Posts tagged state of the apps
Apple Cracking Down on Mass Produced, Low Functionality Apps?
Mar 8th
TechCrunch is reporting that companies who mass produce (or provide tools and templates for the mass production of) “cookie cutter” apps are hearing that they need to add differentiation and functionality or risk Apple not allowing them into the iTunes App Store. Jason Kincaid says:
Between the developers I spoke to, the consensus was this: Apple doesn’t appear to be opposed to ‘app generators’ and templates per se, but in the last month or so it has started cracking down on basic applications that are little more than RSS feeds or glorified business cards. In short, Apple doesn’t want people using native applications for things that a basic web app could accomplish. For some of these services that’s bad news, because that’s exactly the sort of application they produce; any new applications they submit are going to get rejected. But all hope isn’t lost for them, provided they can make their apps more useful.
Kincaid says Appmakr for one has taken suggestions from Apple to improve things like in-app purchases, instant notifications, offline access, and landscape viewing modes and describe the process as positive. Other services apparently haven’t had as much luck.
The move seems to be part of Apple’s ongoing efforts to increase the quality of the App Store experience and protect the brand. Much like the removal of sex-based apps last month, “cookie cutter” apps could seen as low value, sometimes verging on spam. For consumers it could result in a cleaner App Store and ultimately better apps (more than just re-packaged RSS feeds) but at the expense of quantity and choice. For developers, it’s likely another in a list of things they’ll consider before building on Apple’s platform.
If Apple is indeed working on revamping the mass produced app, what think you?
Apple Cracking Down on Mass Produced, Low Functionality Apps? is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.
TiPb – The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog
UPDATED: Upgrade Pricing Finally Coming to App Store?
Mar 4th
UPDATE: Or not, as this dialog’s been around for a while as per 9to5Mac’s @llsethj. Sad now.
ORIGINAL: Developer Frasier Spears posted the above “curious” iTunes dialog to Twitter. It appeared when he hit “Update All”. We have no way of knowing exactly it means, but we’re hoping it means upgrade pricing is finally coming to the app store.
As background, one of the problems still facing developers has been the inability to offer paid upgrades. Either they had to give away new versions for free, or they had to create new apps with no way to discount the price to existing users.
That’s led some developers to slow down or stop making major improvements to their apps (since they can’t count on upgrade revenue), and it’s led to backlashes when releasing new versions as new apps.
In an ideal App Store, developers could choose to give existing users a discount when they upgraded.
UPDATED: Upgrade Pricing Finally Coming to App Store? is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.
TiPb – The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog
Apple Removing Wi-Fi Scanning Apps from App Store
Mar 4th
Cult of Mac reports that Apple has begun removing apps from the iTunes App Store that scan for Wi-Fi access points. It looks like these apps are being removed due to their use of private APIs, which is prohibited by the iPhone SDK agreement. This would make it similar to the recent removal of apps that misused the iPhone camera DCIM folder to store and exchange documents.
There’s been some suggestion, however, that list reflects a policy change from Apple closer to the recent removal of sex-based apps.
Our speculation is that Apple has either added the Wi-Fi private APIs to their static analysis tool, or has just finally gotten around to checking for them. That would make it appear like a new policy when it’s actually the originally agreement finally being enforced.
Some developers believe long term lack of action by Apple equals tacit approval for private API use. Those beliefs likely have to start changing. When Apple makes an API public, they’re guaranteeing that developers can use them and have faith Apple won’t break them (and the apps built on them) in a future update. Private APIs are the opposite — Apple can and will change them at any point, breaking apps that try to use them when they shouldn’t. In some cases Apple is working on public versions of private APIs and will release them in future versions of the iPhone OS. In other cases they aren’t — sometimes for security, other times just for proprietary reasons.
In either case, this isn’t the first and likely won’t be last set of rejections. While we feel for developers, we feel more for users who may have come to depend on the functionality of these apps.
If you’re a developer who’s dealing with this and have a better take on the situation, please let us know!
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]
Apple Removing Wi-Fi Scanning Apps from App Store is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.
TiPb – The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog
Apple Adding “Explicit” Category to App Store?
Feb 24th
Cult of Mac is reporting that Apple has added an “Explicit” category to iTunes Connect, the portal through which developers submit and manage their App Store apps. According to their developer source:
“It’s available for selection when adding a new app to iTunesConnect although I can’t see any sign of it in the actual App Store yet.”
MacRumors says they’ve confirmed the information, so where does this leave us now? Apple removed 5000 sex-based apps last week and stirred up a ton of reaction (cheers and jeers alike), only to come up with an organizational alternative a few days (and hundreds of blogs posts, thousands of tweets and comments) later? If it wasn’t a reconsideration, wouldn’t they have just added the category and reshuffled the apps without all the fuss and muss? Or did they want to force a re-submission to start the new category off with a clean slate?
Either way, hopefully this will include a better ratings implementation to go with it, so parental controls can turn off “explicit” apps without turning off apps that access the web along with them.
What think you?
Apple Adding “Explicit” Category to App Store? is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.
TiPb – The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog
Closed vs. Open, Control vs. Chaos — What’s Best for Apple, the iPhone and iPad?
Feb 13th
Yesterday at Macworld two events helped clarify something I’ve been discussing with Dieter for a while now — Apple, the iPhone and iPad, and closed vs. open systems, control vs. chaos. These two events were a presentation by John Gruber of Daring Fireball concerning the 10 biggest problems faced by Apple, and a brief conversation with Leo Laporte of TWiT about Google Buzz.
