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Apple Extends Non-Disclosure to App Store Rejection Letters

Or maybe...

gifford said:
There is something wrong with the average Apple user nowadays. They seem easily lead by 'news' reports portraying Apple as the 'bad guy', even though 9 times out of ten it is restrictions imposed upon Apple by an affiliate company, or sensible long term decision making that the short sighted, selfish and stupid fail to grasp.

That extra 7% market share didnt come from nowhere... say no more
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...the average *mac user* (since by a large margin, the mac user base is Apple's smallest nowadays) hasn't changed since the 80s-90s with the same tired "Apple Can Do No Wrong" song and dance...whereas most of Apple's customers (that would be people that DON'T own Macs/use MacOS X) are fairly more open-minded and immune from the RDF largely?

Something to think about. In the grand scheme of things, we Mac Users are Apple's *smallest* customer base.

Hmmmmm...
 
tekmoe said:
I agree 100%.

I just sold my iPhone 3G last week for various reasons. After seeing this news, I know I made the right decision.

This is just a downright disgrace. Apple, seriously...I feel ashamed to even call myself a Mac user right now. Ugh...
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You feel ashamed to be using a computer but yet you still use it, how ironic.
 
You people up in arms sound like a bunch of ridiculous spoiled children who have no idea about the real world.
 
Small White Car said:
Uhm, that's the rule, right there: "Duplicates current iPhone function." You said it yourself. Of course it broke that rule. There's no debate there.
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No, there is debate. The question is how to interpret that phrase "duplicates current iPhone function."

If you want to read that very narrowly all kinds of approved apps duplicate current iPhone fucntions.

A more reasonable interpretation (and one much more consistent with the tons of approved apps), is that an app does not violate that rule if it overlaps but significantly extends beyond current iPhone functions.

For "Podcaster" (stupid name, since it reads podcasts not publishes them), I'd say it does significantly extend beyond the podcast player since it is capable of getting new podcasts and new feed items. Mailwrangler is less convincing to me.
 
pooryou said:
I see nothing wrong with what Apple are doing here.

Frankly I wish they were even more restrictive about what they put in the store.
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These are the same people who complain about the App store being filled with junk but Apple decides to control what gets in and they still complain. What a joke.
 
My take...

The issues

1) Apple has control over what applications go "legally" on the iPhone
2) The policies describing acceptable apps are vague
3) We've seem some public rejections apparently based on criteria not spelled out in the policy
4) Some app rejections appear to be done to prevent competition with their own software
5) Apple's preferred MO is to silence discussion rather than address the problem

My take

#1 - It's called capitalism. We'll see if this succeeds. Vote with your $.

#2 & #3 - A very poor way to treat the developer community. The fix (enforcement of a clear policy) seems so simple that it makes one wonder why Apple doesn't take care of it. It leads me to the conclusion that they are choosing to be vague so that any rejection can be spun to appear to be a violation of their policy. If it's for another objective reason I'd love to hear it. And by the way - excuses like "they just can't think of everything" don't fly. Companies with billions of $ and a huge legal staff can make bad decisions but it's very unlikely they are capricious.

#4 - This makes no sense at all. It's such a bad choice I'm still not convinced it's true. If it is true the analysts need to seriously think about the long term viability of the iPhone model in the face of competition that purports to take away this market the same way Apple is taking it away from MS.

Apple's long standing official strategy is to focus on it's market and ignore the niche areas. Steve Jobs will tell you that Apple is what it is not because they give people what they ask for but because they think ahead to what people *will* want. All of this requires a certain amount of arrogance that "Apple knows best". So far so good Apple but to take it to the next level and prevent someone from even offering competition is just wrong. Even if Apple's app IS better the fallout from behaving this way will be very hard to overcome.

Like I said - I'm not yet convinced it's true. Just tell us Apple!

#5 - Apple is not the first to try this. It usually works for a while and then falls apart completely. It has worked in the Mac community for a long time because the press hasn't paid much attention to Apple. That's all changed and it will be interesting to see how long Apple continues this policy. The resources required to control information and/or silence the opposition grow exponentially with the size of the participating population and we recently saw a crack in the armor when they actually provided a description of the fixes in 10.5.5.

So is Apple really saying to it's iPhone developers "Don't tell anyone you got rejected otherwise we won't let you develop for the iPhone"? Does anyone else see the irony in that?

