This is so true. I've done some minor iPad consulting recently, but been asked for comments on several projects. I've found it only fair to prefix my replies with "I can't give you any guarantee that, having spent this money, you'll get anything. Apple uses a hidden list of rejection reasons, and enforces it capriciously". I rarely find companies going ahead with their developments.
Apple may be keeping some garbage out, but they're losing many good apps that probably would have been accepted, if the client had a hard and fast guidelines list to check against. They're also losing developer mindset. They are, in effect, FUDing their own developer base. It's a remarkable strategy, and I can't see how it's anything other than highly damaging.
I'm going through the App Review gauntlet now. My concerns at the end of the development, when doing the last checks against the few official things Apple will say regarding review (and against the web horror stories) were not "What would make a better app". They were:
- Will I get rejected for this icon? I think it's clear, but Apple might squint then claim it's too similar to their XYZ icon. I better change it to this other one, which is less good but at least entirely different
- As I fetch data from the Internet, and someone might post an offensive image before the moderators nuke it, I best set the Age Rating to 17+ (even though I've see an offensive image once in the system, and it lasted 5 minutes).
- I did say "Open in Safari" in my browser invoking popups, which my iPhone addicted users will find clearest. However, Apple randomly reject you for using their trademarks, so I better make it the less clear "Open in Browser"
and a dozen other quality reducing changes that are forced on me by the huge uncertainly about what's "allowed" and what will be understood by their team. In the three days it took me to change my "high quality" app (well, I think so :), I don't doubt the App Store admitted another 10 flashlights and 5 Fart apps.
I love the iPhone and iPad as a consumer. I like the technology as a developer (though I would prefer not to be 100% tied to Objective C). The "business" person and ethnical geek in me hates it with a passion. It's creating a horrible cognitive dissonance that I'm currently tempted to correct by going Android as soon as they have an a decent iPad clone.
Your point is very valid, and I would imagine that prevents really high-quality and groundbreaking applications to be built. However that would not explain why a majority of applications are sub-par quality.
If I was a developer and wanted to make a lot of money, I would either go ahead and build a perfect, innovative app and market it well, or basically churn out app-after-app, which is cheap, redundant and has very little difference between each one.
I haven't personally used the app store much, but from what I saw, a lot of the newly produced applications were merely a bunch of titillating pictures, or a glorified unit converter.
I've seen and read about people make huge amounts of money from applications and websites which offer little or no content, but capitalize on knowledge of what people are looking for - and by doing this in very large and persistent quantities.
The quality problem with the App Store isn't that there isn't pre-approval – the problem is that they pretty much allow anything.
In all seriousness, the experience of iOS developers who play by the rules, and even those who just push them a little bit, is Apple allows pretty much anything, even if it's low quality. There were some blunders at first, but they're pretty settled now. The last mis-step was the banning of 'widget apps' on the iPad (http://www.macworld.com/article/151680/2010/06/myframe_rejec...), and that was quickly reversed. (it's available on the App Store, go check)
Philosophically, the idea that I have to bend over for Apple's approval is a problem, but in practice all they're really doing nowadays is making sure you're app isn't crashy, and doesn't link heavily against private APIs – hell, most of the time they'll let you use private API. Even that isn't an issue to me, because their private API is private for a reason – it's not done yet, and is subject to further revision that could break compatibility in future OS revisions, so if you're using it you're essentially screwing your customer. Your customer isn't smart enough to know you're are a lazy idiot, they'll just assume it's Apple's problem – Apple sold them the device, and the app, and made the OS upgrade. If they can exercise their power in small ways like this so they don't end up wasting engineering cycles like Microsoft (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html), disassembling apps and writing special cases into the OS to fit apps that insist on breaking the contract of private API being private.
