What is behind the appearance of iPhone developer frustration?

Question

I see lots of unhappiness in the iPhone dev forums (and elsewhere) regarding Apple's treatment of developers.

Common complaints include

• App reviews that take weeks or months, only to be rejected without detailed explanation.
• Updates that take even longer for review than the original app.

A number of developers have taken to filing bug reports against the App Store, which seem to be quickly closed by Apple.

Will the iPhone lose appstore momentum to the Android, Pre, or Blackberry? Do any of those treat developers better? Is this something I should be worried about as an iPhone developer?

Answer 1

Viva the iVolution.

Answer 2

As an iPhone developer with an app in the App Store, I have first-hand experience at dealing with Apple's ridiculous policies. To put it simply: the iPhone platform is fantastic to program for and a lot of fun to work with, but dealing with Apple completely ruins the experience. I will not be developing any more applications for the iPhone without a significant change in how Apple deals with developers.

Answer 3

If the tags on StackOverflow are any indication, the Android is a mere echo of the iPhone.

The iPhone has much more user interest, but the iTunes store is so packed with apps that it's difficult to make a mark. Perhaps the real frustration is that the gold rush didn't pan out for all the dreamers.

Answer 4

This sums it up well, I think. Shamelessly stolen from Jeff Atwood's Twitter page.

EDIT:

Just to add a summary of points:

• No sufficiently large iPhone developer community due to NDA
• Lack of trust for developers
• Long wait times to get app. feedback
• Lack of control between developer and users (Apple being a brick wall)

Answer 5

The opaqueness of the App Store and other "business side" dealings with Apple are the core of current frustrations. However, there is also a history of bad developer relations: buggy tools, poor documentation, the NDA, the closed nature of the platform, the initial push to make people do web apps instead of native apps, etc.

The technical side of things is getting better, but it put a bad taste in the mouths of developers before the App Store started taking all the heat.

However, I don't think there is any danger of the iPhone market collapsing due to unhappy developers. That's where the users are, so that's where developers will want to be, happy or not.

Answer 6

The iPhone will not lose momentum to anyone, it's simply too huge a market at this point. This will be greatly reinforced once the iPhone specific devices start appearing, much as even just the audio only iPhone accessories created a huge hurdle for makers of other MP3 players to overcome against the iPod...

Not that other platforms will not grow in popularity too, it's just that they will not catch up and mobile developers will mostly target the iPhone first.

I've been developing for the iPhone since the SDK was released. I will say that at first releasing to the app store was hard almost to the point of madness - but they have cleared up a ton of the difficulty (especially related to certificates) and have made the process about as clear and as straightforward as it can be now, with documentation that is extremely clear on what you need to do because they have seen people mess up everything possible to mess up.

Over time I've seen bad reviewers and good reviewers. Here I think, Apple was simply overwhelmed for a while with the sheer number of submissions and have only started to get that aspect under control. But the are trying and often a gentle prod at developer relations (best is by phone) can free up a process that seems stuck.

In the end I enjoy the platform because I think they have a great set of frameworks and the development community is very helpful, just look at StackOverflow. I don't program to the iPhone just because of the potential market but because the potential to develop a really interesting application that many people will use and enjoy is there. In the end I'm driven a lot more by the prospect of building something others will find useful than any large reward. On the Android I feel like you can get a lot of technical users but on the iPhone if you build an app right you can get users of all kinds, and that is really exciting.

The one area where I think Apple has a good amount of work to do at this point is actually in tools to assist with the marketing of apps. The whole system is really primitive now with respect to properly tracking marketing efforts or allowing discounts and so on. But again they have built up a global distribution system that works pretty well, so now they have the luxury of a strong platform on wish to base these other needs and I expect to see them shorty.

One point of proof at the degree of effort Apple is putting forth into helping iPhone developers is the WWDC videos - last year it took about six months for the videos to come out, just as they had every year prior. This year they were out in weeks, because developers could simply not wait six months to leverage the information the videos had (especially 3.0 features)!

Answer 7

One thought I didn't see here is that Apple's app approval is largely subjective. That condition may get better over time as more apps are reviewed and they have a chance to fine tune their policies.