no, iphone developers need to take more drastic action to boycott apple's actions than just "telling" the story.

apple needs developers to keep the app store and platform popular and, so far, all of the big developers are singing their tune and continuing to publish new apps and updates, even if they are complaining on their weblogs.

i think if the top iphone developers got together and had the petitioned support of dozens or hundreds of smaller developers, and took some serious action like going to apple headquarters and sitting down with those in charge, they could work to change things.

#1 The biggest developers don't deal with this. You really think EA has to put up with this crap? The Google Voice thing was a highly publicized fiasco, but I'd be willing to bet that sort of treatment of other publicly-traded companies is rare, and even that story probably has much more behind it than we know.

#2. There's so much money to be made that if half the small developers quit, the rest will simply fill the void. It's the same game theory concept that ensures the tuna will be fished into extinction. It would be in everyone's long term best interest to band together and make Apple fix their policies, but in each individual's short term interest to take the money and run.

*Totally did not notice when I said that that the very next article on the list was about the extinction of the Bluefin Tuna. Scary.

that was kind of my point. ea knows very well what other developers are going through, but until they get an app rejected, they're not going to do anything about it. i was suggesting that these top developers stand up and use their pull to convince apple to change on behalf of all iphone developers.

Submit app, assign reviewer (who will also get priority for reviewing any updates), and then you have a dialog with the reviewer.

I've got a couple small apps that I'm preparing to submit, but I don't think I'll spend the time to write anything serious until they fix this.

Seriously, what advantage does the review process offer? Can it be seriously argued that "review" benefits anybody?

- Users require a higher level of reliability from their phone than their computer, and keeping out trojans and buggy apps improves the overall experience.

- Apple is able to maintain a more consistent UI by only allowing apps that conform to certain standards.

- Some apps need to be kept out for legal reasons (BitTorrent) or to make parents more comfortable giving a device to their kids (porn).

I don't mind a review process inherently, but Apple has mismanaged the whole thing in about every conceivable way. If I had my druthers, all apps would be instantly approved, with malware/etc yanked remotely as needed. Failing that, a community review process might also work well.

- Reliability is still important on your desktop, and, though a mobile platform is more constrained by processing limits, it's up to the developer to respect those constraints. You don't get carte blanche to load forty terabyte files on a desktop app; you realize that your success depends on your ability to deliver a reliable app.

- Apple's HIG is actually pretty well-applied on OS X; from a strictly UI point of view I don't think they need to mandate you follow their stringent guidelines. Besides which, after the year or so of the AppStore in play, people have a good idea of what an "iPhone app" should look and feel like, which helps reinforce this.

- You can load up all kinds of filth, theoretically, on OS X. It happens. But it's not a big deal.

That said, I probably agree with your final point. I suspect Apple's throwing around a lot of solutions to the "AppStore problem", but since Apple tends never to leak anything until release, it's frustrating to be in the dark in the meantime.

I would like to see anyone do it better than Apple has. The old cliche applies: It's very easy to criticize. Not so easy to do what they have done.

- No way for small bug fixes to jump the queue.

- No way to pre-screen app concepts, so that the developer can get a rejection notice before doing the work.

- AFAIK, future releases are not routed through the same reviewer as previous versions, resulting in nonsensical rejections for previously existing characteristics.

- Again, AFAIK: No second pass for rejected apps, with an eye to the P.R. impact of the decision. I'm all for employee empowerment, but anecdotally, reviewers seem to make a lot of arbitrary decisions which the company backs with little examination.

- No feedback mechanism on your place in line. The wait would be a lot of more tolerable if I knew I knew how many days or weeks it should take, on average.

Simply put, Apple hasn't made developer relations a high priority, which is unfortunate; failure to do so in the 80s and 90s is part of what kept Macs in single-digit market share. iPhone may be king of the market now, but pissing off devs is not a good way to stay there.

- No way for small bug fixes to jump the queue.

There is, you can get them in within a few days. Not immediate, but it helps a lot.

- AFAIK, future releases are not routed through the same reviewer as previous versions, resulting in nonsensical rejections for previously existing characteristics.

Not the same reviewer. But just speaking in general, this is also a positive point: if an app should really be rejected, but wasn't due to a lapse by a certain reviewer, it can still be rejected by another reviewer in another version. Makes sense. (well, you can say just skip the review process totally or enforce some way to make every reviewer have the same standard, but we know the world's not perfect, and we make do with what we have).

- No feedback mechanism on your place in line. The wait would be a lot of more tolerable if I knew I knew how many days or weeks it should take, on average.

Actually it's been months since they started showing the average number of days X% of updates wait (~2 weeks for ~98% so far).

And for the past few weeks, they have started showing the status for each update posted. ie. pending review, reviewing, rejected, etc.

- Simply put, Apple hasn't made developer relations a high priority, which is unfortunate; failure to do so in the 80s and 90s is part of what kept Macs in single-digit market share. iPhone may be king of the market now, but pissing off devs is not a good way to stay there.

This isn't right. Apple has handled developer relations very well for OS X app developers. From the outside, it almost looks like iPhone dev relations is handled by an entirely different group of people.

Anyway, re: whopa, ah, I see what you mean now. I misread it as saying "Apple doesn't care about developers in general".

If there had been a streamlined review process, and there should be, it'd need to be automated, running the program through a test to see if private APIs were being used or traces remained in the background, which is stuff Apple should really check about.

The problem is there is no outlet for rejected software, but I don't think you are any more entitled to sell via the App Store than you are to demand that your product be sold in Apple Stores.

Um, you can bet there will be a "review process" if you approach Apple and ask them to distribute your OS X application.

There are few if any parallels between independent PC/Mac distribution and iPhone distribution. A better comparison would be with game consoles, where each manufacturer has a strict list of requirements before they'll give you a distribution key. In that light, Apple's policies are downright liberal.

The difference is you don't have a choice for iPhone distribution. You have to distribute through Apple.

There may not be many parallels between PC/Mac distribution and iPhone distribution-- but there should be.

I'm mostly playing devil's advocate here, because I agree that as long as a device is marketed as a general-purpose computing platform, it needs to be open to succeed in the long term. Still, Apple is under no obligation to distribute anything and everything that people throw at them.

What they are doing is not easy. And the results so far are amazing. There is the odd horror story, but overall it's pretty good, and getting better.

Personally I would prefer an open system. But for a closed system they are doing it pretty well.

So evolving systems can never be broken or bad? And even though the AppStore is not an ecosystem but rather a hierarchical social system, it should be mentioned that the equilibrium state of some ecosystems is death :-)