Just my 3 cents...
 
pooryou said:
You people up in arms sound like a bunch of ridiculous spoiled children who have no idea about the real world.
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I agree that the people flipping out over this (seemingly for religious foss reasons) are being irrational to some degree. Still, Apple is going overboard with the iPhone NDAs. It isn't the end of the world, but it is silly never-the-less.
 
Hang on...what can Apple really do to someone who breaks this "NDA" by telling the world that Apple rejected their App because it's better than Apple's built-in solution?

They've already rejected the App...it's not like the devs are getting free stuff...they are paying for the opportunity to be lucky enough to be considered for possibly being able to write an App for the iphone that Apple may, if they feel so inclined, possibly allow to maybe be put on the App Store.

If I spent my time and money developing an App and Apple rejected it, I would stop developing legitimate Apps and start working on something else. F that.

It would be one thing if a developer were just making something that already exists, but every one of these Apps that we've gotten news about has done something that isn't currently possible with the available Apps. Even "pull my finger" has more valid utility than some of the stuff you can buy on the AppStore right now. It makes me want to sell all of my Apple stuff and jump ship...
 
Bigdaddyguido said:
thank you apple.

First for stopping these never ending comment wars everytime a developer disagrees with apple, it was getting totally out of hand and none of it was helping anyone, except to fuel apple-haters fire.

Second for just watch dogging for bs apps rather than putting caps on legitamet usage. I regularly have exceeded one gig a month with all legal programs (no netshare anymore) and not even streaming tunes.
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Well said, I mean it's their App store, now we won't get all these people whinning about their app getting rejected, I mean life is full of rejections, I just got rejected by a girl yesterday, but I learned to move on, which is what these dudes should be doing.
 
Adjei said:
These are the same people who complain about the App store being filled with junk but Apple decides to control what gets in and they still complain. What a joke.
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You still haven't answered the central problem:

Why is it that those 100 calculator apps which clearly duplicate iPhone functionality are ok (as well as weather apps), but not PodCaster and/or MailWrangler?

So instead, we will start seeing EVEN MORE useless apps. Thanks Apple. Thanks.
 
iSee said:
No, there is debate. The question is how to interpret that phrase "duplicates current iPhone function."
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What I mean is, Apple says it's a rule, so it's a rule. There's no debate over that.

Yes, we can debate whether it SHOULD be a rule (I say no, btw) but the fact is, Apple said it's their rule, so it's a rule!
 
pooryou said:
You people up in arms sound like a bunch of ridiculous spoiled children who have no idea about the real world.
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Sounds like someone doesn't even know whats going on. Come back when developers stop making big applications due to apples ridiculous app approval system.
 
pooryou said:
I see nothing wrong with what Apple are doing here.

Frankly I wish they were even more restrictive about what they put in the store.
Click to expand...

The problem is the arbitrary nature of Apple's rejections and the fact that they can't possibly be doing any proper validation of submitted software: Years ago, my company developed a BizTalk adapter. In order to get it listed on Microsoft's BizTalk pages, it had to be certified for BizTalk. This process cost me over $8,000 and was incredibly intensive and involved extensive code review and thorough testing by an independent third party.

However, all the criteria we had to pass to gain certification was clearly laid out and if we'd failed validation we would have had no one to blame but ourselves (we passed as it happens)

With the App store there is no code review and probably no proper testing (it would be far too expensive and resource hungry to do that) - I'm not for a minute suggesting they apply the same criteria to a 99 cent app as Microsoft did to an enterprise application, but there has to be a middle ground where the rules are clearly understood by all parties
 
Folks, this is only for the ability to sell it on their store. Apple doesn't block distribution of your program on your own.

Do you think that a retailer should be forced to sell just anyone's merchandise. I'm thinking back to Walmart refusing to sell RU486 in their pharmacies.

Apple, like Walmart, should post it's App Store policies more clearly. Or provide some process to pre-approve concepts.
 
MacEyeDoc said:
Talk about people getting bent out of shape - Comparing Apple with Nazis? Do you know anything about history?

Apple is one of the good guys - imagine trying to buy a new computer with Microsoft XP on it: OOPS, SORRY, you can't have that anymore, even though you don't want Vista. Or think back to a few years ago and trying to buy any PC anywhere without a Windows OS - those guys (MS) are the control freaks.