The quality issue is separate from the approval issue. The quality issue stems from the fact that everything appears on the same 'shelf', essentially. Apple can't censor what's appearing in the 'newly released' section in each category, but they can and do feature apps that are good top and center in the editorialized sections of the App Store. There's plenty of people doing great work, making great apps, and making amazing money. iTeleport (interviewed on 37signals here: http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2421-bootstrapped-profitable-...), has cleared over $1 million selling VNC software which isn't even probably the most 'popular' on the store. OmniGroup sold over $1 million worth of OmniFocus for iPhone copies some time ago (I can't find a link), and must really like what they're seeing because they've spent the last 6 months working around the clock on apps for the iPad (OmniGraffle, OmniGraphSketcher, and OmniFocus). tap tap tap earned ~$150k on Convert in it's first month almost a year ago, and they have a wide portfolio of similar quality utility apps. I have no idea, but they're probably clearing at least $250k/month with the expansion in the number of iOS devices and their portfolio over the last year. For every 100 apps that some crapware developer is pushing out, there is 1 absolute gem available.
Another problem is, if you're not a talented developer, it's much easier to dump piece of crap after piece of crap on the store and just hope someone dumb enough to search for random stuff on the store and buys it. Personally, this isn't fulfilling to me, so after releasing 3 relatively simple apps in 6 months, about a year ago I started heavily investing my time in writing software that allows iOS devices to act as networked point of sale machines for restaurants. It's been a rough 9 months since I only have my income from the App Store and working as a waiter to go on, and my income from the App Store dropped off the map after I stopped investing time in working on my old apps. However, when I'm done with this, there's a possibility to make tons of money given the poor state and technology of the point of sale industry, and even if I don't make it, an app selling 2-3 copies a week for $20 a pop makes me a hell of a lot better off than trying to make money selling crapware at $0.99.
> the problem is that they pretty much allow anything
1. That's not a problem, they just need to allow curated subsections of the appstore itself, which allow people to go through and make subsections of the store which are highly reviewed for quality.
>Another problem is, if you're not a talented developer, it's much easier to dump piece of crap after piece of crap on the store and just hope someone dumb enough to search for random stuff on the store and buys it.
That's the case with the web too. That's why there aren't comprehensive lists of the web, there is google, reddit, and hacker news. We just need the app version of those apps.
Slightly off topic, but that project sounds quite interesting. Shoot me an email at steve at stevenwei.com if you want to chat about it (I have experience in this space).
>However that would not explain why a majority of applications are sub-par quality.
Oh I can explain that: Investment is low, therefore finacial risk is low. That's pretty much the case in any low risk investment client with any product. I mean, look at the web.
> The Appstore is full of crap because apple won't pre-approve things, so no one will risk doing "big" things as they're afraid of rejection.
You're right that fear of rejection deters bigger, riskier apps from being made, but that has nothing to do with the App Store being full of crap. Bigger, riskier apps that are not crap would make up a tiny percentage of apps in the store, and Sturgeon's Law would still apply.
Part of the issue is that there aren't enough "Stores within a store". Apple needs to explicitly allow people making their own app stores that are strict subsections of the full appstore.
1. no one will risk doing "big" things as they're afraid of rejection.
2. If an app store has <200K-budget-apps, it will be full of junk.
3. If Apple pre-approved apps and more >200K-budget-apps were in the app-store, the app-store would not be full of low-quality apps.
The first assertion is a bit extreme. I understand that some big companies may hesitate to create apps that aren't pre-approved, but many other big companies (ranging from Volkswagen to Pizza Hut to New York Times to Microsoft) haven't suffered from any inhibitions when it comes to creating iPhone apps.
The second and third assumptions seem flat-out wrong. On (2) you can create high-quality apps on a small budget and on (3) the presence of high-quality apps (whether low-budget or >200K-budget) isn't going to dissuade junkware publishers.
These aren't assumptions. These are business I have personally dealt with in my product development company who have made this exact decision for this exact reason. We always have to council iterative development, etc, instead of a large impressive release, as Apple is capricious.
