Letter to Mr. Jobs. App Store policies are broken.
So, after my little rant the other day, I figured it was time to actually stop bitching on a website that Apple may never read (I don’t know if they do or not) and do something they may actually pay attention to. The following is the email I sent to Steve Jobs, and then edited and set to Apple Feedback. If you want to see Apple start fixing the problems with the App Store submission policies – PLEASE do the same.
App Store policies for admission / removal are broken.
Mr. Jobs,
I submitted this as a bug report – because there is no option for broken app store policies. I am forwarding it to you, because I doubt anyone else within Apple’s App Store is going to care enough to read it.
I could find a bunch of areas in the App Store policies that Apple has made mistakes. But I’m just going to point out this one – because well frankly its the dumbest one I’ve seen Apple make thus far. Oh, and I am a developer (go ahead check). At this point I’m really considering if I want to spend any more time developing any applications because at any given point (even after submission) Apple may determine that I have broken some line in the sand mythical barrier that only Apple knows about and pull my app – which takes a lot of work, time and money to produce – out of the store with only vieled excuses and no way of knowing how to resolve the problem since there is no discussion involved with the decision makers.
Specifically the case of GV Mobile (and other Google Voice apps). So, before we even start on how bad a decision this was – Did anyone bother to check the history of this app? Phil Schiller himself got this app approved. So, is he the one who made the decision to pull it? If not – it needs to be back in the store (along with every other Google Voice app) immediately and a complete review of the policies for acceptance, rejection & removal done immediately as well. Eventually a continuation along the path of non-disclosure and bad decision making is going to leave you with an App Store filled with nothing more worthwhile than soundboard applications, and games nobody wants to play because all the developers are sick of the policies and are just going to move on.
Now, I realize that Apple gave a legitimate reason for pulling GV Mobile – specifically that it duplicates functionality of the phone and would cause user confusion. Fine. Understandable. Then if that is the official policy – I am completely confused as to why there are tons (and I mean tons) of dialer applications (which duplicate phone functionality), emailing applications (which duplicate the mail functionality), photo storage applications (which duplicate the photos functionality), camera applications (which duplicate the camera functionality), weather applications (which duplicate weather functionality), voice memo …… I think you get the point. There’s a load of applications throughout the App Store which duplicate the exact functionality of many built-in Apple applications. Those apps are still in the store. The policies of the App Store are a horribly twisted mess that is ruining the experience for not only application developers like myself, but consumers as well. The developer of GV Mobile put a lot of time and effort into the application and was making money and feeding his family from the sales – all that gone because of someone’s whim within Apple. The customers had an application the enjoyed and had paid for. Gone now, money wasted, value lost and now upset customers – all because of someone’s whim at Apple.
I’m not sure how you fix the policies… but I think a good start would be to start looking at things from a common sense standpoint, a developer and consumer standpoint – instead of a lawyer and corporate a-hole standpoint.
Thank You for your time and products that I love to use.
You were doing good until you got to the last paragraph and the a-hole comment. I am sure you had his attention up to that point and then he hit the delete button.
Agreed, keep it calm and polite!
I agree – Should have cut that bit out but unfortunately by the time I had that moment of enlightenment I had already hit the send button.
I never really expected a response from Mr. Jobs anyway – so as long as he (or someone) gets to the bottom – they've gotten the parts that I really wanted them to see. If all of us who have owned an app only to see it get yanked from the store took a few minutes to send a letter / file feedback – Apple would have no choice but to finally make some much needed changes to the process or at minimum acknowledge the issues.
I fully agree with the message you're attempting to get across, but you should have had someone proofread it and edit it a bit before sending. It is not well-written from a professional standpoint. If I were in Jobs' shoes, I would have closed the email and deleted it at the beginning of the 2nd paragraph "I could find a bunch of areas in the App Store…" That sounds like a 6th grader wrote it. Sorry, just being honest.
I'm not a professional writer, so I can see where you're coming from. But how many other people who send him emails really have a professional writing background either? Again I agree with you that I "should have" but I didn't and my guess is that most people wouldn't either.
If Apple takes the stance that they only accept comments/feedback from people with professional writing and editing, well then I guess we'll hardly ever see anything change. And frankly if you were in Job's shoes and took the same stance – my guess is the company wouldn't last very long because very few people actually write well enough for it to be considered anything above a grade school level.
Honestly, emails such as this one aren't going to result in any changes being made. It's poorly written, and unprofessional. As a programmer with an actual stake in the app store, you really should have put a bit more time into writing this if you really wished for it to be taken seriously. It's far too colloquial, and at times even rude. I'd imagine Mr. Jobs has a lot more on his plate than just app store review policies, and as such informal emails are far from the way to get his attention on the matter. Secondly, I'm quite certain that a lot of the information that you posted as fact in your email are unsubstantiated, how can you be sure that the developer of GV Mobile was unaware of his app being pulled, or that he was feeding his family with the sales of his application? As I'm sure you're aware, not many developers are making a living off of the app store. Anyway long story short, if I was Jobs, I'd have deleted this email two sentences into the second paragraph.
Rude? Not sure where that comes from but ok. I think I covered the "professional" part a while ago – but again I'm not a professional writer. I wrote it exactly how I would have said it directly to him. There's lots of writers on the planet, some are pros, some are technical, I'm more of a spoken word kind of writer. Along with that, I'm very much a "here's what's on mind" type of person. I'm not going to take a huge amount of time to write a letter that in all likelihood is not even going to get read by Jobs. Chances are nobody at Apple (who has any bearing on the App Store policies) will even read it. I fully expect it to go into the pile and be ignored like all other App Store complaint emails have so far. So again, if you know there's a very slim chance of something being done, why would you spend half a day penning an email? The one I sent is to the point, nothing more, nothing less.
Secondly – I don't make assumptions about other developers. What I presented as "fact" was based upon information about the developer readily available on his website.
I can be sure that the developer was unaware of his app being pulled – because he himself was told only hours before it disappeared and given almost no explanation. You can find that information here: http://www.seankovacs.com/index.php/2009/07/gv-mo…
I can be sure he was feeding his family with the money from sales (maybe not completely feeding his family) but money in to the bank account = food on the table – based upon this information on his about page:
"I’m a SQL ninja by day, a husband by night, and an iPhone app developer somewhere in between."
So, thanks for the comment. Maybe next time I have something to say to Apple, I'll hire Dean Koontz, Mike Cane, Jeff LaMarche or heck maybe one of you professionals to pen it for me.
Oh and one more – they didn't really know what was happening to their app post:
http://www.riverturn.com/blog/?p=455
Again, its not like I was making this stuff up…
"If you want to see Apple start fixing the problems with the App Store submission policies – PLEASE do the same."
then…
"Chances are nobody at Apple (who has any bearing on the App Store policies) will even read it. I fully expect it to go into the pile and be ignored like all other App Store complaint emails have so far."
"if you know there's a very slim chance of something being done, why would you spend half a day penning an email? "
Why spend ANY time at all?
Because maybe if more people did they'd see there was something they needed to fix. Squeaky wheel gets the grease.