Apple's Mistake

by EliAndrewC • 17 years ago

723 269 17 years ago

charlesju• 17 years ago

1. While I agree with most developers that Apple has room for improvement, I think we should take a step back and realize how much of an improvement the iPhone has made mobile developers from a couple of years ago when the carriers were in charge of mobile applications.

2. I think the solution to the iPhone fiasco should be for Apple to hire more reviewers and allow developers to pay more money so that they can buy a faster turnaround time. It doesn't make sense for me to wait 2-3 weeks for another shot at the review process because I placed a bad keyword in the description.

jgrahamc• 17 years ago

I strongly disagree with your conclusion. Both smack of 'religious' thinking. Your point 1 is essentially 'be thankful to the merciful god who has ended the drought'. Your point 2 doesn't solve the problem, it just throws more priests at it.

The solution is to open the platform to all developers. Imagine if Microsoft had vetted every DOS and Windows app, or if we had to submit Linux apps to Linus for review.

dasil0033• 17 years ago

Yes, PG makes the point very well. Apple thinks of themselves as ensuring quality, when in reality they are having the exact opposite effect.

What they need to do is just let all apps through, and make it easy for customers to report problems, and then Apple can proactively pull apps that have too many problems. They could do that at half the cost and have much better overall quality, to say nothing of the developer good will.

pohl2• 17 years ago

Imagine if Microsoft had vetted every DOS and Windows app

Or, hold constant that Microsoft didn't vet DOS/Windows apps and imagine that every DOS/Windows machine had access to a cellular network owned by a some other company.

I agree that the review process is completely broken, but I don't think the solution is as easy as having no controls whatsoever.

allenp• 17 years ago

I keep seeing this notion of opening the platform brought up here. I'm having a hard time visualizing how this works out.

Does Apple continue the overhead/cost of the app store? Do they have a giant disclaimer that they do not support or condone the applications, take no responsibility for any damages, etc? Do they still act as the payment gateway? How does this impact Apple's brand and the consumer trust of the product?

Why is it that mobile phones with open app development have not taken off even with years and years of head start?

What is Apple's incentive to do this? Can they make money on a phone that allows this sort of development?

I really think there is a lot more to it than just "open it up the world deserves to be free" and we're not talking about it. Why is that?

janm• 17 years ago

> Imagine if Microsoft had vetted every DOS and Windows app

We associate the BSOD with Microsoft software. However, in the majority of cases, the bug is in someone else's code or is a hardware problem. These days it drivers, but in early Windows (pre-NT), applications could cause the system to die.

I suspect that Apple are vetting to avoid bad apps from tainting the perception of the platform. The platform is what they care about, "like Google cares about search".

If an app is buggy and fixes or new features don't turn up the end-user blames the app vendor. If the device crashes, the end-user blames the platform vendor. Those things can stick; witness how the BSOD has influenced perception of the Microsoft platform.

Avoiding that is a reasonable thing for Apple to want to do. However, I agree that the way they are doing it is probably counterproductive.

Zak• 17 years ago

Your first point is a bit like saying we should take a step back and be glad we're only being imprisoned instead of being imprisoned and beaten. Perhaps we should be happy about any improvements, but the situation still isn't very good. Android and Maemo both treat developers much better, and while I suspect Maemo will remain a niche platform, Android most certainly will not.

antirez3• 17 years ago

1. I'eve mixed feelings about that. The idea of a store was great because it was a great marketplace without tricks to get inside, as it's just a simple as paying 100$ (and lose two weeks understanding how the whole process works...).

But the review process is not the part of the App Store that made it successful, nor the fact the applications are so limited and can't use APIs outside a strict list.

2. This is not something you can fix with more reviewers... it's not just a matter of time, but there no way to create an objective review system, at least if you don't limit the review process to macroscopic stuff like "the app does not work" or "there is a huge disney logo", but in big companies you can't do things like this. If you have got the review process then even a 3 pixel logo of something remotely copyrighted will stop the process.

Also, the more reviewers you need, the less qualified you get, and it requires to be very sensible to handle well the review process. I don't think this can work. Jeff FooBar will simply read all the rules and apply them without the ability to figure if it's really applicable in this particular case. So like it happened recently if there is a program to connect to your mac, and it shows an icon accordingly to the model of mac detected, and there is a 10x20 pixel mac os x default aurora background, he will stop the application.

wvenable6• 17 years ago

1. A couple of years ago, I had a Windows Mobile phone and tonnes of applications. While it wasn't a great phone, it was a still a pretty good computing platform. A couple of years before that, I had an SE smartphone running Symbian which had fewer apps but was still open (I even developed a few). For smartphones, carriers were no more in charge of mobile applications then as they are now. In fact, in Apple's case, the carrier (AT&T) has more control than they do on blackberries or WinMo phones.

2. The review process is almost exponential, every week you have more apps and updates to all the existing apps. Maybe Apple is hiring more reviewers; they might have to just to keep up. Having a paid review tier just means that big developers get a 1 day turn around and indy developers get the left overs.

derefr• 17 years ago

The App Store is only viable because Apple is protecting it as a crown jewel loss-leader. If the Store were spun off into a separate company (not a subsidiary) that had to be profitable on its own, I can imagine the policies changing for the better rather quickly.

mcormier• 17 years ago

A separate company would probably want a higher percentage of sales too though.

boucher3• 17 years ago

Unlikely. 30% is already pretty high, probably more than any startup would have been able to credibly command. It's another instance of the lack of choice allowing Apple to dictate whatever terms they like, however unfavorable they may be.

boucher3• 17 years ago

I don't think it's a protection thing, and loss-leader isn't entirely fair. The App Store makes money, there's no question about that. It's just that the profits from the hardware make the App Store money irrelevant. Apple almost certainly makes more money from the Google Searches in Safari (maybe even just in MobileSafari) then they do from the App Store, figures in the hundreds of millions. Compare that to the iPhone profits which are in the billions already.

antirez3• 17 years ago

Paul captured my whole feeling about the App Store matter, especially about buying Apple products. Now I feel like I'm doing something wrong. I still like the products but I no longer like the company.

Today my small team of developers submitted the first "toy" we released just to test how the approval process works. Let's see if we'll have some bad experience as well.

catweasel2• 17 years ago

Faustian bargain? Assholes? Evil? .. really, if this is the most serious accusation of "evil" one can level at Apple then it isn't really going to affect my buying decisions. It's not like they're dealing in small arms or manufacturing cluster bombs. If you step back and think about it all Apple is doing is stuffing up their own app store, which can be classified as monumentally stupid and short sighted but not really "evil".

catweasel2• 17 years ago

General Electric, now there's a company that's "evil". http://www.google.com/search?q=%22general+electric%22+%2Bevi...

Do you see my point? To anybody outside the app development community it's going to look a little bit "self important" for developers to be using such strong language and talking of boycotts over something most folks would agree is not evil. I agree what Apple is doing is stupid, in the long term the app store is going to be polluted with crappy apps and they're approval backlog is going to be rather daunting. I think strong lobbying from the development community is in order, but it takes conscious and deliberate inhumanity for me to label someone "evil".

jshen• 17 years ago

I think it's reasonable to make such a charge if "their app store" is in effect "The App Store". This is like saying that it's not evil to remove freedom of speech in America. I mean, it's only stuffing up "their country".

antirez3• 17 years ago

Sorry but I believe in a religious way that an hardware vendor should not have the power to enforce what software can run into a device. Like a bike vendor can't force you to only use your bike in a limited number of streets.

b-man• 17 years ago

My vote for a truly free hand-held platform is the n900[1].

It's beautiful, clean and comes with with Debian based distro, Maemo.

My opinions about apple were never positive, probably because I'm only 25 and did not program in the 80's. I've only saw apple as a manufacturer of shiny, well designed rich boy toys, but that is probably because I live in Brazil, where only rich people have it and they think they are 'computer people' because of it.

I was always more influenced by the open source community, and apple's record is far from shiny on that aspect.

My 2 cents.

[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nokia_N900

kirse2• 17 years ago

I've got this baby on preorder, can't wait to see if Maemo lives up to the hype.

Personally I've never been an iPhone fan either purely because you can get phones with far, far better technology for the same price. iPhone wins hands down in UI right now (I still hate touchscreen-only phones though), but that really won't be an issue for long with Nokia/Samsung/SE/HTC working double time to improve their OSes.

zyb09• 17 years ago

You know on BlackBerry AppWorld each submission of an update costs you $20 AND goes through a lengthy approval process. (you need to purchase 10 submissions for $200 at a time). Oh there's a bug in my app? I could fix it in 5 minutes, but too bad..

sfwc• 17 years ago

There's a fundamental difference between BlackBerry and iPhone here, though: You don't have to use BlackBerry AppWorld if you don't want to, you can make your application available directly from your own website. Furthermore, AppWorld only takes a 20% cut: I think getting another 10% of the gross revenue (over what the App Store charges) should be worth a flat $20 administration fee to you.

akc• 17 years ago

Speaking from personal experience, their approval process is not lengthy at all. On their site they say 8-10 business days and sure enough I got approved on day 8.

I was at the BB Dev Con last week and their tech lead explained the approval process: "they load it, make sure it doesn't crash the phone, then sign off on it."

larsberg• 17 years ago

My biggest problem is that it's a half-assed review process. Neither is it an open platform nor is it a relatively clear and thorough review process like you get on the gaming device platforms (Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony).

