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Rogue Amoeba Retreats from iPhone Development Over App Store Policies
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I'm just a regular iPhone user...not a developer. I just want my phone work. And I want the apps to be fully vetted and tested before they are available for download. RA's action doesn't make me dislike the iPhone, Mac computers, or Apple. In fact, quite the opposite. It makes RA look childish. I say...good riddance. Oh, and I'm also now less likely to purchase other software from RA. Just sayin'
Then you're missing out. RA is a very highly regarded Mac developer.
And apple's actions here don't improve quality - they reduce it,
That's a shame, Mike, because RA's mac-based apps are fantastic. I use them all the time at the small community radio station I volunteer at. I admittedly have not tried their iphone app.
Like you, I am also not a developer, just an end user. And as an end user, Apple's mishandled control of the gatekeeper role is incredibly frustrating. As an end user, if a program I'm using has a bug that can impinge on my ability to use it, I like to have a responsive system that fixes that bug. A responsive developer is important, but so is a responsive gatekeeper, if that role exists. Apple has repeatedly shown themselves to be a failure point in a system of their own devising.
To a certain extent the issue isn't even if RA's use of these images was in violation of the SDK (though, of course that is a big issue), but, again as an end user, how is the system that's in place functioning to resolve the issues that matter to the common customer of the developer and Apple? Unfortunately there are very visible breakdowns in the process and I want to see those treated as serious bugs and fixed accordingly.
HOW IS IT A GOOD THING FOR THE CONSUMER THAT THEY STOP DEVELOPING APPS FOR THE IPHONE?
Did you even bother reading the goddamn article? Apple rejected the app because RA implemented the displaying of the remote device in the exact same way Apple does in their remote App!
Work for Apple App Review
You are all very funny for the most part. I'm not even sure how many of you actually develop apps for the iPhone, but it seems like you would all fit quite well working for Apple's App Review team in prolonging the process and stifling developers. I think it's pretty hilarious how many of you just jump and support Apple. If Apple obeyed rules from day one, they would never have become the innovative company they are today. The point is, any developer creating an application for the iPhone should be encouraged and motivated to develop for a great and unique platform. The other side (Apple) is obviously being very difficult to work with and ambiguous with many rejections and comments. With a lack of communication, you'll get adversity from both sides. I just wish most of you would wake up, stop bowing to Apple and realize that they have more control over making the App Review process WORK for the long-term than the developers do. I hope they stick with thinking different and start to make great changes to the App Review process.
You are all very funny for the most part. I'm not even sure how many of you actually develop apps for the iPhone, but it seems like you would all fit quite well working for Apple's App Review team in prolonging the process and stifling developers. I think it's pretty hilarious how many of you just jump and support Apple. If Apple obeyed rules from day one, they would never have become the innovative company they are today. The point is, any developer creating an application for the iPhone should be encouraged and motivated to develop for a great and unique platform. The other side (Apple) is obviously being very difficult to work with and ambiguous with many rejections and comments. With a lack of communication, you'll get adversity from both sides. I just wish most of you would wake up, stop bowing to Apple and realize that they have more control over making the App Review process WORK for the long-term than the developers do. I hope they stick with thinking different and start to make great changes to the App Review process.
Too many apps and updates - appstore is chaos.
I think that Apple doesn't have resources for decent quality review process.
App store works in a such way, that all underdog app developers want to update their apps as often as possible. A new update brings an app to the first page in its category, sorted by date (for a day or 2)
Apple does not have guts or desire to charge for reviews, and all this mess goes on. They "review" apps very formally, and I suspect that this is outsourced to India.
If Apple wants to make this right, they should include 10 or 20 reviews into the annual $100 developer fee, and charge $20-$50 for each additional review. That would greatly reduce the number of updates, and increase the quality of reviews.
I myself have several apps in the appstore, and my apps and updates were also rejected many times for formal reasons, which were totally stupid in the context of my apps.
And what's also funny, Apple suddenly rejected my critical update with a bug fix because of a piece of graphic that already was in my app for 6 months
I think that Apple doesn't have resources for decent quality review process.
App store works in a such way, that all underdog app developers want to update their apps as often as possible. A new update brings an app to the first page in its category, sorted by date (for a day or 2)
Apple does not have guts or desire to charge for reviews, and all this mess goes on. They "review" apps very formally, and I suspect that this is outsourced to India.
If Apple wants to make this right, they should include 10 or 20 reviews into the annual $100 developer fee, and charge $20-$50 for each additional review. That would greatly reduce the number of updates, and increase the quality of reviews.
I myself have several apps in the appstore, and my apps and updates were also rejected many times for formal reasons, which were totally stupid in the context of my apps.
And what's also funny, Apple suddenly rejected my critical update with a bug fix because of a piece of graphic that already was in my app for 6 months
Yes, but only for Apple, because they own the infrastructure. We still haven't heard of a company that can really make a living with software for the iPhone/iPod Touch platform. So far, it's all just hype and even though there are hundreds of thousands of apps distributed through the AppStore, the only winner at this point in time is Apple.
