Fraser Speirs – App Store: I’m out.
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Apple’s current practice of rejecting certain applications at the final hurdle - submission to the App Store - is disastrous for investor confidence. Developers are investing time and resources in the App Store marketplace and, if developers aren’t confident, they won’t invest in it. If developers - and serious developers at that - don’t invest, what’s the point?
You have to wonder if Apple wants the App Store to be a museum of poorly-designed nibware written by dilettante Mac OS X/iPhone OS switcher-developers and hobbyist students. That’s what will happen if companies who intend to invest serious resources in bringing an original idea to the App Store are denied a reasonable level of confidence in their expectation of profit.
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That said, Apple is now selecting for anti-competitive reasons. It came to light today that an app that will deliver a capability I really, really want was rejected by Apple because it replaces a feature in Apple’s own software. The app is called Podcaster and it would allow one to update podcasts directly on the device over wifi. I sync my iPhone to my Mac Pro - should I have to go home to put a new episode on my iPhone? I’d buy that app in a heartbeat.
Do you want a store in which every app in the “Productivity” category is a to-do list manager? That’s exactly what you’re going to get because, without some a priori assurance that your idea will be accepted, the only way to know what Apple likes and dislikes is to look at what’s already on the store. Clearly Apple can’t get themselves enough of those ticky boxes, so why not do “your take” on a list of text cells and checkmarks? Much safer bet than inventing something new.