I made three applications (only one that was popular - WiFinder) for the AppStore. Every time I interacted with reviewers, either by e-mail or phone, I got the feeling they had no idea what they had signed up for, and had not thought out beforehand how to deliver on the promise of only having quality applications in the AppStore. Which is a shame because it's an old problem.

tokenadult• 17 years ago

Y Combinator RFS 5: Development on Handhelds, mentioned in the submitted article:

http://ycombinator.com/rfs5.html

mattyb• 17 years ago

And submitted here:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=950781

gvb• 17 years ago

...and the list http://ycombinator.com/rfs.html (which needs to be updated to add RFS 5).

charltones• 17 years ago

Some Nokia devices have a TV out facility that lets you see the screen output on an attached TV. Coupled with a Bluetooth keyboard you have the beginnings (I know it isn't perfect) of an acceptable input and output arrangement. Then take a text editor and something like Python for Series 60 and voila - a mobile development device. I've already got Putty (SSH) running on my phone, so I can do server side development via that.

kirse2• 17 years ago

Yea, my Nokia N95 (built in 2007) has this... it works perfectly for showing videos, etc. Mobile mfgs. are starting to build 720p HD-ready devices (ala Samsung Omnia i8910) but there's still tons of bugs and it's all very beta. Give it 2 years and we'll have phones outputting quality 720p, they're already recording at that resolution. With the latest tech like Qualcomm's Snapdragon (1ghz chip) on phones like the HTC HD2, I wouldn't be surprised if you could get some decent dev-work out of it.

edw519• 17 years ago

A customer recently asked me to look into a program that used to run in 5 minutes but now took 1 to 4 hours. It's used by thousands of people all over the world all day long.

It iterated through an array doing 3 SQL SELECTs against non-indexed files for each element. There used to be about 50 elements in the array; now there were more than 5000. I rewrote the whole thing in one day to do a total of 4 SELECTs and run in 12 seconds.

But it took 6 days to get through QA (while the users continued to suffer). QA's biggest complaint? I indented 4 spaces instead of the (unpublished) standard of 5 spaces.

Of all the things I have to deal with, nothing pisses me off more. Software QA is becoming more and more like TSA security at the airport: illogical, and obviously so. Last year, flagrantly unacceptable code was promoted without question while its replacement was held up on a meaningless detail.

I got the feeling from the programmer's quotes in this essay that the same thing is happening at the app store.

We programmers are a funny lot. Make us struggle for business or technical reasons and we adapt beautifully. Make us struggle for something stupid and we just get pissed off and do something else. What a pity.

cschep• 17 years ago

Five spaces?! Ludicrous.

lt3• 17 years ago

Not that the indentation complaints are valid, but the fix should definitely go through QA while the users continue to suffer. While I'm sure it works on the developer machine, it is much better to have a program that takes a long time and works right than for it to give incorrect results to users, or make a different part of the application stop working.

If the feature was really critical and important, QA should find a way to expedite the verification, but it should never be skipped in order to ship the fix faster.

jrockway2• 17 years ago

I've seen lots of software that's gone through QA but didn't work. Ever use Microsoft Windows?

QA is important, but determining how many spaces a line of code is indented is not QA. That is a code review, which is important, but not critical. There should be automated acceptance tests, so that new releases can be shipped immediately. (It's also worth noting that stuff like indenting, naming conventions, etc. can be automatically checked at checkin time. See Perl::Critic, for example.)

If there is some feature or corner case that the users test but isn't in the acceptance test suite... well... yeah, the software is going to be unreliable. So don't do that. Write a test.

(I worked somewhere with a QA department once. They didn't like it when the programmers wrote tests, because they felt their job would be threatened. It was true, so we were asked to only write unit tests; no "integration" or "acceptance" tests. I quit a few weeks later.)

rapind2• 17 years ago

That's only true some times. Unless the data is mission critical, or you introduce a really major bug, the company in question could be losing customer's and / or significant revenue due to the slow down of the application.

I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just saying there's no hard rule on this. I've had to push code many many times without any outside testing and while occasionally it's been detrimental (but fixed quick, because I didn't have to go through QA), the large majority of times has been beneficial.

A large and formal QA process can kill a product / project just a quickly as cowboy code.

Periodic• 17 years ago

QA is basically your testing framework. It's there to do all the tests to make sure the software actually does what you say it does.

No developer is good at testing their own code because deep down no developer wants to break the code they just lovingly crafted.

Xichekolas• 17 years ago

I find when this stuff happens with QA teams, it's almost always a case of protecting turf.

When no one is looking (the first, buggy, submission is made), they will do the minimum necessary and approve it, often quickly.

Then, when everything goes to hell, all eyes are on them. The developers submit a fix with the note "this needs to be approved ASAP to put out fires"... the QA person resents being told what to do, and suddenly feels compelled to justify his job by finding anything and everything that could possibly be considered 'wrong'. There is also the issue that things like indentation are more visibly 'wrong' than obscure bugs that only show up in production environments due to the way database replication is set up.

Now, I'm not saying all QA people are like this. I've worked with some downright awesome QA people before. But awesome QA people don't reject things for spite, and usually don't stay in QA long before moving up.

brown9-2• 17 years ago

This might be a controversial opinion, but does anyone else think that if the QA team is reading your source code then you are doing QA wrong?

Or do you really mean "held up by code review" when you say "get through QA"?

emmett• 17 years ago

No, at some companies people really do have the QA department ensure "code quality". After all, it's Quality Assurance, so they must know about code Quality!

petenixey2• 17 years ago

The value of QA is a very delicate balance:

Value - stuff should work after it's been through them

Costs that I've seen - more stuff doesn't get done/fixed because of the delay time associated with QA - things don't get scheduled because of lack of QA bandwidth - additional specifications required in order to go through QA - programmers / PMs worry less about catching bugs because they feel it'll come back from QA

When is it better to QA something rather than just measure when it's broken? Everything we do goes through QA but I'm sure most of it is a net loss.

Anyone have a good way of knowing what to QA and what to simply monitor?

bumblebird4• 17 years ago

Agreed. The last company I worked at we had some similar idiocy.

We had a backend process that connected out to a network and did some things. However, the network it connected to changed their protocol, so our backend process was broken - didn't do anything - completely non functional.

We created a fix, but had to wait for it to go through QA for ages. What's the worst that could happen? It doesn't do anything like the current version? It wasn't even a massive update. Maddening.

lt3• 17 years ago

The worst? Data Loss, or corruption, which is worse than "not working".

Likewise, more likely it could just not work well, be buggy and require several updates to get it right, burning out your team's (or your company's) image with the customer. Before you deployed your fix, it's whoever changed the protocol at fault. After that, it's you that can't fix it.

Again, not justifing it taking ages, just saying there's never an excuse to skip QA.

dylanz• 17 years ago

You indented with spaces instead of tabs!? Just kidding of course, but the QA team might have been on the other side of that holy war. I'm going to have to start using your TSA parallel though... it's so painfully true.

indiejade• 17 years ago

We programmers are a funny lot. Make us struggle for business or technical reasons and we adapt beautifully. Make us struggle for something stupid and we just get pissed off and do something else.

This is the best YC quote of all time. Thx, edwin!

rbanffy8• 17 years ago

What kind of insane person indents at 5 spaces. I get 2, 4, 8, but 5 is beyond me.

crayz• 17 years ago

As Moore's law marches on, it's inevitable that the computing power needed by Joe Sixpack will fit into smaller and smaller packages. The rise of the desktop, then laptop, now netbook. Each iteration takes less time than the previous one. That asymptote will soon - a few years at the outside - hit the iPhone/PDA form factor

Apple must understand this, and they can't possibly believe they'll be allowed to maintain this sort of dictatorial control over people's primary general computing platform

cpr2• 17 years ago

Why not? They're certainly going to try, and they're winning so far.

Maybe our generally-accepted notions of what should succeed in the market is wrong.

radley• 17 years ago

Just to add: Apple must break their current marketing / announcement strategy and take direct action to resolve this issue.

Otherwise we won't see or hear of any solutions until June 2010 @ WWDC. (Apple is not involved with Macworld this year.)

prakash• 17 years ago

I wish Amazon gets into the handheld device business.

They clearly understand consumers, software, infrastructure & user-experience. They missed the boat with the ipod, here's a fantastic opportunity to do something about it.

kylec• 17 years ago

Since the "1984 incident" I trust Amazon even less than I trust Apple. At least Apple doesn't yank music/apps/whatever off their customers' devices.

bkudria• 17 years ago

I suspect because it's difficult for them to technically do so. They would have pulled the GV Mobile app in an instant, if they could have, but the iPhone OS doesn't have this capability. The Kindle does.

akkartik• 17 years ago

Instead you just "lose" music on your ipod willy-nilly.

Amazon apologized; it's unlikely they'll delete books again. I trust them more.

rtrunck• 17 years ago

Most of Apple's policies handling the app store make me somewhat believe they wanted their original plan to succeed, namely, making developers write web applications and not opening up the iPhone to native development.

orangecat• 17 years ago

Agreed. I think there's at least a 50% chance that the original plan was a console-like model where the only native apps would be from Apple and hand-picked partners. The popularity of jailbreaking forced their hand, because if unlocking became common it would ruin their cozy relationship with the carriers.

dschobel• 17 years ago

I don't think that's right. They've made the app-store a central part of all iphone advertising campaigns.

credo• 17 years ago

I agree with the primary point that Apple is making a mistake in not treating developers well.

However, I think that the essay misses a couple of points.

1. The essay rejects the notion of an "intermediary" or a "software publisher". However, it fails to appreciate the fact Apple has opened up the mobile app market to developers and eliminated far worse intermediaries (the walled gardens of carriers). This is a huge order-of-magnitude improvement.

2. A lot of developers do release badly-buggy apps out there and then end up "blaming" the Apple review process for their customers dissatusfaction. While I agree with the launch-fast-and-iterate approach, I don't think developers/companies should use that as a license to release poor-quality crashing apps. Cutting/postponing features to launch the app quickly can be a good thing, not testing the app and releasing an app with crashing bugs is not a good thing. ---

I don't expect Apple to throw out the review process, but I do hope that they improve the review process. A simple/easy improvement would be to show the latest queue ranking of apps that are waiting for review. That will go a long way towards reducing the "ongoing karma leak" that pg mentions.

