Facebook iPhone Dev Quits Project Over Apple Tyranny

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/11/joe-hewitt-developer-of-facebooks-massively-popular-iphone-app-quits-the-project/

by vulpes • 17 years ago

127 60 17 years ago

He's also the developer behind the three20 project which Apple has recently been rejecting apps using three20 because it was supposedly using private APIs.

I can see how that can be frustrating to put in all that work in to develop a very valuable and powerful library and with the flick of a switch Apple makes your work almost useless.

jzting• 17 years ago

more information regarding app store rejections: http://groups.google.com/group/three20/browse_thread/thread/...

app store safe fork: http://github.com/uprise78/three20-P31

grinich• 17 years ago

Here his announcement to the Three20 Google Group.

http://groups.google.com/group/three20/msg/9ab6b6345775dc45

evgen2• 17 years ago

I find the irony of a developer working for one of the biggest walled gardens on the internet complaining about walls around someone else's garden to be very deep into the pot/kettle/black territory...

madair7• 17 years ago

Ummm, Facebook's wall is quite a bit less ominous than Apple's. You may want to return that irony to the store, they cheated you and watered it down.

naz• 17 years ago

Collecting intimate personal details and selling it to advertisers is less ominous than screening apps to ensure quality?

evgen2• 17 years ago

The walls are still there. Facebook is still a roach motel for data and now they are going to be spanking platform developers whose apps are proving to be detrimental to Facebook's reputation and user experience. Same tune, different band.

natrius• 17 years ago

Describe a social network with user-friendly privacy controls that doesn't fall under your definition of "walled garden".

tedunangst• 17 years ago

One with a link that says "Click here to download all your data."

akamaka• 17 years ago

Agreed. It rings even more hollow given the recent revelation about widespread scams in Facebook apps.

If his company was doing as good a job at protecting users as Apple had, I'd be more inclined to listen to him. The position he's taken is a purely self-interested one, asking for more developer freedom without even acknowledging the difficult challenge Apple faces, and without admitting that maybe his company could learn something from them.

davidw• 17 years ago

Recall that you pay nothing to use facebook, whereas with an iPhone, something that you physically own, you're not even really allowed to do as you please with it.

amichail• 17 years ago

Aside from obvious quality benefits, the review process is a good thing because it results in users having more trust in apps developed by relatively unknown developers/companies.

madair7• 17 years ago

I'm not sure all of us see the quality benefits quite so obviously. Are you implying that dictionaries with censored words are better quality?

teej• 17 years ago

I challenge you to find a popular dicionary that isn't carefully curated. You can't just call up Webster and get a word added to the dictionary, there's a vetting process it has to go through.

orangecat• 17 years ago

Apple having a repository of approved apps is fine. Denying the ability to run other apps isn't.

wmeredith• 17 years ago

This is really too bad. I use Facebook via the iPhone app more than the web interface. I can't wait to see what he does next.

bkbleikamp• 17 years ago

The iPhone app is continuing, if it sucks he can always walk over to the desk of whoever is working on it and tell them why it sucks :)

numair2• 17 years ago

You assume he works in the office...

jsz0• 17 years ago

Ideology in the work place is tricky. It's something most people should be very careful about. Most of us cannot opt out of a platform/technology we dislike personally. Even if you can it may be hard to rationalize their existence when you deposit your paycheck. I hope it works out for him.

jimmybot• 17 years ago

Nice, I literally read "philosophy" as "ideology" as well:

"however I am [ideologically] opposed to the existence of their review process."

(I wouldn't take ideology in necessarily a negative way)

indranil2• 17 years ago

I can't believe that it's been a year and Apple still has the weird ass review process!

colbyolson• 17 years ago

I personally dont find the app very well made. Interesting outcome for the developer nonetheless.

ivankirigin5• 17 years ago

It is the most popular free iphone app. That wouldn't be the case if it weren't well made.

What don't you like?

allenbrunson• 17 years ago

I use the facebook iPhone app quite a lot, and I don't like it either, so I'll take a stab at it.

I never know what I'm looking at. The array of controls changes every time you move from one screen to the next, so I'm never sure where I am.

And that button up in the right hand corner, the one that usually says "News Feed?" Say I'm trying to switch to something else, but all of a sudden the selector control stops working, because the app is busy trying to prefetch stuff for some selector option I didn't plan on choosing, I just stopped on that one temporarily. Then, when the control becomes responsive again, it's impossible not to overshoot, because now it's processing a bunch of user interface events that happened while it was ignoring me.

Maybe part of the problem is that facebook itself is confusing. I don't really have any idea what the difference between "News Feed" and "Status Updates" is, and I'm not terribly interested in finding out, because the site will probably change to something else altogether in a month or two.

Yeah, I have to admit, I just don't like facebook very much either. But everybody I know is there, and it's pretty, so here we are.

scottjackson• 17 years ago

> It is the most popular free iphone app. That wouldn't be the case if it weren't well made.

I believe iFart was fairly popular for a time (where popular is defined as "downloaded many times"), and it even cost money, putting a financial barrier to entry in front of potential users. Does that make iFart a well-made app though? I don't think so (though maybe you or others do).

I think the Facebook app's popularity just comes from the popularity of Facebook the service.

minsight• 17 years ago

There is a tremendous gulf between popularity and quality. If you'd like an illustration, go turn on a radio.

nailer2• 17 years ago

If he'd like to work on a much more open app platform (where market update time is less than 24 hours) Facebook's Android app needs some love.

weegee• 17 years ago

crybaby

marram• 17 years ago

Maybe he just burnt-out and wants to move on to something else?

jasongullickson• 17 years ago

Smartphones, PDA's and other mobile-computing-platforms have been around for years (more than a decade). Almost all of them have provided third-party developers with a means of producing software for the platform. While some were more successful in this regard than others, none of them enjoyed the third-party-developer support that the iPhone now has, whether you measure that by number, quality or market share.

What's the difference? Were these other platforms made from inferior technology, relative to the state-of-the-art at the time? Did they have inferior marketing? Was cost-of-entry too high for most developers?

The app store approval process is one of the major differences between the iPhone and all preceding platforms. Is this just a coincidence?

If you find Apple's process unacceptable there are many (ie, all) other platforms that offer similar devices on which to distribute your work without oversight by their creators. If you want to develop for a successful platform then you'll need to learn to appreciate the traits that make it so, and while not perfect, the App Store approval process is a key factor in that success.

dpapathanasiou• 17 years ago

The TC boys need a sense of perspective; while the App Store review process is terrible, it doesn't come close to being "tyranny".

maukdaddy• 17 years ago

Came here to say the same thing. Author needs to go live somewhere where they can experience true tyranny.

pavlov• 17 years ago

Relax -- it's just a metaphor. The iTunes App Store may not be under tyranny, but that's like saying it's not an ecosystem because binaries are nothing like living creatures (nor is it a platform because it's not a flat physical object, etc. ad absurdum).

Facebook iPhone Dev Quits Project Over Apple Tyranny

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