Following the recent decisions by a couple of very high-profile and well-respected iPhone developers to abandon developing for the iPhone OS “ Joe Hewitt of Facebook and Rogue Amoeba “ it ‘s pretty clear that Apple ‘s reputation with developers is suffering a lot because of their App Store review policies.
This morning I ‘ve been reading through some commentary by John Gruber at Daring Fireball and, via his mention and link, a lot of commentary by Paul Graham. I have to admit I didn ‘t know of Graham before this morning, but his Bio is very impressive. And his thoughts on the App Store and how much damage Apple is doing to its reputation among developers are worrying if you ‘re a fan of the iPhone platform.
Here are just a few very small slices from an excellent piece by Graham titled ‘Apple ‘s Mistake ‘:
I don’t think Apple realizes how badly the App Store approval process is broken. Or rather, I don’t think they realize how much it matters that it’s broken.
The way Apple runs the App Store has harmed their reputation with programmers more than anything else they’ve ever done. Their reputation with programmers used to be great. It used to be the most common complaint you heard about Apple was that their fans admired them too uncritically. The App Store has changed that. Now a lot of programmers have started to see Apple as evil.
How much of the goodwill Apple once had with programmers have they lost over the App Store? A third? Half? And that’s just so far. The App Store is an ongoing karma leak.
That ‘s a scary situation, especially if you believe that apps are the single biggest factor driving the success of the iPhone OS platform, as I do.
Here ‘s a great question Graham poses to Apple:
How would Apple like it if when they discovered a serious bug in OS X, instead of releasing a software update immediately, they had to submit their code to an intermediary who sat on it for a month and then rejected it because it contained an icon they didn’t like?
And a quote from another developer in Graham ‘s piece on why the approval process on updates is so detrimental to both developers and users:
I believe that they think their approval process helps users by ensuring quality. In reality, bugs like ours get through all the time and then it can take 4-8 weeks to get that bug fix approved, leaving users to think that iPhone apps sometimes just don’t work. Worse for Apple, these apps work just fine on other platforms that have immediate approval processes.
Go check out the full ‘Apple ‘s Mistake ‘ post by Graham HERE “ it ‘s really a great read. Have a look at how he feels about purchasing a new Mac given his current feelings about Apple, at the end of the article “ strong stuff and not good for Apple if some of their core fan base is feeling this way.
I also like Gruber ‘s thoughts on how frustrating all of Apple ‘s App Store Follies are
The hard part about criticizing the App Store is that it doesn ‘t fit into a black-and-white narrative. It ‘s not bad or good. It ‘s both. In fact, it ‘s more extreme than that ” it ‘s both amazingly good and horribly bad. And, frustratingly, many of us see how the bad parts could be made better without sacrificing the good parts.
Once again, when reading stuff like this, it just reinforces my feeling that the only way Apple loses out in the smartphone arena is if they ‘beat themselves ‘ by buggering up the App Store and losing too many good developers to other platforms.
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TAGS: Apple