Replying promptly to developer emails about app-store rejection will also help. Setting a limit of n apps for a $99 license may also help Apple cope with the incoming deluge of apps

wvenable6• 17 years ago

1. Carriers never had walled gardens around smartphones. Apple didn't invent smartphones, they've been around for years before the iPhone was released. In fact, the carrier (AT&T) has more control than they do on blackberries or WinMo phones.

2. I'm not sure what you're trying to say here. The review process exists so developers are already doing their best to not be rejected and Apple is rejecting anything badly-buggy. Bugs still escape that process, it's inevitable. Fixing them should be easy and quick, but it's not, and Apple is entirely to blame for that.

tptacek2• 17 years ago

Though I can't marshall any evidence to support this claim, it was specifically not my impression that Apple was a company pro developers loved working with before the iPhone.

onewland• 17 years ago

In high school, I thought that the CodeWarrior IDE (which was, as far as I knew, the dominant development environment) was absolutely terrible. I'm not sure how good my judgment at that time was.

That said, with OS X they really became a lot more developer friendly just because they adopted a UNIX base. At this point, I'd say they're the default platform for ruby/web development. Look at all the rails job postings for small startups promising 30" Mac Pros, etc.

YuriNiyazov• 17 years ago

The relevant times under discussion are: the era of the Apple II which came with built-in Basic, and the era of post-OSX but pre-iPhone

samlittlewood• 17 years ago

Unfortunately, CodeWarrior was still way better than MPW (Macintosh Programmer's Workshop) - that was pure pain.

steveklabnik• 17 years ago

Oh man, I had so many CodeWarrior shirts... "Blood, sweat, and code," "X Rated" for their OSX version...

I'm pretty sure that it was dominant at the time. I remember reading a lot of examples that used it.

hristov3• 17 years ago

Yeah, I have terrible experiences with codewarrior as well. I had one programming class in the late 90s that required macs and boy did that make me hate macs with a passion.

But I dont think it was purely a codewarrior issue. The overall apple OS at that time was simply terrible and 10 years behind windows (i wont even count how far behind unix they were) -- they still could not get multitasking to work right. Which meant that any pointer error causes your computer to hang. And when you are coding for a data structures class in C all of your errors are pointer errors.

So I am sure a lot of developers abandoned the mac platform around those times, but maybe many of them are coming back now.

barrkel3• 17 years ago

Fully agree. I recall in particular reading John Carmack a few years back talking about how he was glad Apple wasn't as dominant as Microsoft, because they were far harder to work with.

I wish I could remember the quote well enough to search accurately for it.

keltex• 17 years ago

This may be it:

http://kotaku.com/5397908/carmack-working-with-apple-is-a-ro...

fjabre• 17 years ago

Yeah Cocoa dev was never took off if only b/c Macs used to be much more niche than they are today.

chaosprophet• 17 years ago

Yeah and to think at one point in time, they were literally begging programmers to write software for their Mac platform...

tjogin5• 17 years ago

Mac developers mostly did (and still do). If you're developing anything other than Mac applications, you probably don't know a lot about what it's like either.

ellyagg• 17 years ago

I think the "can't marshall any evidence to support this claim" is pretty critical here, because the vast majority of developers who actually write software for the Mac have loved it since OS X came out. They've loved Cocoa and they loved that the IDE and development tools were made free.

And while there was a dead period due to the technically deficient underpinnings of the late Classic MacOS, before that, the Inside Macintosh days, I hear folks loved programming Apple too.

After having been deeply involved in the Mac dev community for the last 10 years, the implicit claim that Apple is a company pro developers do not love working with sounds, frankly, a little bizarre.

tptacek2• 17 years ago

All available evidence suggests that OSX developers love the technology. Fully agree with that.

dirkstoop2• 17 years ago

I make Mac apps for a living and have, over a few years built up nice relationships with Apple. In spite of only being a small, not US-based, company (11 people now, but only 5 when we won our first Apple Design Award), it was never hard for us to get noticed by Apple, or to get in touch with the people at Apple we needed to talk to at any given point.

Our first app was built using 'unsanctioned' technology, PyObjC (before PyObjC shipped with 10.5); the app would have never seen the light of day on the iPhone, but then again, we would never have built it in PyObjC for the iPhone to begin with. Everyone we've ever met at Apple has been supportive from day one, and we owe a lot to many of those people.

We have not shipped any iPhone apps, so I can't say how I'd like that, but as a Mac app developer I love working with Apple.

mkramlich3• 17 years ago

You've shipped PyObjC-based apps for the Mac? We should talk. :)

gcheong5• 17 years ago

I think there might have been a difference between Mac-only programmers who, it could be argued, were leaving a lot of potential money on the table by not developing for Windows and therefore must be doing it mainly for love of the platform or the company (remember all the Boo's Steve Jobs got when he announced the "investment" from MS in Apple?), and developers who's main product was on Windows and who, perhaps reluctantly, also had to support a Mac version.

lt3• 17 years ago

This is a very developer-centric view, though. For users, the app store is great - tons of applications, and they're easy to find, buy, and to install. The approval process, for the user, makes a better overall experience, increasing the overall quality of available apps. For each bugfix waiting for approval there I'm certain there's lots of buggy apps being rejected, and for each anedocte of rejection due to using the wrong icon or such nonsense, there's lots of appropriate rejections due to unstable apps.

Obviously without good and satisfied developers those benefits are moot. I'm certain the approval process needs to be [improved/changed/redesigned/removed], and maybe some kind of sanctioned jailbreak should exist where more advanced users can manually install third party apps, but I do believe the App Store itself is a good thing when you you look at it from a user perpective.

poub• 17 years ago

I don't think the claim saying that "Apple doesn't understand software" is correct.

Apple do understand software. You cannot release Mac OS X, iLife and other jewels without understanding software. Also Mac developers jumping off the iPhone bandwagon are not jumping off the Mac plateform.

For the iPhone, Apple tried a different model that nobody really tried before.

They indeed have a broken store but the previous models on other platforms never worked. The most successful one before was for the PalmOS and it wasn't over the air.

However Apple always been an arrogant company. With their customers, their providers and their developers.

The climax of this arrogance has been reached with the iPhone eco system (certainly helped by the arrogance of the mobile phone operators).

And for many it is not sustainable.

But anyways, who really cares?

Apple can open the doors of the store overnight. It wouldn’t have been the first time they do one thing making you beleive it was the only way and then suddenly change in the opposite direction.

That’s the strength of Apple: they can change. Not only they can change but they usually know when, with what, for who and at which price.

I never realised the arrogance was a trade mark of this process though. Note: I don't mean being evil by being arrogant.

e40• 17 years ago

> I don't think the claim saying that "Apple doesn't understand software" is correct.

I think he just left out a word: marketing. They know how to build it, for sure. Paul's point is that they're marketing it like it is music.

petewarden2• 17 years ago

Apple has always treated third-party developers with suspicion. The developer website is only accessible by creating an account and agreeing to their license agreement. They churn through and deprecate APIs comparatively fast. They will quite happily steam-roller over third-party developers by adding competing features to the OS: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dashboard_%28software%29#Compar...

None of this is new, the only difference is that there's now a release bottleneck that requires Apple's approval, and there's a lot of developers new to the platform.

The thing is, this is part of Apple's culture for a reason. Steve is an obsessive control-freak when it comes to a great user experience, and third party developers are seen as a threat to that. Microsoft has always been a great company to deal with as a third-party developer - they value their ecosystem, put effort into free documentation and solid IDEs, and rely on outside developers for key applications. The trouble with this comparative openness is that you end up with 800 pieces of software written by different companies fighting it out on your desktop, leading to crashes and inconsistent UIs all over the place.

I think Apple is in danger of screwing up a great opportunity with the app store, but this way of operating is in their DNA and it won't be easy to change. Despite what the geek consensus might be, the record shows they've made a lot of money in the past whilst ignoring third-party developers.

bad_user• 17 years ago

> The trouble with this comparative openness is that you end up with 800 pieces of software written by different companies fighting it out on your desktop, leading to crashes and inconsistent UIs all over the place.

And that's a bad thing because? Who has the mainstream OS now with over 87% market-share? Even popular cross-platform applications that were first available for Macs (like Adobe Photoshop) are now more optimized for Windows.

Microsoft has always been more open ... you can install Windows on any hardware you want as long as it's compatible (and most hardware is, with the notable exception of ARM-processors).

The developer tools where a lot more competitive because Microsoft allowed competition from the likes of Borland. And the Windows API was free to use (as opposed to OS/2 for instance). And for end-users ... Microsoft has always been committed to backwards compatibility (at least for popular applications).

Microsoft can be called "evil" yes, because of their aggressive tactics regarding competition. But imagine what would Apple do in the same position ... and it's kind of ironic that many developers choosing openness went to Apple for that.

Apple makes money, yes, but they were on the edge of bankruptcy ... they should've learned a valuable lesson then (besides keeping Steve Jobs as the CEO).

rbanffy8• 17 years ago

"you can install Windows on any hardware you want as long as it's compatible"

Sorry, I had to laugh.

Part of the blame for Itanium losing the 64-bit bandwagon could be pointed to Microsoft, for not having Windows ready for it when it became available. Or for delaying the launch - it's silly to launch a processor without an OS to run it on.

Having Windows support for your hardware is paramount to any desktop computer company since the early 90's (with the notable exception of Apple). Alpha, MIPS and PowerPC (as in PReP) desktop systems are not dead because x86 systems were a better price/performance choice: they are dead because Microsoft pulled the plug on NT for them (and Linux was not ready to take its place at that time). That's also why all our computers are remarkably alike from the inside. It's not that Microsoft is open - it's that they have computer makers cornered.

