eyes!
Or do some sort of crowd sourcing where they have a larger group of beta users that do a lot of the testing, and leave only the privacy testing up to apple.
This is pretty much what Mozilla’s Addons site does. Anyone can access pre-reviewed addons. But after the review team actually installs and inspects it for not breaking stuff and not stealing your passwords, it gets approved. And because more people can volunteer to be a reviewer, it can help with the large number of submissions. Don’t get me wrong: AMO has had its share of backlog, too.
The Android Market is doing the right thing. For every permission you need on your app, you present it to the user before installation. If the user is afraid of privacy concerns, then go ahead and not install these applications.
Will 40 full time engineers really have the time to thoroughly check every application? The answer is no. The review process will just make it difficult to release fixes for bugs. I love how I can release a version immediately to fix any bugs that I somehow did not catch on Android.
remember, they are 40 reviewers and not engineers. my guess is they don’t know crap about the SDK and the just go through 50 ridiculous check list items.
MG you seem to be a bit of a Face Book Pimp.
Facebook calling on another company to “Open” a process. You have ot be kidding. Facebook is no doubt the Dark Star of the internet. Generating hundereds of millions of dollars on members content while not allowing members to easily have control of the data they create.
At least Apple’s business practices are isolated to their hardware products. Facebook’s own designs on internet domination are much, much more troubling. Real reporters would be hammering on the power that FB is accumulating, and warning consumers of the risks.
>Besides, when I have a problem with a friend, I don’t threaten to boycott our friendship until they change, so I’m not going to do that to Apple either.
Are you hearing that Mike?????
Does anyone know the percentage of Apps that are actually rejected from Apple’s current App submittal process? If it’s less than 5%, then what’s the point of having to wait 14 days and employ more and more reviewers?
Have the review department turn into an App customer service department, and they’ll be seen in a totally different light, even though they will be doing the same kind of thing – just after the apps are on sale instead of before.
a bit flawed the logic behind this however i see where it came from.
lets run a hypothetical with no app approval process.
what if someone installed a rogue app that did allsorts of nasty things to their contact list, such as sharing with others, random text messages. worst case scenario obviously.
perhaps some ppl arent as net savvy as others and wont always hear about the latest probs with rogue apps/developers. not as tuned in as you for instance?
sure they’d get found out, after the event and banned, but that’s not good enough. its not just the app that goes, the apple brand will also take a hammering. thats a hell of a lot of goodwill, measurable in dollars that would get flushed down the toilet.
if this was a financial service, a bank, or a company and your data you’d find it unacceptable yet in this case you’d be happy to have awful things happen. strange.
those 1% of apps could cause a hell of a lot of problems for many ppl.
No app in the world could do what you thought about, because they are sandboxed. And if you had read the original piece by Joe Hewitt, you’d know that he suggests a “permission window” for addressbook access, just like for “location services”.
Please folks and fanbois. stop spreading fud!
Do you remember what the Google App team did?
Reverse engineered the software so the app could use stuff not allowed by the SDK. What if some developer that don’t mind about being evil does the same?
The great part about the app store it’s that you can install whatever you want, cause you know it won’t do havoc on your phone… remove that and the App Store looses it’s biggest selling point and it becomes a failure
The sandbox is not implemented in software; it is a policy that is enforced in part by the App Store review process. See for example:
http://blogs.or...like-apple.html
Apps can do all sorts of things on the iPhone they are “not supposed to.”
Then it’s Apple’s fault for introducing such shitty security and providing such shitty sandboxes. Their framework has security concerns written everywhere.
Once again, compare this to Android. Every application can ONLY read and is sandboxed within itself. The only way it can reach out to other applications is through Intents which the other application must agree to intercept and allow. Android’s fine grain permissions and security are heavily embedded into their entire framework.
The exact same thing could be said of windows vs mac. Guess what. Most people chose freedom over security.
Did you hear that Obama? LOL
You’re an idiot. Stay on point. This is about the app store. Not Obama… not… political ideology… not android.
Geez… what kind of person hangs around a forum posting nonsensical and random off topic remarks on things they know nothing about.
Get out a lttle more.
Again, what about the not-at-all-hypothetical malicious software you can download to your personal computer, which can again access your documents, address book, send emails, etc..
