With all the hubbub surrounding the App Store these days, the blogophiles among us may forget that, for casual users, everything is pretty sweet. Browse. Tap. Download. Launch. For mobile gaming fans this is especially true. Check out the Top Apps list, and you’ll routinely see games hogging most of the spots. Don’t think this has escaped attention either. Says Block Breaker Deluxe (available via the iTunes App Store) developer Gameloft:
With some competitors due out next year, Apple is looking to capitalize on their virtual monopoly of these types of games, and with the success of their iphone games so far, they look certain to sustain a strong share of the market for smartphone games for some time to come.
As if to prove their point, Block Breaker Deluxe looks to be a bright, innovative take on the classic genre, and will no doubt appeal to the casual gaming audience the iPhone (and Apple) is hitting so well with as of late.
Whether the push from Android Market eventually forces Apple to change their current developer relations process or not, in the gaming space at least, everything on the iPhone is apps!
A while back TUAW reported that an iPhone programming course was being created. Well that course became a reality and they now have 80 students signed up and ready to start developing killer apps this fall. Along with the programming course, Stanford has designed a project that contains a series of apps for their students… The Stanford iApps Project. These apps are currently in beta testing and should be in the App Store soon.
A suite of five software applications developed by students is now being tested on campus. Two of them, for managing course registration and bills, are intended for students. The other three will allow access to Stanford’s searchable campus map, get team scores and schedules, and check listings in the university’s online directory, StanfordWho.
All of this makes me want to go back to college all over again. A class for developing iPhone apps, a series of apps on my iPhone for me to use just to make my learning experience that much better? Where do I sign up?
Start alienating your developer base and there’s two ways to handle it: the right way, and the current Apple way. Delicious Monster’s Wil Shipley offers up what should be required reading for both Apple PR and App Store staff, on how to go about the right way: let the market decide. Apple, much to their discredit on this one, has chosen pretty much the exact opposite. Macrumors reports:
Apple has now started labeling their rejection letters with Non-Disclosure (NDA) warnings: THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS MESSAGE IS UNDER NON-DISCLOSURE
That’s right. Apple’s answer to upset developers? Shut them up. It’s the business equivalent of not only Apple putting their heads in the sand, but yanking the developers heads down with them. iSigh.
And if developers choose to use (or abuse) the Ad Hoc distribution method to provision 100 specific licenses at a time as a way of circumventing the App Store? Well, Podcaster got away with it for a while (read: 13,000 whiles!) but TUAW now says Apple has turned off the spigot on that one as well. Podcaster: no more licenses for you!
NetNewsWire’s Brent Simmons says this behavior is beneath the Apple he knows and loves. John Gruber, by way of linking to Simmons’ article, says the situation is beginning to give him “the Fear”. We know how, and what, both of them feel.
Hey, Eddy Cue: Didn’t Apple put you in charge of the App Store? You did great on iTunes and are fixing the MobileMe. Can’t you put foot to trouser seat on this fiasco before it drives all the best developers (and customers!) to You Know Where?
Following on the heels of PodcasterGate, another App has been denied entry into Apple’s iTunes App Store: Mailwrangler. The reason, according to Apple (as cited by developer Angelo DiNardi, via Daring Fireball):
… Your application duplicates the functionality of the built-in iPhone application Mail without providing sufficient differentiation or added functionality, which will lead to user confusion. …
And:
… There is also no way to edit an account once it has been added. …
The latter is a gimme, and the developer acknowledges it, though feels is a capricious enforcement. The former?
Many developers are still in an uproar over Apple’s tight-fisted control of the App Store, and others are distracted by counting the huge heaps of money they’re making, and Google’s “open” Android Market looms on the horizon, we’re left to wonder how this will shake out in the ecosystem.
Some have theorized that Apple rejected Podcaster because iTunes is a revenue stream for Apple, and they don’t want any precedence set for bypassing iTunes, even for “free” podcasts. But MobileMail’s Gmail functionality doesn’t generate any revenue, does it? And all the calculator, weather, etc. App’s already duplicate functionality, so what’s going on here?
Atari’s legal team is getting quite a workout lately, just yesterday they demanded that 4 more App Store games be removed with more likely to come. It was not long ago that TiPb reported that two other notables were forcefully removed, Tris and PhoneSaber.
