Longtime reader and tipster The Reptile wrote in to tell us about Fortune’s coverage of the iPhone Amber Alert app and its problem getting into the App Store:
Now Jonathan Zdziarski, one of the original iPhone hackers and the author of several O’Reilly books, has hit on something that might work. It’s an open letter to Steve Jobs pleading with Apple’s CEO to speed up approval of the Amber Alert iPhone app that’s been sitting in the queue since February 14. The application uses GPS location information to funnel sightings of missing children to the nearest law enforcement agency as quickly as possible.
Has Apple dropped the ball? There doesn’t seem to be a duplicates functionality, or official Amber Alert app that could explain the problems this time (see PodCaster and StarPlayr), does there? Is Apple that understaffed and ill-prepared in the face of 25,000 apps, or are the $99 novelty apps and iPod touch-highlighted games making so much money, no one really cares about the rest?
Full text of the letter after the break…
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While the recent coverage of Steve Jobs and his health has ranged from the respectful to downright tabloid blogism, Apple and their CEO have remained their usual utterly-silent selves. Until now. In one of his rare open letters — and the first ever on personal matters — Steve Jobs says:
I’ve decided to share something very personal with the Apple community so that we can all relax and enjoy the show tomorrow.
The letter does not directly say he dropped out of Macworld for health reasons, and therefore technically should not vindicate some of the more disturbing speculation we’ve seen lately. Jobs concludes by reaffirming his goal of always putting Apple first, and hopes the Apple community supports him in his recovery. Apple’s Board of Directors put out a simultaneous release re-stating their support as well.
For TiPb’s part, we hope everyone joins us in wishing Steve Jobs a quick and complete recovery, and a healthy and happy 2009.
Not content to simply produce great (and great looking) software, Craig Hockenberry continues to knock it out of the park on his furbo.org blog as well, this time with an open letter to Apple CEO Steve Jobs on App Store Pricing:
As an iPhone developer who’s been in the App Store since its launch, I’m starting to see a trend that concerns me: developers are lowering prices to the lowest possible level in order to get favorable placement in iTunes. This proliferation of 99¢ “ringtone apps” is affecting our product development.
This is something we’ve been following on TiPb, and something that both interests and concerns us greatly. The App Store is quite literally a killer app on the iPhone, but competition of revving up from all sides, including Android Market and the BlackBerry series of offerings.
Check out Hockenberry’s complete article, and let us know what you think Apple could do to properly incentivize developers to make the next Excel, the next Quark, the next killer app?
Or should they? Do you prefer your $0.99 apps, and don’t really care if we ever see anything more?