But over 3000 new apps in about 75 days is not enough for you? Can you name a single other computing platform that has produced over 3000 titles in 3 months? Sure a little wheat might get thrown out with the chaff, but I'm more than glad not to have all the Porn, spam, spyware, and Viagra programs that Android will likely have. You liking Android better? - great, make your move - I hear it works great with Vista . . . .
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Cool .... Apple is selling MacBooks with 10.4 Tiger again???? .... Yeah. I thought so!
3000 Apps .... Of whom 30 I actually want/find usefull. That's a quota to be proud of. Way you go AppStore!
OtoH Podcaster would be an app I could really use. I listen to lots of podcasts. Most of them are update daily. I find it very anoying that I can only update the episodes through iTunes.
 
w00master said:
And this is a good thing... why? Please explain that to me. Imho, this type of thing doesn't benefit ANYONE. Even Apple.




Again, you never answered my questions in one of my previous posts. The problem was (in the case of Podcaster and the MailWrangler app) is that Apple wasn't consistent. Before or After.

I don't give a d*mn about the agreement. Imho, this is stuff that people should know.




Do you really side with Apple 100% like it seems like right now?




Sony felt the same way before they lost in the Rootkit debacle. Guess what, the rootkit stuff was IN the EULA. Guess what, Sony STILL LOST.




Poor example, a better example would be:

- Hey make bread and apples and we'll sell them in our store.

You make some bread and try to sell it to the store.


- Oh, sorry, we can't allow sale of this because it's Rye bread. We don't allow rye bread b/c we sell it already.

Ok, but where's it in the NDA?


- Oh, we just added it. Sorry, it duplicates functionality already.

What a minute, but you're selling green apples, but there are 100 other green apple types being sold.


- No comment.
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It's a good thing for me because I won't hear about all these whining developers crying because they got their app rejected by the bad evil Apple Inc. Life is full of rejections, move on with your life and get over it. There are many developers who have found success through the App store, just yesterday I read about a small time developer who has made 250 000 of the App store in 3 months, but instead of hearing stories like this all we hear are stories about a bunch of babies crying because their app got rejected by the evil Apple. Sometimes these dudes feel that corporations aren't run by people who have feelings, if the shoe was on the other foot they wouldn't like it.

Apple wasn't consistent, when did they say anything about consistency. It's up to their discretion what gets allowed in their store. Some of y'all believe we live in a perfect world where everything goes perfect. Why are there some med students who have higher grades and higher scores on their MCAT but get rejected for those who's scores are higher, where is the consistency in that. Life is not fair.

I don't side with Apple 100 % of the time, I'm just sick of all these crybabies who think that everything should go in their favour all the time and that corporations are big evil entities.

All those examples that you gave are valid, and it happens in the real world, all the time.
 
FakeWozniak said:
Folks, this is only for the ability to sell it on their store. Apple doesn't block distribution of your program on your own.
.
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Er, yes they do - the only way to get apps onto the iPhone (except by Jailbreaking with is against the iPhone License Agreement and potentially breaks your warranty) is through the app store. Also, it's against the terms of the SDK license agreement to distribute apps outside of the App Store. That's why there is such an outcry when Apple reject an app: If they reject it you have nowhere to go
 
MacEyeDoc said:
Talk about people getting bent out of shape - Comparing Apple with Nazis? Do you know anything about history?

Apple is one of the good guys - imagine trying to buy a new computer with Microsoft XP on it: OOPS, SORRY, you can't have that anymore, even though you don't want Vista. Or think back to a few years ago and trying to buy any PC anywhere without a Windows OS - those guys (MS) are the control freaks.

But over 3000 new apps in about 75 days is not enough for you? Can you name a single other computing platform that has produced over 3000 titles in 3 months? Sure a little wheat might get thrown out with the chaff, but I'm more than glad not to have all the Porn, spam, spyware, and Viagra programs that Android will likely have. You liking Android better? - great, make your move - I hear it works great with Vista . . . .
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That is Microsoft's decision and how they want their business to run. If you don't like it, there are other options.
 
pooryou said:
You people up in arms sound like a bunch of ridiculous spoiled children who have no idea about the real world.
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Well said, it's like people here think we live in some perfect world where everybody is all happy and everything works according to plan and you everybody gets whatever they want.
 
FakeWozniak said:
Folks, this is only for the ability to sell it on their store. Apple doesn't block distribution of your program on your own.
Click to expand...

Um yes they do. You can't distribute an App to a wide audience on your own (not without jailbreaking).

arn
 
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