As you know, I write applications for the iPhone in my spare time. I don’t have much in the way of spare time, but one or two of the applications that I have written have been moderately successful, although I have been recently forced to pull one due to some changes in Apple policies.
You will have noticed that I haven’t been loudly complaining about how unfair Apple is—except for a short comment on Twitter to let people know that Camera Plus doesn’t work with iPhone OS 3.0, I have, in fact, been completely silent.
This doesn’t mean that I don’t care, or that no work is going on. And, especially, it doesn’t mean that I necessarily agree with Apple’s policies. I simply recognize that they are their policies, and that they are the price to pay in order to play the game.
More importantly, I recognize that, when I signed up for publishing apps in the App Store, I entered into a legal contract that had some very specific provisions, including certain confidentiality requirements that a number of people seem all too happy to ignore completely.
Thus, every time I see the latest beta OS features published on “tech” websites, I cringe a little. The betas are released under an NDA—this means you do not leak them—period. Developers want to be entrusted with more advance information on what changes are coming to the iPhone product line ahead of time—I know I certainly would like to have known about changes to the camera interface in 3.0 a lot sooner than I did, instead of finding out, like everyone else, when the public announcement was made. But, put yourself in Apple’s shoes: when every little detail of the beta software you release (including
details that you haven’t even announced to the developers themselves) ends up being leaked to the public, it’s tough to find a good reason to entrust them with even more information.
In fact, I suspect that there are people inside Apple who would like a bit more transparency—but they must be having a hell of a time making a case for it with the business types.
Best of all, however, are people who complain about how Apple is unresponsive and difficult to get a hold of. I have, through my short life as a developer, had a number of conversations with Apple about my apps. In general, they have been quite responsive to my questions—in fact, some of the conversations have been unsolicited on my part and initiated by Apple itself. I can’t, of course, say that I’ve always liked what they had to say, but the point of a communication channel is not to get your way no matter what—it’s to… communicate.
I doubt that I am a special case of any sort. My apps aren’t top sellers, and they’re certainly not going to make or break the iPhone. Perhaps the only thing that sets me apart from others is the fact that I have made it a point to keep every conversation I’ve had with Apple respectful and polite—especially when disagreeing—and confidential. Because, you see, those conversations are also under NDA—it’s written in the contract, and whatever Apple rep you speak to will explain it to you at the outset of a phone call (a bit which, interestingly, never seems to make it into those “transcripts” that end up online).
Perhaps most interesting of all is the fact that people should have realized by now that Apple is almost entirely impervious to outside pressure. Bitching about how unfair your rejection is on your blog is simply not going to get you anywhere and, if anything, is simply going to perpetuate the perception that developers are not to be trusted inside Apple.
Take, for example,
this post from
Riverturn, makers of the
VoiceCentral app. I am sorry their application was rather unceremoniously pulled from the App Store—undoubtedly, to use a very precise business term, it sucks, but they’re not helping a thing by publishing a transcript of the conversation they had with Apple about it. What is the logic in that? How open and forthcoming would you be if you knew that your conversations were likely to be put out in the open without your consent?
The best bit, of course, is this:
I don’t care if it needs to be off the record or we need to sign another top-secret NDA
Why, is the NDA you’ve signed not secret enough? Do you need one that’s more secret? Cross your heart and hope to die? Seriously!
The App Store rejection circus is largely a myth. I have had my applications rejected five times—and all but one were entirely my fault, and came with a pretty thorough explanation to accompany them (or, at least, as thorough as the tester could make it given the fact that, you know, I was the developer, and not them). As for the other time, it cost me an application that, as a result, hasn’t made it to the App Store. I wasn’t happy about it, and mentioned it to them… and now it seems that things might change for the better thanks to upcoming new features.
Yes, apps do get rejected. Yes, they sometimes get rejected because there are conflicting business, rather than technical, considerations in play. Yes, the process is sometimes arbitrary. But—and that’s a big “but”—rejections are a small percentage of all submissions, or there wouldn’t be 50,000 applications in the App Store.