Any development endeavor is a risk. Will I choose the right feature sets? Will the design be appealing? Will I deliver it to market on time? How will I find customers? How will I secure my software? How will I do billing?
Every developer has these and a thousand other questions. Apple’s iPhone App store presents a wonderful marketplace for developers. Write your application and Apple takes care of getting eyeballs onto your application. They take care of the distribution. They take care of reviews management. They take care of billing. They only take 30% which I find very fair.
But then Apple also has the Big Stick of Rejection. Apple has wielded the BSOR several times. Once for a thousand dollar scam. Once for a application that didn’t follow the AT&T contractual obligations. Then Apple started getting unfair.
Apple rejected a comic book application due to content. Really? Censorship? What if the contents of my application do not appeal to some reviewer at Apple? Am I supposed to put the sweat, blood and tears into a product only after the fact to learn I’d been banned from the library?
Apple rejected an application because it duplicated functionality. Many applications duplicate functionality, but maybe Apple saw Podcaster as duplicating potentially revenue generating functionality. The reason does not matter, Apple told someone who had baked the pie that their cake was not welcome. Apple already had some Lemon Merengue.
The App Store is as much a library as it is a market place. There are free applications as well as for sale applications. There is content masked as applications simply because that is the delivery medium.
The most bothersome issue as a developer is trying to figure out how to limit the risks imposed by Apple.
Should I submit a slide-show application which merely shows some screenshots of what I’d like to do? I can submit applications without pushing them live to the store, so should I submit a plan before I develop?
If I do this, is my intellectual property at risk? Will Apple just become pissed off at me and reject everything I submit?
I have decided that if Apple is going to wield a Big Stick of Rejection, then Apple should institute a formal submission process for allowing developers to determine if developing an application is even worthwhile. Sure this will mean more work for Apple, much slower time to market for applications and likely fewer applications, especially the thousands of free applications.
Or Apple could just accept applications, put the stick away and separate the Apple business model from the App Store business model.
Let the market decide if the developer did something worthy of income. Then everyone wins.