- Users require a higher level of reliability from their phone than their computer, and keeping out trojans and buggy apps improves the overall experience.
- Apple is able to maintain a more consistent UI by only allowing apps that conform to certain standards.
- Some apps need to be kept out for legal reasons (BitTorrent) or to make parents more comfortable giving a device to their kids (porn).
I don't mind a review process inherently, but Apple has mismanaged the whole thing in about every conceivable way. If I had my druthers, all apps would be instantly approved, with malware/etc yanked remotely as needed. Failing that, a community review process might also work well.
I appreciate that you're devil's advocating it, and I'm still personally undecided on what direction Apple should be taking, but I'll just point out that all of those aspects could also be applied to OS X:
- Reliability is still important on your desktop, and, though a mobile platform is more constrained by processing limits, it's up to the developer to respect those constraints. You don't get carte blanche to load forty terabyte files on a desktop app; you realize that your success depends on your ability to deliver a reliable app.
- Apple's HIG is actually pretty well-applied on OS X; from a strictly UI point of view I don't think they need to mandate you follow their stringent guidelines. Besides which, after the year or so of the AppStore in play, people have a good idea of what an "iPhone app" should look and feel like, which helps reinforce this.
- You can load up all kinds of filth, theoretically, on OS X. It happens. But it's not a big deal.
That said, I probably agree with your final point. I suspect Apple's throwing around a lot of solutions to the "AppStore problem", but since Apple tends never to leak anything until release, it's frustrating to be in the dark in the meantime.
I give them a lot of leeway because of this principle. But there's a lot of low-hanging fruit they've failed to grab:
- No way for small bug fixes to jump the queue.
- No way to pre-screen app concepts, so that the developer can get a rejection notice before doing the work.
- AFAIK, future releases are not routed through the same reviewer as previous versions, resulting in nonsensical rejections for previously existing characteristics.
- Again, AFAIK: No second pass for rejected apps, with an eye to the P.R. impact of the decision. I'm all for employee empowerment, but anecdotally, reviewers seem to make a lot of arbitrary decisions which the company backs with little examination.
- No feedback mechanism on your place in line. The wait would be a lot of more tolerable if I knew I knew how many days or weeks it should take, on average.
Simply put, Apple hasn't made developer relations a high priority, which is unfortunate; failure to do so in the 80s and 90s is part of what kept Macs in single-digit market share. iPhone may be king of the market now, but pissing off devs is not a good way to stay there.
I guess most people here don't write iPhone apps. Here's to clear things up where I can:
- No way for small bug fixes to jump the queue.
There is, you can get them in within a few days. Not immediate, but it helps a lot.
- AFAIK, future releases are not routed through the same reviewer as previous versions, resulting in nonsensical rejections for previously existing characteristics.
Not the same reviewer. But just speaking in general, this is also a positive point: if an app should really be rejected, but wasn't due to a lapse by a certain reviewer, it can still be rejected by another reviewer in another version. Makes sense. (well, you can say just skip the review process totally or enforce some way to make every reviewer have the same standard, but we know the world's not perfect, and we make do with what we have).
- No feedback mechanism on your place in line. The wait would be a lot of more tolerable if I knew I knew how many days or weeks it should take, on average.
Actually it's been months since they started showing the average number of days X% of updates wait (~2 weeks for ~98% so far).
And for the past few weeks, they have started showing the status for each update posted. ie. pending review, reviewing, rejected, etc.
- Simply put, Apple hasn't made developer relations a high priority, which is unfortunate; failure to do so in the 80s and 90s is part of what kept Macs in single-digit market share. iPhone may be king of the market now, but pissing off devs is not a good way to stay there.
This isn't right. Apple has handled developer relations very well for OS X app developers. From the outside, it almost looks like iPhone dev relations is handled by an entirely different group of people.
But you reinforced lukifer's point instead of rebutting it. In the 80s and 90s (pre-OS X), Macs had crappy market share, and when they improved them (OS X timeframe), you saw much more developer interest.
- Users require a higher level of reliability from their phone than their computer, and keeping out trojans and buggy apps improves the overall experience.
- Apple is able to maintain a more consistent UI by only allowing apps that conform to certain standards.
- Some apps need to be kept out for legal reasons (BitTorrent) or to make parents more comfortable giving a device to their kids (porn).
I don't mind a review process inherently, but Apple has mismanaged the whole thing in about every conceivable way. If I had my druthers, all apps would be instantly approved, with malware/etc yanked remotely as needed. Failing that, a community review process might also work well.