Today I can get a non x86 computer and expect all my userland to work (with the possible exception of Flash, Skype and parts of Eclipse). I could not do that in the 90s.

The Itanium is not an expensive server chip because Intel cannot build an Atom-like processor with the Itanium ISA (heck - it must be easier than do it with the x86 ISA). It's an expensive server chip because it won't run Windows 7 and Office.

I see very little competition in the development tools in the Microsoft space these days. Tool makers know better - if they make something that competes with Visual Studio, Microsoft will come after them in the next release cycle and it is not worth the pain to fight them. That's why every non-Microsoft development tool around is built for a niche. Or is free, a case where Microsoft will not be able to go after you. That could be a reason for the free language explosion we are seeing.

And thanks. The Psystar imbroglio is a statement of how evil Apple can be about competition these days.

It even seems that after stopping attracting the best and brightest, they started attracting former Microsoft minions...

petewarden2• 17 years ago

You seem to think I'm arguing that Apple's approach is better than Microsoft's. I'm not at all, just pointing out that there's internally-consistent reasons behind Apple's culture of preferring tightly-controlled, closed systems. The lesson learned from that brush with bankruptcy was that the cloned-hardware approach degraded the user experience.

Steve seems to think that the benefits of closed systems (standardised UI, fewer crashes) outweigh the costs (more expensive, less software). I don't have to agree to recognize that he's making a rational trade-off.

barrkel3• 17 years ago

Since when was Apple's reputation with developers great? They've always been capricious, flighty and controlling - not what you need in a solid platform.

crocowhile• 17 years ago

>They treat iPhone apps the way they treat the music they sell through iTunes. Apple is the channel; they own the user;

Makes sense. I think it is not by chance that OSX is the least customizable OS around (and that's why my mac runs linux).

raintrees• 17 years ago

I am about to show my ignorance of developing for the iPhone, so please forgive any incorrect assumptions and mistaken conclusions.

It is my understanding that apps can also be installed directly from third party websites... If so, is there a way to create an app for the App Store that is a shell to a website where a conglomerate of listings can be offered? It seems this would give the value of having everything fairly easy to find (one extra click) and yet get out from the management of the App Store for all but the original shell app...

mechanical_fish• 17 years ago

It is my understanding that apps can also be installed directly from third party websites...

This is not true, and that's the essence of the problem.

You can install software that you've written yourself on your own phone. And there's some sort of deal that lets you give your software to beta testers and let them install it. A year or so ago some clever fellow tried to use this beta loophole as a way of selling an app that was banned from the App Store. I believe they threw the book at him and he had to stop. I haven't heard of that happening again.

You can distribute apps for jailbroken phones, but that is not really a solution.

Psyonic• 17 years ago

With a few awkward exceptions, it's not possible to install apps directly from third party websites.

ErrantX• 17 years ago

I disagree with the blanket statement that it doesn't work: for every 10 programmers who cant be bothered to create FOO app because of all the fuss there will be one who does because he can take some market share.

I agree in spirit the system is screwed - but Apple do have a hell of a lot of sway. They have the leading product and the huge customer base (and the cool factor). To a point they can dictate things (and I agree this is bad and we should stop them)

Alnoor• 17 years ago

Paul Graham, what are you smoking buddy?

chaosmachine• 17 years ago

If you want a developer environment that fits in your pocket, look no further than the TI-83 graphing calculator.

Much of my free time in highschool was spent creating games on it. It's extremely easy to develop for (it uses a variant of BASIC), and the menu system is designed to minimize keystrokes, which means you can bang out your code very quickly.

Of course, the platform is very dated: 6 MHz CPU, and a 96×64 monochrome LCD screen! I'd love to see something in the same format, built with modern technology. Maybe the default language could be Python.

boredguy8• 17 years ago

I learned assembly on the MC68000 in the TI-89

Mongoose• 17 years ago

The goal would be to have that kind of developer-friendly functionality in a much more powerful and usable form. Imagine having a "phone" with a robust and developer-friendly OS that could wirelessly connect to external displays and peripherals. You'd have a single, compact brick of computing power in your pocket at all times. And if the oft-projected future of cloud services comes to fruition, the device itself wouldn't necessarily have to have ultra high-end computing power or storage.

That's a mobile experience that I'd get excited for.

jamwt• 17 years ago

Oh yeah, the BASIC on those TI calcs!

I spent every calculus class working on various things. My proudest accomplishment was a blackjack game. I implemented drawing routines for every card type, which was really painful given the graphics primitives you had available. So much Line(..) and PxOn(..).

Distribution mechanism was hooking up that cable to your classmates' TI-XX. Maybe iPhone devs should try that.

wtallis• 17 years ago

Go for an HP graphing calculator, then. ARM processor, SD slot, far more powerful programming tools, especially the built-in ones. TI's have BASIC on the calculator, but HPs have an interpreted language, a compiled systems programming language, and an assembler and disassembler all in ROM. And you can run a C cross-compiler on your laptop.

It's nowhere near as powerful as a PDA, but it has a great keyboard (for math, at least) and runs off AAs.

JunkDNA• 17 years ago

Part of Paul's reasoning depends on Apps being central to the iPhone experience the same way software is central to the desktop experience. I'm not totally sure this is the case. While apps are certainly a major component to the iPhone, are they really the major factor in end-user adoption? With the exception of games, how many killer iPhone apps are there that don't already ship with the phone? The phone shipped for an entire year without an App Store at all. I even read something not that long ago that said the majority of apps sit unused on people's phones after they get them.

Now, this doesn't mean that developers won't want a developer friendly phone, or that Apple is hurting their reputation with developers. I'm certain it has been frustrating to deal with the whole process. However, if 3rd party software isn't essential for the iPhone as a platform, then developer satisfaction moves down a bit in terms of importance in Apple's eyes.

Now, it's clear that games are major for the app store. Games are also a special class of software application that benefits disproportionately from having access to the hardware at a low level. They also have properties more similar to music and movies (incidentally, things the iTunes store is good at selling). Except for the simplest games, they require a lot of up-front design work and investment. It's rare that a released game goes through a ton of rapid iterations to "get it right". Games may still have bugs after release, but in general the functionality they are going to have is there on day one. They also ship with the final sound effects, music, artwork, etc... Games are also probably very unlikely to "duplicate existing functinoality" or any of the other cases where "normal" apps hit barriers. Perhaps Apple has (intentionally or unintentionally) created an environment optimized for game approval?

I'm certainly not defending the app store process, but I just wonder if the software development community has a disproportionate view of its importance to the iPhone as a whole.

tjogin5• 17 years ago

You're sort of right, but that's true for all other platforms as well, so it doesn't really tell us anything about the state of app use on the iPhone platform.

The OS bundled ones are the ones people use the most. Across the board.

If I had to guess, I'd say third party apps are just as often or more used on iPhone than on, say, Windows and Mac OS X. Simply because, on iPhone, a lot of web apps out there are used via a special-purpose iPhone app rather than the web interface.

mikebo2• 17 years ago

I don't agree. On the desktop there are 'killer apps' like Photoshop, Excel, Quicken, Final Cut, etc.

I don't think there are any killer mobile apps yet. Maybe for some it's FourSquare or FB, but I can't think of one app I'd miss that's not built in.

shiro• 17 years ago

I too noticed the similarity to the console game development. Usually console game developers have to go through lengthy approval process of the platform provider. Still developers accept that (although grudgingly), since once approved and the released, that will be the end of the process; no more bug fixes; the team dissolves and everybody starts working on the next project. (PC games are different, and certainly network games are continuous development, but console games have this feeling of "done is done").

Part of it may be a byproduct of the way the console games distributed on ROMs or disks. That may change, for consoles nowadays have network connection and can get updates anytime. There's another part, however, that some type of games fits this "done is done" philosophy. Like novels or movies, which you don't expect them to be improved over time.

Well, I don't defend the app store process either, and I believe majority of software should be developed in the iterative process. It's just interesting that games may be a marginal area that has some peculiar properties.

ams6110• 17 years ago

Here's my guess about Apple's thinking. Note that I don't own an iPhone or iTouch. So I don't have any experience with the App Store or submitting applications to it, and can't say that it is or is not working this way but....

Apple wants iPhone apps to "just work" They don't want a plethora of buggy, half-baked, inconsistent apps in their store, because this would diminish the brand. It would be like a typical Linux distribution where half the apps implement their own peculiar UI conventions, crash often, or just don't work at all.

So it is like developing a game. You get one release, one chance, to get it right. It needs to work. Maybe a lot of app developers don't get this. There are published standards about conventions, icons, behavior, etc. The app is expected to be FINISHED and WORKING before you submit it to the store. Don't count on deploying 27 follow up patches and updates to customers -- imagine the chaos if every iPhone app needed updates multiple times. Users (most of whom are not hackers) would, after a while, just give up and abandon the platform.

So, when an app is submitted, it is reviewed, and if it's found to be buggy, or it doesn't work, or it works in an unconventional way, then they don't want it. And they're not in a particular hurry to waste more time on you when you didn't follow the instructions the first time.

I don't know, I'm just speculating. But this seems plausible to me.

mlinsey• 17 years ago

I think you may be right, but I have a couple misgivings.

The year that iPhone existed without the App Store, no smartphone competitors came close to replicating it's core functionality and user experience. I don't think that's quite true anymore, and so I think that the App Store is one of the iPhone's key advantages. Specifically, the iPhone didn't need the App Store to differentiate itself from RIM and WinMo in 2007, but I think it absolutely needs the App Store to differentiate itself from the Pre and Android in 2009.