As part of his Round Robin BlackBerry review, Dieter departed on a rant about BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) of epic proportions. A closed communications protocol, he argued, was untenable. BlackBerry users create incredible amounts of content in BBM (yes, chat is content) but it’s all completely closed off and owned by RIM. If you leave BlackBerry, you can’t take your BBM content with you. If RIM ever disappears, all your BBM content is lost. Something like Gmail on the other hand, works across platform and if you switch from BlackBerry to iPhone to Android, you enter your Gmail account and everything is there. Since you can access it via standard protocols like POP and IMAP, you can also make local copies and upload them to a different service (i.e. upload your mail to a non-Google IMAP folder).
Laporte made a similar comment about Twitter and Facebook. If either Twitter or Facebook were to fail, all your status updates, all your wall posts, all your friends and those you follow and/or follow you would be gone.
I don’t know if Google Buzz will prove to be an open protocol and system for sharing status, location, and relationships, and certainly it’s implementation shows signs of the typical Google “release now, fix later, polish never” model, but something needs to.
And this brings me rather circuitously back to Apple and the iPhone. As much as a certain segment decries Apple as “closed”, in terms of protocols they’re remarkably open. They use IMAP for mail, and open-sourced CalDAV and CardDAV for calendaring and contacts. They use WebDAV for web directories and WebKit for Safari. iChat supports most IM protocols, including Jabber. They use BSD Linux and the Darwin kernel for the core of Mac and iPhone.
Apple is generally built on top of open technologies, and one of their core strengths is melding that open architecture with tightly controlled (i.e. proprietary) user interface layers (and developer APIs, and App Store review processes).
For some, that last part is an absolute deal breaker. But they have Ubantu and Open Moko. (Yes, even Android is closed — you can’t muck about with Gmail or Google Maps apps). For mainstream users, however, the front end, the user experience, “just works” to the point where it’s become a cliche.
I said it previously in my Round Robin summation, to use Google you must give up privacy, to use Apple you must give up control. (I don’t even want to think about what I’m giving up to use Google on Apple!)
So proprietary interfaces to open technologies — how does that work for us? What happens when we use something not controlled by Apple?
John Gruber suggested AT&T as an example. Indeed, he listed it a one of Apple’s problems. Now, some people get great AT&T service while others have connection problems that have become near-legendary. Either way, it’s hurt media and mainstream perceptions about the iPhone.
Gruber also mentioned Big Media (movie and TV studios, music labels) as a problem. They want to charge more than the market will bear (certainly enough to make free-as-in-torrent an alternative) and make less available via iTunes than via a retro 1980s corner video store.
Is it a coincidence that some of the main aspects of the iPhone and iTunes that Apple has absolutely no control over are some that cause the greatest amount of user frustration?
(The App Store and its review process mostly create developer frustration, and Gruber listed this as a problem as well, though one that’s slightly improving since the holiday shut-down).
So, we come back to and down to Apple liking to control the user-facing aspects of the iPhone (and iPod touch, and soon, iPad) but using and promoting open standards for a lot of the technology underneath. While this approach might clash philosophically with some users (and again, Android, Palm, etc. aren’t open, they’re just more open) and practically for others (power users who want the control themselves), its proved remarkably effective for casual, mainstream users, and for power-users willing to give up some control for a better experience.
Except for that part about AT&T and Hollywood, but then those are controlled with little concern for user experience…
Closed vs. Open, Control vs. Chaos — What’s Best for Apple, the iPhone and iPad? is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.
TiPb – The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog
Apple to iPhone Developers: So… Happy with the App Store?
Feb 9th
TechCrunch is reporting that Apple has started sending developers invitations to take a satisfaction survey with regards to the App Store in general, and the App Store approval process in specific.
Apple asks you to answer with: “Very dissatisfied,” “Somewhat dissatisfied,” “Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied,” “Somewhat satisfied,” “Very satisfied,” or “Don’t know.”
They also ask, “What one thing could Apple do to make the iPhone Developer Program better?” and give you a text box to write anything you want. A few months ago they certainly would have gotten some interesting responses there.
Indeed and as we suspected, “wait for developers and bloggers to get really ticked off and then have Phil Schiller email them” wasn’t a scalable solution. TechCrunch speculates that the improvements in the App Store approval process starting 2010 involve more and better trained staff, since approval speed has improved and reportedly even communications between Apple and developers is better.
So, if you’re a developer, what will you be telling Apple? And if you’re not a developer, does it matter to you that Apple is trying to improve their developer relations?
Apple to iPhone Developers: So… Happy with the App Store? is a story by TiPb. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.
TiPb – The #1 iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch Blog
UPDATE: Apple has Stanza App Remove DCIM Work-around for USB Sharing
Feb 2nd
UPDATE: PatternMusic reveals that the issue is (mis)use of the DCIM folder (digital camera image folder — where your camera roll pictures are stored) to transfer non-image related files.
Apple, however, precludes apps from reading or writing data files to any other place except the app’s “sandbox” document folder through their developer agreement.
ORIGINAL: TechCrunch reports that the latest update to the Amazon-owned Stanza eBook reader [Free - iTunes link], version 2.1, removed USB sharing as demanded by Apple’s iTunes App Store:
Just for your reference: the feature enabled users to transfer books in the ePub or eReader format to their mobile devices using a USB cable.
I’m sure Apple has good reasons to prevent people from being able to transfer files to iPhone and iPod Touch devices using a USB cable, and I believe this isn’t the first time they’ve asked developers of apps with this or similar features to remove them for new users. That said, I’m not 100% certain which rules were broken here, and since Apple requested Lexcycle not to discuss specifics we’re left guessing why Cupertino had an issue with the USB syncing features.
Existing Stanza owners who want to keep the feature should, of course, ignore the update. Give us your take in the comments!
(Thanks to Fassy for the tip!)
This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.
UPDATE: Apple has Stanza App Remove DCIM Work-around for USB Sharing
