Evil apple

Tuesday 23 September 2008 — This is 16 years old. Be careful.

I really don’t know what Apple is thinking. First they release a really cool phone, good. Then they release an SDK for it, also good. But developers aren’t allowed to talk to each other about developing for the phone. That’s bad, doesn’t Apple realize how developers learn? Then Apple sets up a store and keeps control over what apps can be sold there. Partly good (no malware can pollute the ecosystem), but partly bad (no one knows how Apple will decide what can be sold).

Then Apple started to reject apps from the app store, which is bad, because app developers only find out they’ve been rejected after they’ve expended all the effort to build the app, and it can be hard to predict whether an app will be rejected or not, making it risky to build iPhone apps.

After this breathtaking descent into cluelessness, Apple has topped itself by deciding that app rejections are subject to the non-disclosure, making it illegal for developers to talk about the fact that their app has been rejected! Is Apple actively trying to discourage app development? Is there any other company that could act this way without raising the ire of the development community? This is the company that used Gandhi in an ad? What exactly is Apple thinking?

Comments

It's a Van 8:16 PM on 23 Sep 2008

Goes to show that power corrupts.

Name emaN 9:07 PM on 23 Sep 2008

I bought an iPhone and paid my $100 for the dev cert and started working on something in my spare time with the hopes of releasing it. I've put a lot of hard work into the app and plan on finishing and releasing it to the app store. But I am really interested in what is going to happen to Android and their version of the app store. Maybe Apple will be what Rails has been to web frameworks--a nice kick in the pants to wake up and do better.

Giacomo 2:21 AM on 24 Sep 2008

Apple apologists descending on your blog in 5, 4, 3, 2...

Jesse Noller 8:00 AM on 24 Sep 2008

You know, I'm a big apple guy - I have several macs, an iphone and an ipod - and even *I* find the policies about the app store abhorrent. I spent the 99$ for the dev cert, and started picking up objective C just to build apps for the store - but now I won't be doing that. I'm going to wait to see if Apple changes its policies, and I am going to hope they do the Right Thing, but until then - I won't be expending energy to write code for the iphone platform.

That being said - I won't give up my macs, or my current iphone. Will I think twice about upgrading my existing iphone? Yes - but I still love OS/X as a developer's platform and desktop, and so I won't give that up.

Jason Bock 9:28 AM on 24 Sep 2008

I feel the exact same way - I commented on this issue here: http://www.jasonbock.net/JB/Default.aspx?blog=entry.b80dbcf1ac6b4f92b7fc6eaeb646e771. Sheesh, just let me deploy my stuff!

Ed Taekema 11:51 AM on 24 Sep 2008

It interesting how a company can take something so good and mess it up. I wrote about how this factored into my purchase of a netbook instead of a mac recently in Apple's descent into evil - Rise of the Netbooks Heck you can even run MacOS on some of these new netbooks. It doesn't take much to turn a customer off a product or a company.

Florian 5:40 PM on 24 Sep 2008

Ned, I can tell you that I'm not surprised. I'm still disapointed, but not surprised.

Apple has always behaved like their CEO, the ueber control freak Steve Jobs. They also happend to do some fairly decent things every now and then, and to even have success with it.

However to any casual observer it was always clear that this companies attitude is their biggest problem should they ever be marginally successful.

Rob 11:28 AM on 25 Sep 2008

Partly good (no malware can pollute the ecosystem)

Sorry, no. A motivated hacker could easily get malware through their so called review process, and could even hide it against a source code review.

todd 6:34 AM on 26 Sep 2008

This is why competition is good. The Android platform, while still young, will force Apple to adopt. If in a year, there's more devices that are more appealing, and more and more developers make cool applications, well, then...competition is good for us consumers of technology. Android really needs a sexy device. Nothing tops the physical design of the iPhone.
I don't know much about developing for iPhone, but is it true I have to be on OSX platform? To me, Android, with it's cross-platform Eclipse integration, java-based (ick) language, is going to open the door for a lot of developers.

Evil apple

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