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.
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