Amateur Hour

Jesper of Waffle Software on the new, published, App Store rules:

[…] I don’t think it’s unfair for Apple to have a list of the applications produced for its platform that it believes is decent and upstanding, and which it is proud to be associated with. I just don’t think that that list should be the same as the list of all applications that can run, ever. I honestly think that even my detractors will concede this as a fair point.

I’m constantly surprised, myself, how many people still don’t see this as a problem. Is Apple totally within their rights to arbitrarily block apps? Yep. Nobody I know is arguing they shouldn’t be allowed to. However, it is troubling to me that they would want to. A dick move is a dick move is a dick move.

“Steam Is a Port”

John Bell on Steam’s Mac version, and cross-platform UIs in general. As I did in my post on Steam, he sees it as an example in favor of Apple’s stance on third-party SDKs in the App Store:

Apple has their head on straight with regards to ports. They want apps to be designed with iPads and iPhones in mind. If that means half the apps, that’s fine. PC computing never had trouble with sheer numbers of apps, it had trouble with quality. Apple is willing to give up some of the former for a lot of the latter.

via Lukas Mathis

The App Store: Revenge Reviews

Garret Murray, developer of the Ego app for iPhone, on what he calls “revenge reviews”: Reviews posted to the App Store by users who accidentally purchased an app, misread it’s description, or otherwise made a mistake. I hadn’t thought of this:

People brought up a great point the last time I complained about App Store customers—they’re all children. Not metaphorically, but literally. Most of these customers are kids with iPod Touches. So of course they act like children.

But it rings true. I’d go further and say that the ones that are not literally children, are probably emotionally stunted in some way.

Apple Now Blocking ‘Overtly Sexual’ Apps from App Store

First they came for the creepy almost-porn apps, and I said nothing because I wasn’t into creepy almost-porn apps. I’m sure this makes sense to businessmen, but I am really fucking uncomfortable with Apple being in charge of what is considered “overtly sexual.”

This is purely “I know it when I see it” fascism. There is no defense for it that doesn’t start and end with “they can do what they want so shut up.”

E-Book Reader Eucalyptus Now Available on The App Store

Apple has made it right with developer James Montgomerie:

Earlier today I received a phone call from an Apple representative. He was very complimentary about Eucalyptus. We talked about the confusion surrounding its App Store rejections, which I am happy to say is now fully resolved. He invited me to re-build and submit a version of Eucalyptus with no filters for immediate approval, and that full version is now available on the iPhone App Store.

This hasn’t “fixed” any of the serious issues around the approval process, and it took them way too long to do the right thing, but I’m glad for James. Eucalyptus is an application that was obviously crafted with much care. Previously.

The App Store Is Fucking Broken Part XXXL

Apple has now rejected an application that allows users to remotely manage the popular Bittorrent desktop app, Transmission. Why? Because sometimes people use Bittorrent to bootleg things. In Apple’s own words:

this category of applications is often used for the purpose of infringing third party rights. We have chosen to not publish this type of application to the App Store.

Which means, “we choose to tell you to go fuck yourself” if you’ve just wasted hours/days/weeks of your life developing an app only to have it shot down on a whim.

App Store Customers Are Neither Bad Nor Good by Default

Garret Murray’s most recent post on his blog, the land where posts do not have titles, is about what happened last week with his (lovely) application, Ego. In it, he basically vents about being a single developer caught between a rock (customers angry that something stopped working) and a hard place (Apple’s arcane approvals process). His frustration is completely understandable with regards to Apple, but I think his larger concern is wrong. In the post, he says this:

This kind of thing continually reinforces something I’ve thought about a lot since the App store was released, which sounds horrible to say but it might be true: Apple is creating an ecosystem of the kind of customers I don’t want.

John Gruber thought it important enough to link to the post using that link as illustration, with the title “Are App Store Customers Good Customers?” This time, though, I think the question is already answered: No, not realy. But the App Store doesn’t create Good or Bad Customers, either. Sturgeon’s Law just as well here as anywhere. What the App Store does do is make it very easy for a user to complain when the mood strikes them.

It’s hard not be frustrated when you have to wait for something beyond your control, but the simple facts are these:

  1. Garrett charged money for an application.

  2. The amount of money is irrelevant.

  3. The application sold Google Analytics support in the same breath as support for other applications that have solid developer APIs

  4. In doing so created an expectation that GA support was “stable” and “not likely to break at the whims of Google with no warning.”

  5. You cannot blame any customer for being angry when that happened.

Do I agree that the users leaving many of these comments are probably huge assholes? Yes. Could Apple do more to mitigate the costs for Developers when something goes wrong? Yes. But the frustration that made Mr. Murray write his blog post is the very same kind of frustration that made those customers, assholes or not, write their negative reviews.

More users means more sales means more assholes.