I don't think there is one killer 3rd-party app on the phone that everyone needs to have, but there could very well be many third party apps that smaller niches need to have. For me personally, MLB At-Bat (live streaming of baseball games) and the Kindle reader are actually the two biggest factors keeping me from switching to Droid. Those applications could easily be ported to Android, but haven't been yet, and in both cases a third party holds the distribution rights for the content so it's not like me or another hacker could replicate those apps easily.

gcheong5• 17 years ago

It may not have started out as central to the experience, but I think that it's starting to quickly become just that and Apple knows this or at least they want it to be. So far all the recent iPhone commercials I've seen only focus on the thousands of apps you can get for the iphone - not the iphone's "awesome" feature set. I was looking at a friend's iphone the other day and I saw page after page of 3rd party applications. My wife wanted an iPod Touch because she saw some applications she wanted. Another person I know bought an iPod Touch just so they can run a bird identification program. I don't think these are unusual cases. What's funny is that in the beginning, Apple didn't even want to provide an API for native applications. They wanted all developers to use the Web API. When developers balked at that idea Apple reluctantly laid out plans for native applications.

CamperBob3• 17 years ago

What's funny is that in the beginning, Apple didn't even want to provide an API for native applications. They wanted all developers to use the Web API. When developers balked at that idea Apple reluctantly laid out plans for native applications.

I wouldn't believe that for a minute. The App Store would have been part of the iPhone product plan from day 1. It's too big, too complex, too strategic, and (yes) too well-executed to be a panicked response to developers' demands.

That's how Apple under Jobs has always done things: major features are not "supported" or "planned" or "offered" or "part of the company's philosophy"... at least, not until they appear out of nowhere one day.

dagw• 17 years ago

I know lots of people who bought in iPhone or or iPod touch because it could run some unique app. It was a different app in each case and in each case it was an app I personally saw no use for, but for them it was a killer app.

Any app that makes someone get an iPhone instead of something else is a "killer app" as far as Apple is concerned, even if it only sold a total of 27 copies and lost the developer a lot of money. So even if the iPhone doesn't have any one killer app, the sheer diversity of apps means there is probably a killer app out there for most people, and that is vital for Apple.

wvenable6• 17 years ago

> While apps are certainly a major component to the iPhone, are they really the major factor in end-user adoption?

All the ads I've seen lately for the iPhone are of the "there's an app for that" variety. So Apple themselves seem to think that the apps are a critical factor.

That being said, the iPhone sold very well before there were any apps at all.

bumblebird4• 17 years ago

They're a good gimmick. But at the end of the day, half of the apps you can find equivalent web versions that run just as well in the browser.

I agree with others - the app store is not that important. It's a fun thing. I'm not convinced it'll even be around/relevant in 5 years.

hyperbovine• 17 years ago

There was a story on here (or somewhere) a while back about how 70% of iPhone apps go unused after the first month of purchasing. Couldn't agree more. AFAICT there is no killer 3rd party app for the iPhone. I'd posit that 95% of the iPhone's awesomeness is wrapped up in the following four (OEM) components: 1) Browser, 2) Maps, 3) E-mail / SMS, 4) Visual voicemail. Everything else, including games, is just fluff for most users. Relative to those four, I think the app store is a relatively small driver of adoption. I don't think a lot of people are that wedded to it, and I don't think it makes Apple a particularly large amount of money either. Which would explain why they continue to neglect it in spite of the vociferous scorn of a few programmers and pundits.

Retric• 17 years ago

Thank you, I just got an iPhone and I have found zero apps worth downloading. Take this 35 list of great apps http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/08/15/the-35-best-iphone-apps... and find something useful or fun.

gridspy2• 17 years ago

Gosh, I had no idea little quality software was on offer until now. I can only see one or two useful apps in there.

nearestneighbor3• 17 years ago

Have you tried http://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/app-attack-top-15-iphone...

joe_the_user2• 17 years ago

I think you miss the point.

Developer relations are central to Apple as a whole. Apples needs iPhone developers, desktop developers, web developers and developers for whatever they do after the iPhone. If Apple creates hostile feelings in the developer community with its App Store behavior, Apple is going to have ongoing problems regardless of whether it needs third party developers at the moment.

bumblebird4• 17 years ago

Not really :/ They need people developing webapps. To be honest, I think the appstore is just a stopgap until webapps become mature enough to take over (And wifi is prevalent enough). I wouldn't put too much effort into the appstore, and I don't really blame Apple for being half hearted about it. It's certainly not the future.

sheena• 17 years ago

Minor note: I think "inoculate" is misspelled.

pg3• 17 years ago

Thanks, fixed.

nickpp6• 17 years ago

Laptops displaced desktops?! You are deluded.

We develop on 8GB i7s with dual 24" screens. We have one at home and one at work, Remote Desktop-ing from each other.

Gigabit ethernet and optical fiber internet. No molasses wifi here.

We work FAST, we work HARD. But we use Windows 7 too, so we're not limited to Apple's crappy hardware either...

nickpp6• 17 years ago

Oh, and we write web apps and desktop apps, in php, java and c++.

We test on iMacs and we serve from Ubuntu.

But we develop on Windows Desktops. Our Mac Airs are for browsing. And reading Hacker News.

jseliger2• 17 years ago

Although I don't think your comment is true, I do have a question for PG: Did you buy the 27" iMac just to use as a monitor, or for the computer part as well?

pg3• 17 years ago

I bought it as a computer. It's my new, separate machine for using the Internet, as described here:

http://www.paulgraham.com/distraction.html

nickpp6• 17 years ago

Not that I care much, but what makes you think my comment is untrue?!

rbanffy8• 17 years ago

Ever since I moved from Windows to Linux I never had the need to develop on such a monster. My netbook (with some extra memory) serves me well. When I am at my desk, I just hook it to the big monitor, a keyboard and mouse and away I go.

The only moment I wish for an i7 is when I have to buildout Plone, which is time consuming, but specially so on a machine designed for battery life. Fortunately, I have been doing mostly Django work, so I haven't been building Plone out lately.

I wonder if other Linux developers also feel the need for 8GB i7 machines.

ciupicri• 17 years ago

If you're talking strictly about developing, I guess any machine would be fine as long as it can run an editor. On the other hand there are people who prefer IDEs like Eclipse combined with all sorts of application and database servers, not to mention virtual machines. Also, let's not forget distractions. After opening hundreds of tabs in Firefox assorted with some Flash, you're gonna wish to have a better CPU/GPU. I had a slow machine while I was a student and it was fine for some homework, but I'm glad that I have a decent desktop right now.

Regarding laptops and Windows: after using Visual Studio on a laptop for a month, I don't even want to hear about working on laptops. Also, I've noticed that some companies promote working on laptops as a cool factor, although in my opinion it's not.

rimantas• 17 years ago

Meh. Apple does understand software. A bounch of peope hired to do reviews for thousands of apps flooding into App Store daily may not.

nearestneighbor3• 17 years ago

If there was a version half the size I'd prefer it.

http://i.gizmodo.com/5185837/a-hackintoshed-dell-mini-9-auto...

petenixey2• 17 years ago

The other huge irony about the app store approval process is the massive advantage that it ends up giving Apple's competition.

The app store is already far ahead of the competition but it could be factors further ahead with shorter cycle time.

Progress is a non linear function of cycle time. Apple are holding themselves back by many factors by artificially extending cycle time and making it far far easier for the other platforms to catch them up.

clawrencewenham4• 17 years ago

The killer feature isn't that you can run lots of apps on it. The killer feature is that it has a market built into it.

The more I think about it, the more I think a QA review process is necessary to make the market work in the long run, and I think the idea of "rapid iteration" on mobile devices--while nice for the developers--is ultimately wrong for the users.

APIs are notoriously hard to get right without either committing yourself to support a broken implementation forever, or breaking thousands of apps. So access to the API is rolled out slowly and gradually to give engineers time to see what's working and what should be changed.

And the value of "don't have to think twice about buying" for the users is probably worth millions or billions of dollars to a large marketplace. I don't think you can get that with certifications, because it really hasn't been working for SSL certificates and "TRUST-e", etc.

A mobile phone is NOT the center of my world. I already hate the fact that the few apps I have installed on my iPhone keep coming out with updates that I keep having to install. I do _NOT_ want rapid iteration being performed on a phone with 10-20 apps on it. It's a chore to keep installing the new versions. Nor do I think they should auto-update, because that comes with its own can of worms, too.

Apple isn't handing an advantage to its competitors. The review process _is_ the advantage. We've been needing a good review process for the notoriously crap-assed QA problems in commercial software for a long time.

nickpp6• 17 years ago

That mobile platform has already arrived. It's called Windows Mobile.

I was surprised too: my wife has a 3GS and I was planning to get one for myself too.

Instead I got a HTC Diamond2 which I plan to upgrade to a HTC HD2. I'm a developer, not a essay-writing millionaire. I like platforms that are Powerful, flexible and CUSTOMIZABLE to my taste. I like pretty too, but form has to follow function, not the other way around.

On WinMo, thanks to xda-developers I belong to an AMAZING (real, not wannabe) hacker culture and environment. The latest HTC ROMs are sleeker and better than the iPhone. More useful and immensely customizable.

My wife still has to click an "App" to get to her favorites... mine are on the first page. Which first page is GORGEOUS, not an old matrix of icons.

But the most important part... my phone is HACKABLE. My wife's is like my ps3: untouchable.

forensic5• 17 years ago

But does your wife want a hackable phone? Does she really care?

Does she want to have to deal with it when she downloads an app that sounds cool and it ends up installing spyware on her machine and drains her battery and drops her phonecalls?

Or would she maybe rather give up some hackable freedom for ease-of-use and a promise of a protected experience?

nickpp6• 17 years ago

No she doesn't. She's perfectly happy with the iPhone. Even if she envies the functionality on my HTC sometimes.

But the discussion here were HACKER phones, not consumer phones.

augustus2• 17 years ago

I have now two published apps in the App Store. Both business apps - one in finance and the other in business.

