Ok, Apple Not Stupid – They Have Just Turned Into “The Man”
Wow, I got a lot of feedback yesterday. Protip: don’t call Apple stupid in the title of your blog post if you want Apple fans to read the content of your post! I got some really thoughtful comments which I’ll go over here, but I got a lot more email that, if there were Cliff’s Notes, would read something like, “no your [sic] stupid.”
bud says:
I’m sure apples boilerplate rejection has nothing to do with the apps rejection.
It is pretty obvious why they would reject it; to prevent hooks from websites into the iphone; potentially malicious hooks.
Isn’t this obvious? If it is not obvious, you are disingenuous.
Yes, I agree – most likely Apple is not ignorant of the implications of Big5 and phonegap projects! There is a small chance that the review team at Apple just didn’t “get it”, but most likely they did get it and decided to keep it under wraps.
Why? Peter agrees with bud that there are security concerns:
As has been pointed out, this is rejected because it allows an external application to access information about the iPhone. That said, he’s right that someone at Apple should have explained that rather than using the “limited utility” explanation.
To wander a little bit afield, though, I worry about this “limited utility to the broad iPhone/iPod touch user community” sentence.
One of the reasons for third-party developers is to address these areas that are of limited utility to some but valuable to others. For example, medical dictionaries are not of interest to “the broad iPhone/iPod touch community”, though there are some who will find these invaluable. So is Apple now going to try to determine whether there really is a market for your application and decide whether or not enough people would be interested in it?
He brings up a good point about the implications of Apple deciding what is considered ‘useful’ to the general public. 2 years ago if you had asked me if Twitter was useful to the general public, I would have laughed in your face. Now, I read the RSS feeds of a bunch of different people on it and I consider it one of the best ways to access people’s raw, unfiltered thoughts.
Imagine if Apple owned the internet platform and just didn’t see the usefulness of this app…
But, as I said – Apple isn’t stupid (in the ignorant way), they are just turning into “The Man.” My partner in crime got so riled up he went so far as to suggest Apple is the new Microsoft. Personally, I would rather have the new innovative Big5 browser and then patch the security risks later, rather than shutter it out of fear.
As much as I hate to use Internet Explorer as an example of anything but a steaming pile of sumo wrestler dump on a burning tire, imagine if the 90+% of the people in the 90′s hadn’t been exposed to it because it might have security risks? We know now that it was chock full of nice juicy security risks, but I would say the exposure to the internet and booming of the industry that pays my bills is a far greater consequence!
Hi again
Assuming that without internet explorer that there would be no mass exposure to the internet is wrong on many levels. Without IE being built into the os, it may have taken a year or two more at worst, but the momentum was definitely there already.
I have a feeling you'll like android. My personal opinion is that in 10 years, it'll be the windows of the mobile space, full of virus / trojans and whatnot. I've looked (briefly) at how they are doing security, but honestly, not stopping / testing apps before they go out will really make this a playground for a lot of nasty people. But we'll get the apps