And to be honest, from a customer's perspective, I do hope that that the AppStore concept will fail. The AppStore as it is manifest a distribution monopoly for Apple, and monopolies -always- hurt the customer and prevent innovation. Imagine you could only obtain Mac application through the AppStore with similar rules: There wouldn't be a Firefox for the Mac because it competes with Apple's Safari. There wouldn't be an Adobe Lightroom for the Mac because it competes with Apple's Aperture. There wouldn't be any DVD or CD ripping software for the Mac because those apps could hurt Apple's iTunes sales. There probably wouldn't even be a Microsoft Office anymore because it competes with Apple's (inferior) iWork Suite. And, worst of all, all software authors would be FORCED to distribute their apps through the AppStore which would impose an Apple distribution tax on their software. As a result, they would all run away and write their apps for Windows instead. And Apple probably wouldn't even care because most of their customers are Internet-surfing consumers anyway who don't need much more than Safari, Mail and iLife to play with their photos and iPods.
Sorry, but I disagree. Personally, it seems to me that the extreme fanboys have their fingers in their ears. I completely understand Apple's need to protect their trademarks and copyrights. However, in this case, I do not agree that Rogue Amoeba did ANY of this.
Again, to quote Gruber:
"the Airfoil Speakers Touch iPhone app does not contain any of these images. It contains no pictures of Apple computers. It contains no icons of Apple applications. It displays these images after they are sent across the network by Airfoil for Mac. Airfoil for Mac reads these images using public official Mac OS X APIs. I.e. Airfoil Speakers Touch can only show a picture of the Mac it is connected to because the image is sent from the Mac it is connected to."
To continue on... these apologies and justification has been going on for a LONG time now on. Normally, I side with Apple. However, I'm sick and tired of people calling us "whiners" or continually try to justify "Apple's actions." I love Apple, but imho I am a CONSUMER first before I am a fan. Constantly hurting top tier developers hurts me as a consumer, because it potentially restricts the type of killer apps that can come out of the amazing iPhone platform. All I'm asking is for Apple to ease up a bit. Give these developers room to thrive.
w00master
Apple's walled garden policy doesn't bring security to end user or has failed at that. Just take a look at Storm8 apps (dev is sued / spy ware). However, it allows Apple to full fill its destiny of being the big brother like in their 1984 spot... wait, wasn't it meant to be the other way around... hell, just tell me who will be the girl with that sledge hammer cause I'm sure it ain't Apple...
I think that's because they are overwhelmed with testing all those fart apps and pointless updates. As a cell phone user, I want to be sure that all apps on my phone have been thoroughly tested and are clean. I cannot test them, and even if I could, I don't have time for that. Relying on other people's reviews is naive - bit torrents are filled with viruses and spy-ware, and have tons of positive reviews. I've been waiting for more than a year for Apple to rise the plank and reject trash apps, and discourage pointless updates financially (making the developers pay for each submission) - Apple has a different idea. Whatever their idea is, I don't think that the results are good for iPhone users.
Im not sure if anyones mentioned it yet, but Rogue Amoeba has posted an update that explicitly explains the API calls and whats actually going on. Its not just Apples icons that are in play here.
None of these icons are shipped in our apps
On the iPhone side, Airfoil Speakers Touch just displays a generic album art image that comes from Airfoil. On the Airfoil side, both the Mac image and the application icon are fetched using public Cocoa APIs.
The call we use to fetch the computer image is [NSImage imageNamed: NSImageNameComputer]. Behind the scenes, the system has a store of machine icons stored away in the /System directory, and matches up your computers model identifier with their artwork to return an icon.
The call we use to get the target applications icon is -[NSWorkspace iconForFile:], which can be used to obtain the icon for any file on the system. Applications such as the Finder would use this call to display the icons of files and applications on the hard drive when browsing its contents.
The code is not specifically designed to send Apples icons
The code is fully generic and simply sends the icon of whatever application the user chooses on the Mac side. Apple applications are popular audio sources for Airfoil, but its entirely possible to send third-party applications like Firefox, Spotify, Last.fm, our own Pulsar, and others, and many users do just that.
http://www.rogueamoeba.com/utm/2009/11/13/airfoil-speakers-touch-correcting-misconceptions/#comments
None of these icons are shipped in our apps
On the iPhone side, Airfoil Speakers Touch just displays a generic album art image that comes from Airfoil. On the Airfoil side, both the Mac image and the application icon are fetched using public Cocoa APIs.
The call we use to fetch the computer image is [NSImage imageNamed: NSImageNameComputer]. Behind the scenes, the system has a store of machine icons stored away in the /System directory, and matches up your computers model identifier with their artwork to return an icon.
The call we use to get the target applications icon is -[NSWorkspace iconForFile:], which can be used to obtain the icon for any file on the system. Applications such as the Finder would use this call to display the icons of files and applications on the hard drive when browsing its contents.