The biggest change they have made that took me off their platform was their recent policy to not show updated applications along with new releases.

Let me explain. For the longest time, if you looked under released applications you could see applications that were recently updated. This was a great incentive for developers of existing applications to keep updating their applications and getting it easily noticed by users.

Apple no longer allows updated applications to be displayed in the released applications list.

There is now no way for users to discover your application except for about one or two days when it is first released.

CamperBob3• 17 years ago

This was a great incentive for developers of existing applications to keep updating their applications and getting it easily noticed by users.

It was also a great incentive for developers to game the system and swamp the reviewers by submitting trivial updates every week to keep their apps at the top of the list. Tragedy of the commons.

philwelch• 17 years ago

Actually, I think it's a positive thing to the user, since it encourages incremental development. Anything that incentivizes "release fast and iterate often" incentivizes good development.

On the other hand, it did tend to swamp the review process.

workhorse2• 17 years ago

Paul Graham should pull a Kevin Smith and put his writings into a book.

I would buy it.

If it already exists, someone link me!

joshstaiger• 17 years ago

Really?

http://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Painters-Big-Ideas-Computer/dp...

From 2004, but comprised mostly of essays that are on his site.

workhorse2• 17 years ago

Jackpot!

rythie• 17 years ago

I see a lot of apps in the app store that could just be optimized iPhone web apps. However discovery of iPhone web apps on the iPhone is very poor - Apple have a site but it's not optimized for the iPhone and there are no ratings.

scscsc• 17 years ago

I totally agree with the article. However I wonder what prompted PG to write it. Did one of their startups' apps get rejected recently?

pg3• 17 years ago

A lot more than one. The App Store is tied with US immigration as the biggest source of complaints I hear from founders.

netcan3• 17 years ago

That comparison should be worrying to Apple in itself. You should have put it in the essay.

serhei2• 17 years ago

The App Store is very similar to US immigration control. People are justifying the maddening complexity and the casualties of the system by analogous arguments in both cases. And building a startup around an iPhone application and then having the app kicked from the store is like a less dramatic version of building a startup in the United States and then having a co-founder kicked from the country.

RevRal• 17 years ago

As far as a handheld development machine, the Pandora comes to mind: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora_(console)

Looks pretty powerful, roughly the size of a Nintendo DS. Of course, it won't replace a laptop... the keyboard size alone.

But if I could sync code between the Pandora and my laptop and compile stuff on-the-go. The Pandora could function like notepad for writers... but for programmers.

Its usefulness in developing for windows applications would be very limited, however.

clawrencewenham4• 17 years ago

There are two logical flaws in this essay, and I think a misperception in the essay as a whole.

The first logical flaw is to point out how developers love Apple's support for developing desktop software, and then a few paragraphs later say that they [Apple] "don't understand software". Obviously they do understand software.

The second is that Apple's control over the app store review process will create a closed monoculture. So the original iPhone development model of using web apps has been forgotten already? Mobile Safari is continuing to support new standards and APIs, enabling new kinds of app to be delivered that way, and it will continue to be a competitive option for developers in the future. These apps will work in other phones and do not require an approval process.

The misperception of the essay is that the app store, and specifically its approval process, is evil. But this doesn't make any sense.

Apple just handed to small, independent developers a way to distribute their software to tens of millions of customers with a real, working single payment mechanism that is so easy it affords impulse buying from anywhere at any time. The cost to enter this program is $99--less than the cost of the phone itself and an entry barrier so low it's practically nonexistent.

So we now have apps developed by the recently unemployed--while sitting on their living-room couch no less--making tens of thousands of dollars in a few weeks.

This is unprecedented and incredible. It's one of the best things that has ever happened for independent developers since the microcomputer. And then they made it even better by adding in-app purchasing through the same payment mechanism. This is huge.

The inconsistency of the app rejections points to the problem of hiring and training people to interpret the policies, not the policies themselves. They aren't likely to find people who want to do that kind of work, and I'm figuring that the turnover is probably as high as it is for call centers. And given some reports that app store submissions (or at least approvals) reach 2000 per day, I would be amazed if these kinds of problems didn't happen in even the best run and most benevolent company in the world.

But while everybody is calling Apple evil for these growing pains, Apple is busy learning how to do App Stores. Statements made by Tim Cook, the rejection-reversals that come from higher up, policy changes and clarifications, suggest that Apple does actually care and is (slowly) improving the process.

Apple has a clear vision of what they want to deliver to the customer, and the review process is part of how they're trying to make that vision work. I think they're going to stick with it until they get it right.

I think it's likely that Apple will eventually find a way to solve these problems. When it does, it will have a competitive advantage that Android and Palm and even Microsoft won't be able to match for years: an app store that customers trust and will readily make purchases from without second thought, and a simple, painless way for independents to get their apps in. This would pave the way for an Apple TV App Store, a iTablet App Store, a Book/Magazine/Newspaper store and so-on.

It'll probably take a while to make it as painless as it should be for developers, because these kinds of problems are _hard_. Harder than engineering.

This isn't Apple's Mistake, this is an extra $100 or more per share of AAPL in the next few years.

mattmaroon• 17 years ago

"Google and Apple. If Microsoft was the Empire, they were the Rebel Alliance."

I always think of them more in terms of Animal Farm. Microsoft was Mr Jones, Google and Apple are Snowball and Napoleon.

davidw• 17 years ago

> Could anyone make a device that you'd carry around in your pocket like a phone, and yet would also work as a development machine?

I can answer this one: there are already a few people who are interested in Hecl for this reason: they want to use it to write code on the phone. That was never my intent with the system, as it seems painful to me, but if there are already a few using my little language, which is not well publicized, there must be a bunch more out there. And if people are doing that with existing phones, I think things will only get better in the future.

Aegean• 17 years ago

"It's too complicated for a third party to act as an intermediary between developer and user"

That's a good summary of the situation.

joecode2• 17 years ago

Talk about it. I just got a rejection today for a major bugfix on my last update. The only change in the update is to use utf-8 encoding---one tiny change on one line of code. After 2 weeks, they tell me they can't approve the update because I'm using undocumented APIs in a couple places. Sure, OK, looks like I was using some methods that went from deprecated to undocumented... but that's exactly what's in the store right now... ugh. Meanwhile, users are, rightfully, pissed-off.

I'd say about 50% of the time my submissions get rejected, and always for a stupid reason like this; this is one of the better ones, actually. Will I stop developing? Probably not, because it's good money. But am I seriously considering moving to Android? You bet.

jorgem• 17 years ago

I had similar one line fix...

I have a simple "free" app in the iPhone App Store. It lets users browse "available" Web domains. One feature is a BUY button that forwards them to Godaddy.com, if they want to buy the domain.

I don't make any money from Godaddy.

The app has been approved for a while, but I wanted to patch one little bug, so I submitted a patch.

... And waited two weeks. Apple's testers found a bug that was in the original approved app, and asked me to re-submit.

... And I waited three weeks. This is classic: Apple rejects my app again because they want to test the domain "buying" feature on Godaddy.

It's a website! Not even my app! Not even a new feature.

Please kill me.

hristov3• 17 years ago

What they really want is to figure out if there is a way for them to make money off of it. Even if you personally are not getting kickbacks from godaddy, there is a lot of money in selling domains. There is got to be, somebody has to pay for those awful superball ads.

akamaka• 17 years ago

I think it's worth pointing out that even Apple's own developers don't get the luxury of being able to push out bug fixes whenever they want. Point releases of the iPhone OS are often months apart, so good testing is not optional for them.

tumult2• 17 years ago

Apple employees have the advantage of being paid by Apple to work that way.

khangtoh2• 17 years ago

Same thing here. We just got an update rejected for a line of code that calls an undocumented API within a function that was no where called in the program, dead code and they rejected the update that had an important bug fix that we emailed them about for an expedited review.

The expedited review request was accepted but in the end took 14 days to come back and got rejected for a piece of code that was never ran and has been there since day 1.

Talk about frustration, hell yeah.

But as everyone does, after getting over the anger and back to reality and business sense, what else CAN I do but only to resubmit since there lies a never seen before first of it kinds, an easy software distribution and payment system that many other platforms did not provide to small independent developers a year ago.

It's not about just supporting one SINGLE platform, that has never been the case. Just like making web apps run nicely in IE, Safari, Firefox, etc or even Windows, MacOS, Linux. As a developer, what matter is that I support the platform that has massive adoption/users. I will not drop iPhone and go Android, or any other platform. The only decision I will make is if there's enough users on the platform that I do care about to invest and develop for that platform. One day Android might be there and I see the possibility of developing for both Android and the iPhone.

nearestneighbor3• 17 years ago

Does Apple examine your source code?! I thought iPhone devs kept the source to themselves.

eelco• 17 years ago

No, just the symbol table in the binaries. You can easily do it yourself with the 'nm' command. It seems that they are using a tool that matches the 'nm' output with a list of private APIs since about a month or so, meaning that a lot of updates suddenly get rejected like this. What really annoys me as a developer though, is that they should be able to automate this check and give feedback instantly. (It's not like they will give feedback on more than one 'problem' anyway.) Instead you'll still have to sit out the 2 week waiting period.

gruseom• 17 years ago

Oldtimers have told me that they liked PCs better than Apples in the early 80s because they were more hackable: you could mix and match and tinker and make them do your own thing, while Apple's stuff was closed. Users loved Apple, but hackers didn't like their we-know-best mentality. If that's true, it may not be the first time Apple has made this mistake. Perhaps losing hackers was what caused them to lose to PCs the first time around.

billswift• 17 years ago

That was why Stephenson described Apples as "hermetically sealed" in "In the Beginning Was the Command Line..."

ynniv• 17 years ago

Apple doesn't need the AppStore, they didn't even want it. Lets stop complaining and better ourselves instead.

