I'm currently in my final 30 days of my development license contract and I'm still wondering if I should renew. I haven't had the problems a lot of people are complaining about (my apps have been accepted or rejected with a valid reason which I fixed easily).
It's been a fun year learning the cocoa language and getting applications out there that lots of people find useful (my most popular app was #1 on the free app store for a week within a week of it going online).
I'm just unsure if I should continue. I'm working on a game, but it's hard to find motivation to continue when there's so many others out there getting rejected with no reason after all their hard work. I'm still in the "it hasn't happened to me so who cares?" camp, but I could easily get burnt after spending 3 months of spare time developing.
I renewed a little while ago. I'm having a blast developing apps. I've had three in the store... lately I've been taking my time making a game. What's nice is I receive some money from Apple every month from sales of an app that I've thought about for maybe an hour over the past year. Also ad revenue from free apps is great!
I wouldn't call their app rejections baseless. They aren't going to approve apps that compete with the phone's built-in functionality. Period. Yeah, it stinks and yes, GV got a raw deal because Schiller apparently pre-approved the app initially. But now that these precedents have been set, any lone developer who is working on a VOIP/podcasting/digital music sales app is wasting their time IMO.
Even if some "big name" developers leave the scene, I don't think it will matter much. The barrier to entry for creating apps isn't that high.
As for the "unsustainable pricing structure" he talks about, that's partly due to the above. It's not prohibitively hard to create a simple app–therefore, any simple, successful app will have competition and the price will fall. I think it's also due to the fact most people are create B2C apps. In my opinion there's a good market for niche/vertical-focused B2B apps. The kind you can charge $10+ for and that don't require app store visibility.
They aren't going to approve apps that compete with the phone's built-in functionality. Period. Yeah, it stinks...
It stinks even more when Apple adds new built-in functionality that competes with your existing application and you are notified that your application is no more. In fact, the more successful your application, the greater the chances Apple will decide to make it part of the OS.
What Apple has done it the past with Mac OS X (the desktop OS) is that they go and buy the product from you.
Examples:
* Coverflow(first standalone app by a developper) was bought by Apple.
* The new iTunes visualizer was also first developped and then bought by Apple.
They aren't going to approve apps that compete with the phone's built-in functionality. Period.
Exactly what built-in functionality was Google Voice competing with that caused Apple to flip out? According to the gizmodo article posted earlier today Apple has approved numerous apps that duplicate dialing and sms functionality, so I guess it must have been something else right?
I agree with you completely. I have a few apps of my own on the appstore and they are ranged between $0.99 to $14.99 and we make more money on higher priced apps than lower priced apps because it took more time and are serving niche markets. Generally speaking iPhone apps are easy/cheap to make so people saying that its not sustainable is BS. IMO every developer thinks that their app should make them enough money in 6 months time that they can retire off of it. Regarding the apple app rejection process, again developers/bloggers are being ridiculous. There are definitely some glitches but every system has its pros and cons. I think this article http://appreview.tumblr.com/ covers all the reasons apple has given for app rejection and none of them seems unreasonable to me.
You're right. The cases that are brought up in this article aren't baseless, as you say, it's just that the real reasons are camouflaged as other more generic reasons.
But there have been other cases where the "reasons" given have been completely without explanation.
I'm a huge Apple fan. But I'm no fanboy — their behavior here is unacceptable and it makes me outright ashamed (as I'm usually the one to praise them).
It's been a fun year learning the cocoa language and getting applications out there that lots of people find useful (my most popular app was #1 on the free app store for a week within a week of it going online).
I'm just unsure if I should continue. I'm working on a game, but it's hard to find motivation to continue when there's so many others out there getting rejected with no reason after all their hard work. I'm still in the "it hasn't happened to me so who cares?" camp, but I could easily get burnt after spending 3 months of spare time developing.