I LOVE my iPad, I LOVE my iPod / iPhone etc
I REALLY LOVE Codea!!!
But for f***s sake - I heard on Thursday about Apple’s updated policy regarding Dropbox (basically - because you CAN buy a dropbox sub from their site without Apple being able to take a 30% cut, all app’s with DB functionality are being rejected!!!) I was initially worried that the 1.4 update would get panned, I held off saying anything as I thought it would incite unnecessary worry and confusion. Turns out I was right!
How long will the brightest, most creative people continue to put up with this crap…
The sooner Apple get over themselves and stop being a bunch of dicks the better, yes they might be one of (if not the) best tech companies on the planet, but they have such greedy fed up policies regarding control and abuse of their core fan (read customer - that is PAYING customer) base makes it that Steve’s arrogance and bulls temper tantrums and unwillingness to “share his toys” will be his legacy for many years to come…
It’s just their policy. Any violation causes a rejection. I think the policy is a fair one — if you want to be available on their store, you agree to sell within their system and by their terms.
However they enforce it in a particularly ad-hoc manner, which can lead to people getting upset due to unexpected rejections. To be fair: we violated the policy by including Dropbox — though we were not aware of the external link and thought it was a safe SDK (that thousands of apps had used before us.)
I think their policy is okay, but they could certainly improve their developer relations. The worst part is not knowing if something is safe to implement, and not being able to get any feedback from Apple in advance.
Yep. Same here. I love Apple’s products, they simply the best. But I hate Apple’s policy, which in my opinions looks arrogant (instead of greedy). Well… life is not fair anyway. Just enjoy it.
I just don’t like Apple’s “Oh? You should have known” way of doing this. There has been no problem with Dropbox integration until now. More often than not, Apple seems to reject apps around the time they plan on getting in to that particular app space. I am not saying that they aren’t right, I just think Apple is showing they are a bit childish when it comes to approving/disapproving these things.
@Simeon - I can appreciate you guys might have had an inkling about the Dropbox issue (and I do appreciate why Apple has the checks on the app store), but it still stinks that they have to be so restrictive on such a petty issue - it’s not as if they haven’t already had their 30% cut from all the sales (and the IAP) already.
Codea was the FIRST app I put on my iPad and so far it’s the one that’s had the most use!!! Kudos to TLL for making such a cool product available!
Anyway that’s my rant over for the day - I’m just hoping that you can find an adequate solution to getting 1.4 passed as soon as possible, in the mean time, it’s back to coding for me.
Jon…
PS. Can a forum admin / mod please close this thread before it degenerates too far
Thanks for your kind comments @TechDojo. I’ve sunk this thread so new posts won’t bump it to the top of the pile. Hopefully we’ll be able to get 1.4 through by sometime next week!
One of the reasons Apple’s “walled garden” has been so phenomenally successful is that their #1 concern (no, really!) is the quality of the customer experience. They want to be sure that Joe End-User has absolutely no doubt they can spend money in the App store and not be concerned that they’re getting malware, or a rip-off game, or A BAD DEAL.
That’s the root of the Dropbox fiasco - Apple wants to be sure their customers don’t have to worry that they could get something cheaper elsewhere than they can in the App store.
So - apple prohibits you from linking to a web page where you could get the things you can get in the App Store (and Dropbox space is something the Dropbox App offers as an in-app purchase) directly - because if they allowed it, you’d have no real assurance of price. In addition, as the cynics point out, people would say “Well, I can give apple 30%, or I can set up my own page, sell it 10% cheaper, and keep the remaining 20%”. And then apple is doing all of the things they do (and running the App store, with it’s demands on servers and bandwidth and the push notifier and the advertising and the credit card processing and so on isn’t cheap) for free.
The root issue here is Dropbox - they screwed up by linking to the purchase page, and they know they did, and they’re fixing it. This isn’t a new policy. And frankly, it’s not a bad policy. Apple has PLENTY of bad policies if you want to rant, but this isn’t really one of them.
One thing to keep in mind with Codea - when we use it, we’re moving into the developer world a bit, and TLL is kind enough to share with us some behind-the-scenes details of their experience with getting Codea approved. Developers are LESS IMPORTANT to Apple than end-users - end of story. Sucks a bit for developers, but it makes the App Store ecosystem on a whole better for the people paying Apple and the developers money - and it’s hard to argue with that. There are frustrations that developers are exposed to that end-users don’t see - don’t flip out too much about it, it’s part of doing business on the largest portable software platform in the world. I’ll bet if you went to developers and asked them “Would you be happier if the App store wasn’t available”, the answer would be a resounding NO - it is, in large part, what makes the platform successful. It’s worth some frustration. Software development can be frustratig at times, for lots of reasons. We’re used to it.
@Bortels - point well made, and as an Apple customer I can appreciate (and do benefit from) their sandbox approach - although even WITH the sandbox there still exists the capacity for Apps to do “naughty” things (it’s just more difficult). On the other hand as an Apple developer (both via Codea AND directly) the restrictions placed do seem a little draconian and the capacity for Apple to bully and pricefix is just as feasible.
However as a friend of mine was fond of saying - “it’s their bat, ball and wicket” and if we want to play in their garden we have to play by their rules (and it is a very nice garden)
Still getting rejected because of someone elses (Dropbox’s) failings / mistakes still sucks.