[ http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=951384 ]

jsz0• 17 years ago

"If software publishing didn't work in 1980, it works even less now"

The App Store is an experiment for Apple. The publishing model has worked pretty well for Nintendo, Sony, and now Microsoft in the console games market. It should be pretty clear that's what Apple wants on the iPhone. They may lose developers to other platforms but from their perspective there's plenty of others waiting to take their place. I say it's an experiment because Apple can ditch the closed model at anytime in the future when/if it starts to negatively impact iPhone sales. If they had started open it would be impossible to go closed at a later time.

lucifer• 17 years ago

Paul, when you wrote this, did you mean by "programmer" anyone who started programming in the new century? Because Dave Winer -- and here I'm feeling like you did when you bought the iMac ;) -- wrote extensively on Apple's treatment of developers in the 90s. This is not news.

ggruschow• 17 years ago

I don't think he was referring to programmers from any period. I'd be surprised if work for Apple computers ever constituted even 25% of programming work, and I'd be shocked if Dave Winer's reach was even 1%. I don't mean any offense by either, it's just it's a really big world.

netcan3• 17 years ago

Genuine question about the RFS:

Why so specific? If the idea is get iphone-replacements into developers hands, why not just say that. 'Development on handhelds' sounds like a reasonable idea, but maybe it's impossible. Maybe it's just one of several possibilities.

'Get developers using something other then an iphone' seems like something that could at least yield some good ideas. Is there any reason the RFS is so granular?

tumult2• 17 years ago

Thanks pg, this one was great. I was just ranting about software here in HN comments the last couple of days, so it feels even more timely.

mid• 17 years ago

I disagree. Apple understands software extremely well. What they don't understand is 3rd party software. The same mentality that eventually killed DEC.

cpr2• 17 years ago

I think a lot of the problem stems from the fact that Jobs hates third party apps (because he can't control them), and he always has, and always will.

He just realizes he can't build a successful product, long-term, without them.

But his main internal smart software guys know better, and build a great software ecosystem.

Thus Apple is now projecting a seriously schizoid personality.

forensic5• 17 years ago

But see this is the dynamic between the user and the developer. This kind of tension is necessary to the process.

When developers can make whatever they feel like making, we get linux.

When Steve Jobs is there to lobby for the customer, to lobby for beauty and ease of use and a focus on the details and thorough documentation, then we get OS X and the other "It Just Works" features that Apple is becoming known for.

Customers want a Steve Jobs parental figure to stand there beating back the hordes of opportunistic Bonzi Buddy coders trying to make a quick million. That's why people pay premiums for Apple products.

Love it or hate it, the philosophy behind the App Store is a large part of Apple's growing success. The philosophy is that the user will pay more and in return the developer has to jump through some hoops and get his app approved.

Having said that, obviously the approval process needs to be adjusted. It sounds relatively trivial, in fact, for Apple to implement a procedure that would allow minor bug fixes while still putting apps through an approval process.

It would be great if customers could trust developers, but the truth is they can't. This has been proven over and over again. For every hacker that is dedicated to making something people need, there are ten willing to code exploitative Facebook apps and spambots and spyware and toolbars and programs that run in the background and phone home constantly so they can sell user data.

serhei2• 17 years ago

Paul Graham criticizes the App Store, which is significant because it's a rare instance of a person with such major hacker street cred and no vested interest in the platform putting in their two cents...

... then he gives a really insane Request for Startups: http://ycombinator.com/rfs5.html. I think the current upper limit for input bandwidth on a 4-inch or so screen means that you would really have to invent something not seen before. Moreover, given the stubborn habits of the top hackers, you can't have significant adoption with an 80% solution. And you really need to go after top hackers who influence others to get significant adoption by programmers.

(Not to mention that ideally you need RFS5 users to be able to develop for things that aren't RFS5 or generic Unix. Otherwise you just end up with an adoption rate similar to Linux. Possibly even lower, if people have to buy your hardware.)

I'm thinking of the fact that all top hackers have some kind of Holy Revered Tool on which they are dependent for their workflow. These might be large, clicky keyboards, vim, Emacs, or TextMate. Even if any given Holy Revered Tool is used by 5% of important hackers, ALL important hackers have SOME kind of Holy Revered Tool.

This means that the hypothetical RFS5 device would have to capable of running, at minimum, vim and Emacs, with trivial compatibility between the new handheld version and the old desktop versions (because the top hackers have years and years of muscle memory and customization that they want to make use of without months of retraining/rewriting).

If I were to spend time thinking about it I would broaden the problem somewhat:

- Alternative Goal 1 - invent some kind of user interface that smoothly scales from handheld devices to small notebooks (not just netbooks, but even something like a Macbook). The exact same software automagically squeezes into a handheld, and stretches to fill a notebook. Make sure you can put the OS on some commonly used notebooks. (Maybe even focus on easily supporting scenarios like dual-booting a Mac?) You could have a notebook computer running the software, and a companion handheld device, with really tight integration between the two, hopefully down to the level of closing your notebook, and having all of your open apps - the exact same session - in your pocket.

- Alternative Goal 2 - create a distinct mobile experience, but have really, really good sync to all desktop operating systems. Not an 80% solution, a 100% solution. Make it possible to sync anything, really easily. If you use iPhone you can only easily sync it with Apple stuff. If you use Android you can only easily sync it with Google stuff. If you use WebOS you have a slightly wider choice of services, but they're all cloud services and hackers might be paranoid about that. All of these platforms only sync a limited range of stuff. If you want to sync something else you have to wait for Apple/Google/Palm to decide that you're a significant market segment. Not to mention that (for Apple/Palm particularly) much of the data that is on the device is locked down. Want to bet how long it's going to take for Apple to allow their email client to view a Scheme/Haskell/Clojure source file someone sent you? How about Arc source code? How about if you want to edit a .txt attachment and forward it to someone else?

Alternative Strategy 2, by the way, might be useful as an intermediate measure to get more of your hacking stuff onto the device so you can more realistically evaluate, as a resourceful programmer as opposed to a regular consumer, what wonderful things you might be able to do with it that appeal to you in particular, and that Apple's restricted (read: lowest common denominator, just versatile enough to be widely adopted and no more) user interface doesn't let you do.

forensic5• 17 years ago

You can already run emacs on the iPhone. The issue is just that the keyboard sucks. But right now I can do all my regular dev tasks on the iPhone by SSHing in my webserver.

It's just kind of pointless because you get 50X the productivity by bringing your laptop with you. My 13" MacBook doesn't exactly weigh me down.

Wump• 17 years ago

Some food for thought:

"In the short term, individual citizens and groups will pay. But in the long run, you can see they can't win. The very nature of technology is you can't harness it -- not authoritarian leaders, not anyone," Hom continued. "It's like riding a tiger, and you can't get off."

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,529090,00.html

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/06/24/censorship-20-china-blo...

teeja• 17 years ago

Here's how I see the question: When did it suddenly become acceptable for a computer manufacturer to decide what software the customer can run on that computer?

I'm sure the money can be good ... but is that really the road anyone wants to go down? Is it worth having your leg chained to the table?

antipaganda• 17 years ago

I don't think we'll see a "proper" handheld developing environment until AR specs, Accelerando-style, become linked with virtual-keyboard interfaces in a big way. (I'm talking the sort of thing that detects the position of your hands and fingers at all times, so you can type on a keyboard that exists only in your glasses. Force-feedback gloves might also be important, for that clicky-keyboard feeling.)

c00p3r• 17 years ago

btw, Android would win in long run. This process already begins with Motorola's Droid.

Apple very well monetized iPhone's wow!-factor, but now it is a mainstream thing.

Let's see what their tablet would be.

rbarooah• 17 years ago

I found it an interesting read. I especially liked the sentiment, "An organization that wins by exercising power starts to lose the ability to win by doing better work.", which I firmly believe.

However I don't see how PG shows that Apple is somehow winning by exercising power. Can someone clarify this? PG even? I don't hear any explanation of how their exercise of power is helping them win.

c1sc04• 17 years ago

I cross-post this from the other thread I started since I noticed the Apple heat is in this one, if you want to learn the background about my app, check this thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=951360

Below is what I've learned after 2 months of AppStore dev.

Here are a few dirty tricks & ideas that I hope will make life in AppStore purgatory easier:

Use the 'Easter Egg' field to plead directly to the reviewer. It's a free-text field that every reviewer will read and a little social engineering will work wonders.

If the app name is important to you, reserve it by submitting a dummy app without binary. You'll need dummy 512x512 and 480x320 artwork in order to be able to fill out the form.

Phone contacts at Apple are pure gold. I consistently got on the line with the same reviewer. Depending on their mood reviewers can expedite things. But it's still pretty random.

Set your app price low ($0.99) while it is in the review queue & jack it up immediately on release date. I got an app rejected because the reviewer did not like the price I set.

It pays not to be a bottom-feeder. Maximize revenue, not units of sales. Often a slightly higher price will give you more revenue. There's more than the $0.99 price-point. At a higher price point you can also afford to pay higher CPM/CPC for initial customer acquisition.

Count on doing your own marketing. The time when you could solely rely on rankings to boost your sales is over. The AppStore UI is so broken right now that you have to assume that your customers will not find your app without some effort of your own.

Expect long approval times. I've started thinking in development/update cycles of at least one month. Agile is not the mindset at Apple. Work on new apps while your other apps are in the queue. I wish Apple would crowdsource the approval process or look into setting up community-managed 'repositories' like Linux.

App Complexity is a good predictor of approval time. This is a big problem because it does not reward taking on the risks of building better apps. It took me 2 months to build up the confidence to start a more complex project.

Private API calls are an absolute no-no: even if you were approved before, your next update will be rejected because Apple started using automated tools to inspect your code.