The way to deal with it in the phone-world is no different than the computer-world, and is not Apple’s paternalistic approach.
the biggest problem I have with the Apple review process is that it’s almost cosmetic. Are the icons confusing, is there “duplicate” functionality, is there porn. All bullshit stuff. The approvers don’t have the time (nor the technical how-to I’m assuming) to sift through the actual source of the application or to go through every possible usage scenario. Malicious apps could still pop up even in this very broken environment. Apple approval process weeds out the obviously crappy application, apps Apple doesn’t want to approve and not much less. It doesn’t stop from malicious programmers from writing something that could potentially mess up the phone. And this is something the API designers should be concerned with not the approvers.
This approval process sucks and needs to be radically changed.
The facebook app is junk, and they need to quit whining. The facebook app limits your functionality. Why? Because they want to tease you to the site to view ads.
Regardless if you (or I) like the app. The developer (he don’t speaks for FB in his post) makes a point and personally I’d appreciate if Apple removed the AppStore review process in such a way.
In fact this is the only way that could prevent other platforms from overtaking one day.
Ssh! I want the other platforms to overtake apple! Don’t you?
just be patient.. two weeks isn’t that long. If you don’t want a pile of over anxious people checking their app store for the update every 5 mins then don’t go on twitter and tell them you submitted your App when you no damn well it takes 14 days. The only reason he did that was because he thought it would put the pressure on Apple to push the new facebook App to the front of the line.
I would rather this process because if it was unregulated EVERY spam, advertising, and marketing flunkie in the world would flock to get an app on the store. Even if they were only there for a maximum of a day or two before they got pulled the store would still end up being 60% junk. People would start losing interest. Where as if they review them all its like a security guard at the door, no one bothers making ads and spam cause they know it will never make the store.
I love the App store.. and I get the feeling they know what they are talking about a bit more then an App create anxious to see people download his App.
Yeah, I’ve been seeing this a lot, lately: Apple’s selling a story to iPhone users that developers are a bunch of whiny babies who need to shut up.
Cute. I assume you can write your own software, then?
WAIT A MINUTE!
Are you saying that the Apple App store is NOT already 60% junk?
Two weeks isn’t long for a new app release, to that I can agree.
Two weeks to a month for a bug fix is just a way to kill the business.
Let’s try a scenario. An app gets approved and becomes an instant hit. It gets 100,000 installs in a week. But after a week is seems there’s some date related bug and the app crushes unexpectedly for those 100,00.
Turns out the developer actually knew about the bug, he found it two days before the app was submitted, but uploading the updated version would mean another two weeks wait time, so he decided to wait for the approval and submit an update – which of course takes another two weeks to be approved, and in the meantime you get 100,000 angry people requesting their money back, because of Apple’s approval process.
Not sure removing all forms of filtering is such a good idea… how about a refocus… removing and blocking all the useless apps on the store… There are lots and lots of total crap that doesn’t do anything useful. Some poor unfortunates end up buy these things and get seriously annoyed.
With a “user controlled” appstore review (instead of approval) you’d simply flag the app as “whatever” and then the appstore reviewers would take their time to review and remove it.
also you could go after a refund if the app is crap, just like when you bought a crappy tv set.
Scamming people via the Android Market is pointless b/c of the one big advantage it has over the App Store: the twenty-four hour refund period after purchase. It wouldn’t be any more than an annoyance to a few people if something like what Apple let out right away, “I’m Rich,” turned up in the Android Market. So you tricked somebody into dropping a thousand bucks on a graphic, so what? They can get their money back right away, and you’re going to get booted.
(Other than that, the Market is far and away the worst thing about Android, and a real mess. Point Apple’s on that one.)
Developers would be smart to create web apps instead and avoid the App Store delays. Many or even most iPhone Apps would make better sense at web apps anyway.
Stop crying and switch to Android.
I take great pleasure in watching apple make their followers suffer.
HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
No one’s crying. But thank you for letting us know our options.
Gee… you’re so smart.
LOL @FacebookDeveloper.
The pain to my developers and our company balance sheet as we wasted tens of thousands of dollars as the Facebook App platform changed standards after standards, moved the apps, changed the rules – did nothing to stop crap applications ruining the experience of others (giving users little faith / wish to install new apps)
… loving the Apple Karma!!!
“Besides, when I have a problem with a friend, I don’t threaten to boycott our friendship until they change, so I’m not going to do that to Apple either. ”
Cough Arrington Cough….
