The problem with Apple's recent fumblings is that it leaves the iOS platform wide open to slippery slope scenarios. While Readability was flat-out denied upon app submission, others were yanked post-approval, which creates a Damoclean sword in the minds of every current and prospective app developer.
You don't need to play the degrees of separation game; Marco's Instapaper subscriptions can be rendered null and void at the whims of Apple's incongruous and incomprehensible "policy".
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As a user, it's also unsettling, because I honestly don't know where this leaves current and future apps. I recently read that Apple allowed a tabloid's app that contains a daily photo of a nude woman. What happened to Apple's no-pornography policy? Remember Steve's e-mail that replied that people looking for such filth could try out Android?
This is the App Store brouhaha all over again, except it now affects approved apps as well, meaning that we as users and developers will live in perpetual fear of a trap door opening beneath the most cherished apps. Not for sake of consistency or "policy", but the behest of whatever incomprehensible whims the guys at Infinite Loop have.
That's a little fuzzier, though. Steve said he's not trying to get a chunk of SaaS. So is Instapaper a content subscription or SaaS? Seems closer to the latter to me, but definitely concede the point that this uncertainty is bad for the platform.
At the same time: Paying out $2 billion to devs and having 200 million credit card accounts means never having to say you're sorry.
The problem with Apple's recent fumblings is that it leaves the iOS platform wide open to slippery slope scenarios. While Readability was flat-out denied upon app submission, others were yanked post-approval, which creates a Damoclean sword in the minds of every current and prospective app developer.
You don't need to play the degrees of separation game; Marco's Instapaper subscriptions can be rendered null and void at the whims of Apple's incongruous and incomprehensible "policy".
---
As a user, it's also unsettling, because I honestly don't know where this leaves current and future apps. I recently read that Apple allowed a tabloid's app that contains a daily photo of a nude woman. What happened to Apple's no-pornography policy? Remember Steve's e-mail that replied that people looking for such filth could try out Android?
This is the App Store brouhaha all over again, except it now affects approved apps as well, meaning that we as users and developers will live in perpetual fear of a trap door opening beneath the most cherished apps. Not for sake of consistency or "policy", but the behest of whatever incomprehensible whims the guys at Infinite Loop have.