I have companies who've been willing to write Apple a 20k check to get a go-nogo call on an app before developing it.
>2. If an app store has <200K-budget-apps, it will be full of junk
No, I'm not assuming there is junk, I can see this just by looking. I can also see companies actively not publishing apps due to the rejection risk.
>3. If Apple pre-approved apps and more >200K-budget-apps were in the app-store, the app-store would not be full of low-quality apps.
No, I'm saying it would be more reasonable to invest more in your applications. In the current rejection climate, it is not reasonable to assume 30-80k is safe if you make an app. You may have to spend 50% again to get up to whatever apple thinks is copacetic. Apple may change policies while you're developing an app (One client of mine had this exact issue).
>On (2) you can create high-quality apps on a small budget
You can? Small apps can be high quality, for sure, but are you pricing your developer time? Can you not imagine apps that involve a lot of developer time (for instance, work with lots of external API's, work with intensive processing, do something completely new).
> the presence of high-quality apps (whether low-budget or >200K-budget) isn't going to dissuade junkware publishers.
No, it's not going to dissuade them, look at the web for that. However the issue is people have a disincentive to invest in the platform, which means there are proportionately more crapware people than non-crapware people.
>The first assertion is a bit extreme. I understand that some big companies may hesitate to create apps that aren't pre-approved, but many other big companies (ranging from Volkswagen to Pizza Hut to New York Times to Microsoft) haven't suffered from any inhibitions when it comes to creating iPhone apps.
You think so? I've talked to several large companies, some of which household names, which have made the OPPOSITE decision when making apps. The companies that have made apps in general make them when they're clearly safe from rejection, which not everything in the world is.
Additionally, relatively recently, apple made a A company B Company C company D company classification system for processing rejections. This means something like PizzaHut can put out a non-standard app where RandomCo3 can't.
No, they are assumptions. You are making assumptions and imo questionable conclusions.
I specifically agreed that some companies would hesitate to create apps that weren't pre-approved. So we have no disagreement on that point.We disagree on your assumptions.
You are also factually wrong on the assertion that "no one will risk doing "big" things as they're afraid of rejection". Look up the definition of "no one" and you'll see that it is different from "the businesses that gte910h has spoken to".
You are also wrong on your assumptions about <200K apps.
>>On (2) you can create high-quality apps on a small budget
>You can?
Yes, several other people have also created high-quality iPhone apps.Many of them were done with budgets less than 200K.
You've completely mischaracterized my comment, which is why those aren't my assumptions, as you're thinking I'm saying something more comprehensive than I am. I've shared my observations, but those aren't my assumptions.
I am merely commenting on one of many influences on the store which lead to it filling with crap, not the Unified Field Theory of Apps which explains every trend in the store. I know there are lots of OTHER reasons, which you'll see in my comments all over this page as well.
I'm in no way saying apps cost 200k. I am saying some concepts do, and the apple approval process drives them out.
Most apps cost 1-25k when done non-agency and 15-90k when done through an agency.
I am not, in any way, saying small apps can't be good, nor am I saying I'm an omniscient being. I'm saying I talk to people all day long about this, I watch them choose to go low quality over high quality sometimes, and I see the decision as they make it. It's not just companies I talk to, its companies the 100 or so other iPhone devs I know talk to. Same story all over the place.
I AM saying given the level of limited funds people put into apps, it's not surprising they chose to spend their limited budget on increasing functionality rather than making a smaller subset of functionality work very well (aka, Quality), especially since limited functionality is yet another reason your app gets rejected, no matter how pretty it is. Given the chance even if you do everything right, you will still get a rejection, it's not surprising they spend X instead of 250% of X on their app, as its a business risk. If you don't think people spending 20-50% of what they would if there was no chance of rejection effects quality, you're asleep in a haywagon.
If you spend 200k of your company's money then Apple rejects you and refuses to publish your app, then you lose your job in most companies.
I have this conversation with large large companies over and over.