WAIT A MINUTE!
Are you saying that the Apple App store is NOT already 60% junk?
tell me
Approval process should be compared to Immigration Law, not Criminal Law. It has nothing to do with being innocent or not.
Joe Hewitt’s article contains very interesting remarks and legitimate claims. But trying to compare the Approval process to Criminal Law is not the right thing to do.
Apple is choosing apps like most countries are choosing which people have the “right” to come, live and work on their ground. Immigration is (most of the time) based on written and predictable rules. That is the main difference with Apple’s policies regarding app store approval process: even if we have signed an agreement, the rules are too opaque and can be interpreted arbitrarily by Apple. This situation is very risky and can result in a perfect 0% of ROI, if your app is not accepted.
I won’t cry for people that are making money thanks to iPhone’s technology (or want to make money, may the app be paying or free of charge). Apple is a company. Apple owns the iPhone. Apple is neither the web nor the Internet.
By the way, in the real world, if you want to work in USA, you will have to obtain a Green Card (and most of the applicants are innocent). I wish you good luck, but remember, if you can’t get a Green Card, you can still go to USA as stowaway – at your own risks and without any protection. In a way, it is just like jailbreaking your iPhone.
+1
With immigration you (for the most part) must have something that contributes to the society before the country will let you in (say you have the education/skill they require). Let’s call those “good apps”. Immigration (for the most part) doesn’t let people come to the country if they don’t posses a skill that’s needed or if there are already millions of people like you living in the country (let’s call those “fart apps”). The App Store approval process works almost the opposite of the immigration process: they let in almost all of the “fart apps” (or 200 versions of iMboster, or iVampire or a single app for every book ever made – there must be 10,000 of those alone). They don’t care that the market is already saturated with the same exact type of “skill” (many times virtually identical). They still let them in. They don’t let in many of the “good apps” though – those apps that would actually help improve the “society” by contributing something that’s not there now or that’s improving on something that already exists.
an interesting comment. of course, a keen observer would note that the periods of greatest economic expansion in US history occurred with open borders, long before there was a green card. just saying…
bdufresne wrote:
“Apple is neither the web nor the Internet”
Well, Internet is going mobile, and right now Apple is one of the gatekeepers in building the web on mobile. Maybe that wasn´t the intention but in reality, thats whats happening. So the question is, how to best build a mobile internet, through Apple or Google. I think the answer is pretty obvous. Google has way more experience in this area and will probably succeed in the long run. So even if android still isn´t as flashy as Iphone I think people should buy and use android in order to make web development on mobile more interesting.
+2
What only 60% junk ?
Q. When was the last time you took and used a third party facebook application seriously for longterm everday use.
A. Never.
Man, please, just get an Android and stop bothering! Or stop writting such annoing articles. I don’t want stop reading Techcrunch because someone that can’t accept some rules. Maybe you did not get that Apple is selling the apps as they were their own. So they just won’t sell apps they can not trust.
eh.
It’s just a hobby horse — it would be great if a list of oddities was published every week — twitter’s “suggested users,” which can be seen as a quid pro quo to bloggers/”journalists.”
While they’re on tweeking their App store rules and approval processes do you think they can finally settle their issues with Apple Corps (The other one) and release some Beatles tracks on iTunes?
Not really related I know but another annoying draconian side to Apple.
I want to test the comment module
I think an open, un-gated system is the last thing the App Store needs. In fact, its needs the opposite – Apple needs to be more discerning is what it approves. The App Store is filled with so much garbage that it is impossible for anyone to find anything of value in it. This isn’t to say that we need more bizarre app denials for random reasons, but we certainly don’t need more useless apps clogging up the system.
I would argue that there’s so much crap BECAUSE of the approval process. I’m sure the approval process works the same for all apps – some kind of a checklist or something along those lines to makes sure their mysterious rules are not broken. All the crap apps will easily pass the checks – after all, they don’t do anything other than sucking and annoying users who are unfortunate enough to download them. Good applications, vastly more complex, are a lot more likely to get rejected because the ‘approver’ found something wrong with it.
Get away with the approval process and let people police the app store themselves.
What a terrible idea. What if the app store was as open as the web? You’d have tons of junk, spam and malicious content.
ummmm… so what about all the spyware (pinch media, medialets, mobclix, flurry) and the infinite supply of fart apps? What does that fall under?
spyware? you mean like google analytics?
phew, thank god there’s no crap in the App Store now. We sure dodged a bullet on that one!