The 4 apps kicking the bucket this time around due to “infringements against the pong and breakout copyrights” are as follows (iTunes links): BreakClassic, BreakTouch 3D, Super Pong 2, and 3D Vector Pong.
As of today, all 4 of these apps are still available via the App Store. So get them while you can!
Daring Fireball points to this Twitter from Raven Zachary as a reason why developers will put up with Apple’s capricious and communication-challenged App Store:
Trism, the $5 gravity/tilt-assisted iPhone puzzle game by Steve Demeter, has made $250,000 since July 11.
We’re pointing to DF because they’re right.
And for more on the other side of the App Store debate, check out the latest episode of MacBreak Weekly from TWiT, where Scott and Alex take complaining developers to task, pointing to PodcasterGate as something that could threaten Apple’s revenue stream if Amazon or another major company sited it as precedence for releasing their own music catcher Apps, bypassing iTunes, instigating Apple shareholder lawsuits, and other corporate level intrigue.
Agree or disagree, all sides of the issue are definitely upping the debate. (And Trism may just have given one side 250K more arguments in their favor…)
Seems it wasn’t a hair that broke the blogerati’s back, it was an App. Or more precisely, it was Apple’s denial of the Podcaster App that let loose the floodgates of negative internet reaction. Or even more precisely, it is the continued lack of certainty among developers as to what can and will be denied by Apple, leading many to reconsider the return on investment of hours upon hours of coding with 11th hour rejection hanging perpetually over their heads, like a virtual Sword of Damocles.
I can’t see how distributing the program will hurt Apple. If anything it will make the iPhone a tad more valuable. On the other hand, treating developers capriciously is most certainly going to discourage them from spending nights and weekends working on new and useful applications that may give more people reasons to buy an iPhone.
Sure, the App Store is growing twice as fast as iTunes Music (though starting from zero is an easy way to generate an opening curve), and may well hit a billion units moved by 2009, but with Android’s open marketplace on the horizon, and Microsoft me-too’ing their way in with Skymarket, there could be alternatives. If Apple doesn’t take a page from their MobileMe fiasco playbook and rapidly standardize and clarify the rules of the game, they could lose their early lead. And that could cost them the Mobile Internet Platform dominance they so currently crave.
Don’t get us wrong. It’s Apple’s platform and they, like a Nintendo with the Wii, have the absolute right to approve or deny anything developed for their platform. But developers have the same right to stop developing for a platform they don’t think serves their best interests. And consumers have the same right to stop buying it for the same reason. As with the Blacklist push-back, that will be the ultimate officiator of this debate.
And a terse one-line email from Steve may not fix things if Apple waits too long…
One of the biggest complaints I hear regarding the iPhone? You guessed it! Where is the picture mail (MMS)?! A while back I started a forum thread that told readers how to send a picture with a email attached to any cell phone, to any network, from the iPhone. But the truth of the matter is, MMS is really not all that it is cracked up to be. (it is convenient though, I will give it that). I’m used to not having MMS on my Sprint Windows Mobile devices so when I made the switch to an iPhone it was never a big deal. But for some, it’s a major deal.
Well now there is a nice little MMS alternative called Flutter, available on the App Store. It allows you to send pictures to any cell phone number in your contacts app. And it’s free, which is always a bonus.
While Flutter does have some potential in it, email is still the way to go. I will however, be paying close attention to future updates… like the ability to receive pictures maybe?
Null River sends word that Apple has officially responded to them (at long last) and the response is sadly what we expected:
Looks like Apple has decided they will not be allowing any tethering applications in the AppStore. As such, NetShare will not be available in the iTunes AppStore. We are seeing a lot of similar reports from various developers who’s applications were abruptly removed and banned from the AppStore without any violations of the terms of service. This is all unfortunate news for the iPhone platform end-users.
Of course, this also bodes ill for PdaNet and any other folks looking to create tethering apps. Just ain’t gonna happen, folks.
The App Store cancellation / banning / NDA / mystery is starting to approach critical mass. Dave Winer nails the real issue here: there’s no way to app developers to find out whether or not they’re going to even be allowed to sell their app via the App Store until after they’ve put all the work into creating it. Developers are all sitting “Before the Law,” hoping the gatekeeper will suddenly become reasonable and rational. For tethering apps, at least, that hope is in vain. We’re still holding out hope for Podcaster and, well, for a lot of others.
