You could say that these are Interesting Times to be an iPhone developer — although you could easily have said the same thing at any point since the announcement of the SDK. It seems that time and again we get weeks like this, where the number of "App Store Evil" stories in the press suddenly swells and it looks like matters are coming to a head. There have certainly been some happenings recently. The more public events you've doubtlessly heard of from Gruber, so I'll start with what's been going on behind the iPhone Dev Centre log in.
Trouble in Store
If you're a frequent browser of the App Store you may — or more likely, may not — have noticed something a little funny about the listings; in particular the "Recent" lists. Apple has introduced a new updates policy for the App Store. It used to be that whenever an update to an app was released it would be bumped back up to the top of the relevant list. This is no more. Now this list only shows newly released v1.0 applications. To say that this change is unpopular among developers would be an understatement.
For many developers, frequent small updates — and their accompanying bump in position with attendant spike in sales — was their main (or only) business plan. (I can certainly attest that the only times Lexical has seen any number of sales were after initial release and after the 1.1.) Cue much wailing, gnashing of teeth and cries of "sod this, I'm off to Android", interspersed with pragmatic — and somewhat exasperated — messages which basically boil down to: "Oh FFS, you can't rely on Apple to do all your marketing for you, why don't you try a little advertising, I hear it works wonders in every other single business ever."
As a side effect of these changes — or, more likely, of cracking the App Store open and tinkering with its workings — we get the messed-up listings. Apps released last year are suddenly reappearing at the top of lists, accompanied by other apps which won't be released until next year. On the plus side, you no longer have to manually adjust your release date once your app has been approved, but at this moment that seems like a very small comfort. It's been over a week now and things finally seem to be settling down. Presumably it's taken so long because those whose job it is to fix it — and who made the mistake in the first place — have been nailed up in the lobby of their building on Infinite Loop — alongside the rotting corpses of the old MobileMe team — as a warning to others.
(Playing armchair App Store manager for a moment, I'd suggest a two-track approval process for updates. When the developer submitted their update they'd check one of two options: "Bug fix" or "Feature Update". Bug fixes would be fast-tracked — let's say there's a semi-guarentee of under five days — but would not receive a list position bump. Feature Updates would be subject to the same fourteen-days-if-you're-lucky process as new apps — and as we get by default now — but would benefit from top-of-the-list exposure. But since I do not, have not and probably never will run a international application download service it really doesn't matter two hoots what I think should happen.)
What's in a Name?
Meanwhile, TUAW reports that a number of developers have been sticking the word "edge" into their app names as a protest against the actions of the owner of the trademark "Edge", who has been busy enforcing it — with Apple's help — in the App Store. I suppose it's good to see that, despite their world collapsing around them, iPhone developers can find the time to have a little silly fun. The word "edge" isn't the only one to be proscribed in this way. "Memory" is also now verbotten, although it seems on Jeff Lamarche has reported on this. So should we take this as another sign that the App Store is broken? No. In this case, Apple is responding to a legal request in the only way it can. Whether or not that request is fair is not their decision.
I'm Going Home and I'm Taking My Toys with Me
We've had a couple of high profile hissy-fits in recent days. I'll include that Facebook guy under "high profile", even though I'd never heard of him before. But we shouldn't be too surprised by his departure. If he works for Facebook then he's going to be rather limited in the type of apps he's gets to work on (hint: it will mostly be Facebook clients). The Facebook iPhone app has been around long enough that it probably does everything it needs to, so there's no point wasting your rock star developer on maintaining it. Might as well get yourself some free publicity with a spectacular walkout and then hand the day-to-day upkeep to some lacky.
And then we have Mike Ash and Rogue Amoeba. The Aitfoil Speakers Touch saga is being held up as the latest great failing of the review process and of how the rule reviews enforce are arbitrary, obscure and inconsistent. (Although at least no-one seems to be blaming this on "out-sourcing" and "off-shoring" any more. Those terms rank alongside "UK-only call centres" for making me want to stab people in the face.) But just for the sake of being contrary, I'm going to disagree. I think the — admittedly unspoken — rule is very clear: Apple is asking iPhone developers, "Please do not let users think that your application is our problem".
The Airfoil problem boils down to this: Rouge Amoeba want it to show (a) a Mac OS X application icon, and (b) an image of a Macintosh computer; Apple don't. Rogue Amoeba's first argument is that neither icon nor image are distributed with the app, but are instead accessed using public API calls on the host machine. Doubtless true, but still beside the point. If I try to release XXX iHardcore iPorn I shouldn't be surprised if it's rejected, no matter how loudly I complain that the content isn't included in the app but is downloaded using public APIs. A high proportion of the time, the icon which Airfoil displays will be from an Apple product. 100% of the time it will display one of Apple's images of a Mac. When an application does something 100% of the time arguments about how it does it are nothing more than weasel words.
The second argument is that the first version of Airfoil did exactly the same thing and was both accepted and remained available for the whole time. Which is where — and I'm just speculating wildly here, but then so are you, so shut up — the unspoken "Please do not let users think that your application is our problem" rule comes in. Maybe the person whose job it is to trawl through the support logs found an abnormal number of requests which went something like: "I'm having terrible problems with your iPhone application X and if you don't fix it right away I'm telling my lawyer" "But sir or madam, X is not an Apple application" "Oh no you don't fool me that easily, it has your a picture of [random Apple product] in it so it must be yours". Airfoil need not even have been the product mentioned. We already know that you cannot use images of the iPhone in iPhone apps. Images of any Apple product seems like a natural extension of this. And since we've all seen the App Store evolve over time, it's not an enormous leap to assume that this new tightening of the policy was instigated sometime between the release of the original Airfoil and the submission of the update.
The iPhone and iPod Touch are not Macs, and not only from a technical point of view. They are consumer electronic items in a way that computers never really have been. As such, they have a different user base (although admittedly with a lot of crossover). Let's try a little experiment. Find a non-Apple-devotee iPhone user. Take their iPhone and pull up the home screen. Now ask them to identify which of the apps listed there come from Apple and which don't. Product support costs money. Yes, Apple makes great margins, but they don't do it by paying their staff to explain time and again to customers why the problems caused by that app showing a picture of a Mac and the iTunes logo isn't actually anything to do with them. (After all, Apple is more than capable of causing its own bad publicity, thank you very much.)
Let me try a different metaphor. You may be familiar with the "advertising feature" which you occasionally find in magazines and newspapers: an advert formatted to look like editorial. Now, I'm willing to bet that your average journalist hates these more than an over-zealous expenses auditor. Because you may have the smartest readership in the world, but when they're curled up on the sofa with your publication, defences down, flicking away, there's a good chance that a least a few of them may be tricked into thinking that it's actually you or your colleagues who are recommending that they install Super-Dooper Virus Smasher 2012. I'm sure that Apple views apps that appropriate their content in exactly the same light.
And... I think that's more than enough for now.
No comments:
Post a Comment