What I think, is that apple needs to get more reviewers and aggregate the apps into more hierarchical categories. When a trend emerges such as fart apps, note apps, and tip calculators, then start putting them into their own sub categories so that people looking for specific functionality can find it easily.
The thing I dislike about the reviewers, is that once they see a bug or some violation, they stop reviewing and don’t go any deeper then send an email. The developer then has to wait for two weeks so the next bug is found. They need more reviewers that thoroughly look at apps and tell the developer exactly what they need to change in one email, not 5 different emails 2 weeks apart…
I think this post has missed some information. 99% of the people who own an iphone are dumber then a bag of rocks. If we took down the wall how on earth do we get them to stay with the group.
The Reagan legacy lives on.. I love it!
Why not have allow applications straight away into the app store, so that those users who are confident that they know what they are doing, can decide and risk, using an un Apple approved application. While the ‘early adopters’ are using the software, Apple can be reviewing it for people who want to have the safety of the Apple approval.
So there is an Apple approved tick, of safety and security for those who want it.
This would work well for updates and bug fixes as well, as if an application crashed and a non conifdent user had been using an app without problems for six months, the decisions is then put into their hands to upgrade or not.
I also like the idea of a 24 hour return period, as I have bought a few apps, and a few of them have been crap, and there was no way to test them without buying them.
It is for reason like this – that so many companies, especially the smaller companies, which is where so much innovation comes from are hesitant or refusing to develop for the iPhone platform.
Quit whining – take down the wall – no way.
It’s a classic engineer’s mentality in thinking. This sounds great from a developer’s standpoint. Yes openness is good, but from an end user’s standpoint they are downloading this application form Apple. They don’t understand app developers, etc. They just want to be able to download an app and have it work. I believe the approval process was put in place to ensure at least that happens.
Ah, the irony is so rich. Perhaps, the developer’s blog rants should be applied to Facebook app approval process itself first before throwing stones.
I hope they do!
Man I just love Reagan.
How about, I should be able to download whatever app I want and run it on my iPhone just like can on my Mac Book Pro.
This doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game.
There are good arguments for both sides: a free market and a regulated market. If we want a good solution, we shouldn’t be ideological about this and should try to find a compromise.
So I propose that Apple do BOTH: keep the approval process AND allow people to install unapproved apps.
So how would a quasi-system work? It would be simple really. The user would just have to confirm that they understand they are installing an app that hasn’t been reviewed and that it may adversely affect the performance, security, or UI of their phone, and that any damage to their phone from such an app would not be covered by their warranty (the chances of damage are slim, but it could still happen and Apple shouldn’t be responsible if they’ve warned users)
- Developers could request for their app to be approved when they submit it to the store, or they choose not to.
- Approved Apps would be labeled as such in the App store, similar to Facebook’s Verified Apps
-The App store could feature “Report this App” buttons on unapproved apps, as well as “Unapproved App” labels on unapproved applications
- Parental controls could prevent the installation of unapproved apps
- Paid apps would require verification so people don’t get ripped off
- The Push notification service would probably need to be limited to approved apps so you wouldn’t have to worry about Push spam.
In this way, you get the best of both worlds. Apple would be able to drastically unclog the approval process and developers could launch apps and get user-feedback to tweak their apps *before* going through the approval process.
-KO
Actually, if you remove the App Store approval process, then there’s no checks for if a developer is using a private or unapproved API. That’s where the real danger lies. Yes, the iPhone is locked down, but only because the App Store approval process exists to ensure that developers don’t use these private APIs.
It’s these private APIs that could wreak havoc on a person’s phone. And trust me, it’s very easy to find and use the private APIs. But with the App Store approval process, developers can only use Apple approved functions, thus the sandbox stays in tact. Ever wonder how the jailbreak developers get all of their fancy stuff to work? They break down that sandbox environment. And quite frankly, I don’t want to give someone that kind of access to my phone.
dear lord what I wouldn’t give for Apple to actually read this and AGREE.
give users the choice. they tend to like that.
For the record: app approval on GetJar takes 24 hours. Thanks.
Wow… How many importent inforation here…. Thanks blogger brother….
http://www.earn-safely.co.cc
You are suggesting crowdsourcing the whole process. I like that.