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These aren't assumptions. These are business I have personally dealt with in my product development company who have made this exact decision for this exact reason. We always have to council iterative development, etc, instead of a large impressive release, as Apple is capricious.

I have companies who've been willing to write Apple a 20k check to get a go-nogo call on an app before developing it.

>2. If an app store has <200K-budget-apps, it will be full of junk

No, I'm not assuming there is junk, I can see this just by looking. I can also see companies actively not publishing apps due to the rejection risk.

>3. If Apple pre-approved apps and more >200K-budget-apps were in the app-store, the app-store would not be full of low-quality apps.

No, I'm saying it would be more reasonable to invest more in your applications. In the current rejection climate, it is not reasonable to assume 30-80k is safe if you make an app. You may have to spend 50% again to get up to whatever apple thinks is copacetic. Apple may change policies while you're developing an app (One client of mine had this exact issue).

>On (2) you can create high-quality apps on a small budget

You can? Small apps can be high quality, for sure, but are you pricing your developer time? Can you not imagine apps that involve a lot of developer time (for instance, work with lots of external API's, work with intensive processing, do something completely new).

> the presence of high-quality apps (whether low-budget or >200K-budget) isn't going to dissuade junkware publishers.

No, it's not going to dissuade them, look at the web for that. However the issue is people have a disincentive to invest in the platform, which means there are proportionately more crapware people than non-crapware people.

>The first assertion is a bit extreme. I understand that some big companies may hesitate to create apps that aren't pre-approved, but many other big companies (ranging from Volkswagen to Pizza Hut to New York Times to Microsoft) haven't suffered from any inhibitions when it comes to creating iPhone apps.

You think so? I've talked to several large companies, some of which household names, which have made the OPPOSITE decision when making apps. The companies that have made apps in general make them when they're clearly safe from rejection, which not everything in the world is.

Additionally, relatively recently, apple made a A company B Company C company D company classification system for processing rejections. This means something like PizzaHut can put out a non-standard app where RandomCo3 can't.




>These aren't assumptions.

No, they are assumptions. You are making assumptions and imo questionable conclusions.

I specifically agreed that some companies would hesitate to create apps that weren't pre-approved. So we have no disagreement on that point.We disagree on your assumptions.

You are also factually wrong on the assertion that "no one will risk doing "big" things as they're afraid of rejection". Look up the definition of "no one" and you'll see that it is different from "the businesses that gte910h has spoken to".

You are also wrong on your assumptions about <200K apps.

>>On (2) you can create high-quality apps on a small budget

>You can?

Yes, several other people have also created high-quality iPhone apps.Many of them were done with budgets less than 200K.


You've completely mischaracterized my comment, which is why those aren't my assumptions, as you're thinking I'm saying something more comprehensive than I am. I've shared my observations, but those aren't my assumptions.

I am merely commenting on one of many influences on the store which lead to it filling with crap, not the Unified Field Theory of Apps which explains every trend in the store. I know there are lots of OTHER reasons, which you'll see in my comments all over this page as well.

I'm in no way saying apps cost 200k. I am saying some concepts do, and the apple approval process drives them out.

Most apps cost 1-25k when done non-agency and 15-90k when done through an agency.

I am not, in any way, saying small apps can't be good, nor am I saying I'm an omniscient being. I'm saying I talk to people all day long about this, I watch them choose to go low quality over high quality sometimes, and I see the decision as they make it. It's not just companies I talk to, its companies the 100 or so other iPhone devs I know talk to. Same story all over the place.

I AM saying given the level of limited funds people put into apps, it's not surprising they chose to spend their limited budget on increasing functionality rather than making a smaller subset of functionality work very well (aka, Quality), especially since limited functionality is yet another reason your app gets rejected, no matter how pretty it is. Given the chance even if you do everything right, you will still get a rejection, it's not surprising they spend X instead of 250% of X on their app, as its a business risk. If you don't think people spending 20-50% of what they would if there was no chance of rejection effects quality, you're asleep in a haywagon.




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