The code is not specifically designed to send Apples icons
The code is fully generic and simply sends the icon of whatever application the user chooses on the Mac side. Apple applications are popular audio sources for Airfoil, but its entirely possible to send third-party applications like Firefox, Spotify, Last.fm, our own Pulsar, and others, and many users do just that.
http://www.rogueamoeba.com/utm/2009/11/13/airfoil-speakers-touch-correcting-misconceptions/#comments
To quote Mugatu from Zoolander:
Really? RA used Apple Dev tools and the App Store folks put up a fight for 3 months. RA didn't break any rules and Apple doesn't have a cohesive process. RA walked away over Apple's policy conflicts, and people are defending Apple. Seriously, this behavior is still continuing at Apple, and it needs to change.
My head hurts, I'm going to go lay down...
Really? RA used Apple Dev tools and the App Store folks put up a fight for 3 months. RA didn't break any rules and Apple doesn't have a cohesive process. RA walked away over Apple's policy conflicts, and people are defending Apple. Seriously, this behavior is still continuing at Apple, and it needs to change.
My head hurts, I'm going to go lay down...
Blackberry Bold
When the iPhone 3G was first released, I rushed out and bought one. A year down the line, I gave it to a family member and switched to a Blackberry Bold.
I absolutely love the thoughtful design that goes into all Apple products, I own an Apple desktop, an Apple laptop, an Apple iPod and various other Apple paraphernalia. However, I didn't gel with the crippled iPhone and am much happier with my Blackberry.
It has 75% of the fun features of the iPhone and a slew of others that make it a smarter choice - background apps, Google Latitude running all the time, emails arriving instantly, uncapped international data roaming for £20 extra a month on o2 amongst many others - and being able to type an entire email whilst you walk!
Due to RIM not having a stranglehold over the device's application pool (unlike Apple), there are a lot of fugly applications available, but also a lot of great ones. If you're starting out with the Blackberry, I highly recommend Ubertwitter, BeWeather, Google Sync, Facebook and the Flickr Uploader as high quality apps.
When the iPhone 3G was first released, I rushed out and bought one. A year down the line, I gave it to a family member and switched to a Blackberry Bold.
I absolutely love the thoughtful design that goes into all Apple products, I own an Apple desktop, an Apple laptop, an Apple iPod and various other Apple paraphernalia. However, I didn't gel with the crippled iPhone and am much happier with my Blackberry.
It has 75% of the fun features of the iPhone and a slew of others that make it a smarter choice - background apps, Google Latitude running all the time, emails arriving instantly, uncapped international data roaming for £20 extra a month on o2 amongst many others - and being able to type an entire email whilst you walk!
Due to RIM not having a stranglehold over the device's application pool (unlike Apple), there are a lot of fugly applications available, but also a lot of great ones. If you're starting out with the Blackberry, I highly recommend Ubertwitter, BeWeather, Google Sync, Facebook and the Flickr Uploader as high quality apps.
I have actually heard of lots of companies making very good money since the app store has been released, plenty of small devs that the app store has changed their lives as well as big companies making millions already.
I actually think RA should have worked a little harder with apple to address their frustrations instead of just leaving the app store to make a statement and in the end are only hurting themselves.
Indeed, I hope Apple listens and apologizes etc. to get Rogue Amoeba back.
Come on Apple!
So, if I associate an image with music or a movie on my Mac, Apple assumes it's OK for them to display it on my Apple TV? What about my copyrighted photos in iPhoto? I didn't give Apple the right to copy them to my iPhone.
Oh wait, it's my Mac and it's my iPhone and it's my Apple TV. Apple needs to stay out of MY business and allow me to make fair use of my content.
Oh wait, it's my Mac and it's my iPhone and it's my Apple TV. Apple needs to stay out of MY business and allow me to make fair use of my content.
Boom:
http://twitter.com/kickingbear/status/5803909520
To quote:
"Good question raised by Guy English: Why is it OK for the new Star Wars: Trench Run iPhone game to include this image of an iPhone, when many other apps, like for example Instapaper, have been rejected for including original icon artwork that merely resembles an iPhone?"
Boom. So what now apologists?
w00master
http://twitter.com/kickingbear/status/5803909520
To quote:
"Good question raised by Guy English: Why is it OK for the new Star Wars: Trench Run iPhone game to include this image of an iPhone, when many other apps, like for example Instapaper, have been rejected for including original icon artwork that merely resembles an iPhone?"
Boom. So what now apologists?
w00master
I had an app rejected because the icon was a cartoon of the presidential seal where the eagle, in one claw, was holding an iphone-looking phone, which I drew myself, and which was probably 12 pixels x 6 pixels or so in size (in an overall icon that was 57px x 57px.)
But apparently including a 3/4 scale photo of an iphone is fine.
Whatever.
But apparently including a 3/4 scale photo of an iphone is fine.
Whatever.