If you give unlimited access to the internet through a UIWebView, your app will be pulled unless it has a 17+ rating.

There's no (easy) way to measure where your app sales come from. This makes traditional SEM/SEO difficult. You have no conversion numbers so your marketing funnel is broken.

Don't mention Apple products in your description. Don't use images of Apple products. Don't mention real-life persons in your description, I got an app rejected for that last one.

Don't count on being able to schedule a release date. Once you do get the approval mail, go into iTunes Connect & set your release date to $NOW. Remember, this can work both ways: I got surprised by an early release before my marketing materials were ready.

Yes, you will be pushed back to the queue upon rejection, even if you have the reviewer on the line and beg him to make an exception.

In all fairness, not all is bad. Apple seems to have started picking up speed lately. My experience with App approvals has been that it got faster in the last 2 weeks, at the same time when the AppStore itself went in disarray (wonky rankings, wrong release dates, ...). However, take care and remember "Correlation, Causation et Al.". Also, once I was in contact with Apple over the phone they were very courteous and professional in resolving issues. Slow & polite.

mseebach• 17 years ago

You list of advice is good. It's that it needs to exist to put software on one of the most popular devices of the decade that's absurd.

In the 80's you could travel pretty freely as a western visitor in communist eastern Europe if had a similar list, telling you who to nudge where, what gifts to bring for cheap bribes (IIRC I heard that a good ball point pen got you far in some places) and so on. Now, the ultimate solution isn't a better list, I think was PGs point.

c1sc04• 17 years ago

Completely agree. Apple needs competition from people who have a clue, but in the meantime a lot of developers will continue traveling to 'communist' Apple, because that's where the money is ;-)

hristov3• 17 years ago

I don't know about ballpoint pens but a good bottle of cognac always worked. I knew some people that started a business right after communism fell -- they had to buy cognac by the case.

cesare• 17 years ago

> I got an app rejected because the reviewer did not like the price I set.

That's a new one. At least for me.

selven• 17 years ago

This is an extreme example, but it's happened before.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_Rich

maxklein• 17 years ago

What is this Easter Egg field you talk about?

c1sc04• 17 years ago

The last form in the field, Apple calls it 'Demo Account - Full Access' http://imgur.com/5iqfS.png ... besides demo account info you can add details about any hidden easter eggs in this field, hence the renaming. Sorry for the confusion, the name somehow got stuck in my head.

drp• 17 years ago

> Private API calls are an absolute no-no

Could you expand on this a little? Do you mean web service API calls that are unpublished, web service calls in general or native API calls that are somehow forbidden?

c1sc04• 17 years ago

Anything that's not covered in the SDK documentation is off-limits, even if Apple themselves are using the calls in their own apps. This is what the Whole Joe Hewitt / Three20 debacle was about: http://joehewitt.com/post/the-three20-project/

Web API calls are mostly a 17+ rating problem: if you load anything over the web that could potentially be 17+ you have a problem.

chrischen• 17 years ago

I'm sure part of the reason Apple isn't as keen to rapidly iterate its software is because it wants to keep its image of quality software up.

There are also some benefits to having a closed app store. 1) No viruses 2) Easy platform to collect payments 3) What else?

andrewljohnson• 17 years ago

Yep, we had another rejection yesterday for a "pre-existing condition."

Our latest release of Gaia GPS was just a handful of bug fixes - no feature changes - and Apple rejected it on the grounds that our map screen didn't warn the user they were offline.

They also rejected the new version of our Lite app for a totally different reason - because we used a "private" API - actually just a function restricted to Mac programming called dateWithString.The non-lite version builds from the same code, so it's also annoying that they just pick one random thing to reject you for. They didn't mention the "private" API call for our non-free app at all.

the_real_r2d2• 17 years ago

For me it is much simpler, Apple became much greedier that it was. They saw the opportunity to monopolize the market and they took it without any remorse.

tome• 17 years ago

How much of the goodwill Apple once had with programmers have they lost over the App Store? A third? Half?

pg, can you please clarify this? What exactly does it mean to lose "a third" or "a half" of goodwill?

st-keller• 17 years ago

Paul's new RFS "development 4 handhelds" seems to be quite simple: The only problem to be solved is: How to design a IDE that doesn't need a keyboard. I admit that this may be a bit diffcult as long programs are "written". Does anyone have an idea, how programs can be "sketched" or "told"?

maurycy• 17 years ago

The sad fact is a complete lack of alternative. Personally I hate Apple so much. However, I still buy one or two Apple computers a year.

If you're a developer, and you want a stable environment that gives you access to the Terminal (bye, Windows!), has nice typography (bye, Linux!), excellent text editor (TextMate is the best one I found for Ruby) and does not cause stupid problems with printers or wifi (bye, bye, Linux!), you have no choice but OS X.

Their hardware is a piece of crap. Even a company that made an ad with them, agrees with that:

http://37signals.com/svn/posts/1489-every-mac-ive-owned-has-...

I think it's very similar if you are a professional photographer. Windows is so bloated it's painful to work with. Linux has no Adobe toolkits and you end up with OS X again.

rbanffy8• 17 years ago

No match for "WOMANWITHHAMMER.COM".

>>> Last update of whois database: Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:10:22 UTC <<<

Anyone wants to give it a try?

known• 17 years ago

Apple attitude is

    Everybody should trust us.
    And we trust nobody.

roundsquare2• 17 years ago

Maybe I'm missing something here (I don't own an iPhone or make iPhone apps), but I think the analogy between the app store and a traditional start up is very flawed.

How many people associate an iPhone app they download with a 3rd party? I would think most people associate everything on their iPhone with Apple. Launch fast and iterate is great for developers but for Apple it makes it look like they keep releasing buggy software.

Contrast this with a software company. Most people have learned that if an app doesn't work on their Dell, its the developer's fault, not Dell's (usually).

This misconception about iPhone apps is made even stronger by the fact that users buys apps through Apple!

Edit: I don't mean to defend Apple completely. Obviously their processes should be better, but I'm just disagreeing with the rapid iteration model.

kleine2• 17 years ago

But is the app store (like Microsoft Windows) a good thing from the perspective of the users? App store makes it easier to buy software for the users. Even if it makes life harder for the developers. It also lets developers get paid for stuff that otherwise might be hard for them to get money for.

binarycheese• 17 years ago

"Android is an orphan; Google doesn't really care about it"

Couldn't agree more.

The documentation is incomplete, support is horrible and there is no way to even view my Android 2.0 app without a DROID.

zmarc• 17 years ago

Apple will fix these problems. But Apple does things at their own pace. It can be frustrating, especially to independent developers who are used to operating at a lightening pace. Remember cut and paste? Apple took "forever" to implement that, but when they finally did, it's far better than cut and paste on other platforms.

The same thing will happen with the App Store. Instead of "solving" the problems the way most companies would: throwing money willy-nilly at the problem, hiring hundreds of new untrained reviewers, etc., Apple will look at the core issues and figure out ways to fix it. Keep in mind the App Store is unprecedented in numerous ways (size, growth, etc.) and is new and not even Apple anticipated it would be this popular. It will take time, but it has been getting better and will become great.

(I predict the same kind of slow fix on the App Store itself, in terms of discovering apps, which I think is a more important problem than a handful of frustrated developers. Even if that handful is tens of thousands, finding apps is an issue that effects millions of users and developers, since if users can't find your app they aren't going to buy it.)

barmstrong• 17 years ago

Two points I was surprised weren't mentioned in this article:

1. Open source - this could be Androids greatest strength against he iPhone and the key to making developers switch.

2. The killer app for Android could definitely be free phone calls! VOIP seamlessly integrated, not as an after thought.

I think Android will give iPhone a serious run for it's money, and put pressure on Apple to change some of these things. Great topic, Apple needs to wake up on this one!

nekoniaow• 17 years ago

I think Paul properly describes why Apple's current management of the App Store would ultimately end up deserving them if they didn't address it seriously rather sooner than later. However, deducing anything about the reasons which lead them to this situation seems a bit risky.

One doesn't need to look back far in the past to find examples of situations where Apple, after refusing to acknowledge the existence of a problem for an extended period of time suddenly came up with a solution that not only fixed it but also extended the playing ground significantly. The iTunes Store, the App Store, the iPhone copy and paste mechanism, etc. John Gruber could probably list quite a few.

Apple, or rather, Jobs' main problem is not one of efficiency but one of communication. His combined obsession for secrecy and control of the end user experience his mostly likely what produces this insanely inadapted public stance in face of the App Store obvious problems.

I seriously can't exclude that Jobs' obsessions won over the best of him and that he's actually fighting the tide instead of surfing it, but I wouldn't be surprised if a solution was already being tested inside the walls of the castle.

If Apple critics and users must learn anything about the company, it's that its public posture doesn't give away any information about what is actually brewing inside the company labs. If Apple must learn anything if it doesn't want to alleviate its most valuable partners (by which I mean developers), it's that posturing is not an acceptable communication practice and should be left people like Steve Balmer who have not much else to propose.

slim• 17 years ago

I have an objection on YCRFS 5 : http://ycombinator.com/rfs5.html

Mobile devices are physically constrained by their use case. They must be small to be carry-able. I believe in a future where mobile devices will be more ubiquitous, and where specific tasks (like development) would be delegated to "static" machines.

In the future, mobile devices will be more like a magic wand than a workstation. We would enable functionalities in different "static" devices with the same mobile device.

Also, you ask : How could you make a device programmers liked better than the iPhone?

I would suggest : make an open device for less that $100 and you will win. Now we know that price is a feature. No need for a big touch screen.

erikb85• 17 years ago

If there is somebody out there, making a handheld developing machine, I am one of Ur first buyers! I was looking for that long before the netbook hype and even some time before everybody was running around with laptops.

Apple's Mistake

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