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Apple: Make a desktop, your iPad app is toast

zdnet.com

71–80 of 93 posts

Re: Apple: Make a desktop, your iPad app is toast

#71

Perhaps Apple has been taken over by foreign insurgents following the Simple Sabotage Field Manual.

Nah, I think the iJuche explanation/analogy is best: http://www.zdnet.com/blog/perlow/ipad-isolationism/12031

Note WRT to the self-reliance theme of Juche that the above was written before the section 3.3.1 change. "Spirit of self-reliance" indeed.

Re: Apple: Make a desktop, your iPad app is toast

#72
post #40

Quite frankly, I'm not even surprised anymore. Every month a developer uncovers a new piece of the mysterious approval puzzle.

Right. For me, it's not that they're instituting restrictive policies (which I can sort of understand in some cases). The problem is that it seems to be a moving target. If I was an iPhone developer I would feel like I was being toyed with.

Re: Apple: Make a desktop, your iPad app is toast

#73

Some viable arguments lost in a tirade of hysteria. I've never written an app for the iPhone/iPad, so I have no first hand experience with the approval/rejection nonsense. I do however own an iPhone, and I love the fact that I can expect a certain level of quality in the applications I buy. One thing that makes me snicker about the article in question is the purpose of the app. Why the hell would you want to waste an…

"Why the hell would you want to waste an iPad on using it as a picture frame?"

Camouflage, perhaps - if thieves enter the house, they might leave the "crappy picture frame" behind.

Re: Apple: Make a desktop, your iPad app is toast

#74
post #44

Apple hypocrisy at it's finest! So it's okay to make VNC, Citrix and other kinds of apps that can connect you to remote Windows and Linux desktops, but any app that looks too different from or too similar to Apple's Springboard faces automatic bannination? At this rate, Apple is going to need to start employing teams of Theologians and Talmudic scholars to interpret and administer the Kafkaesque Laws of the App Store…

Never mind the fact that Apple, nor any software company should ever be in the position of censoring the content of any software that runs on their machines.

In what sense is this "a fact"?

Re: Apple: Make a desktop, your iPad app is toast

#75
post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds like they took a page from Microsoft's playbook. I guess they'd know best how well it works.

Nope, Microsoft has been trying to do the opposite. Remember "DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS?"

You're saying Windows' appeal to developers is mainly due to Steve Ballmer embarrassing himself onstage and little or nothing to do with how many users the platform has? I find that quite incredible.

Re: Apple: Make a desktop, your iPad app is toast

#76

I don't see how I can responsibly spend effort on developing an iPad app. The "approval" process is chaotic and arbitrary - witness intelligent cooperative people having their whole business shot down seemingly at random. I will develop for other platforms - the market leader Android for instance - which operate on the oldfashioned principle of "free market".

Another way to look at it, though, is that they're avoiding optimization by proxy, by allowing human discretion in all their decisions. http://lesswrong.com/lw/28r/is_google_paperclipping_the_web_...

Humans are fallible, and so you'll get false positives (and negatives) for what, in retrospect, seem like very bad reasons. However, the one thing you won't get are superstimuli—apps that the approval "algorithm" loves but people hate—because there are people inside the algorithm.

Re: Apple: Make a desktop, your iPad app is toast

#77
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The market research puts Android in fourth place, after Nokia, RIM and Apple. Even so, I can't even sell on Android market because I don't live in one of the approved countries.

So? You can just sell your app on your webpage. The market is not that compelling; it's hard to search and it's hard to read real reviews on your phone, so most people that actually need some software are just going to Google for what they need. The market mostly benefits developers of paid fart apps.

I usually search the web for Android apps anyways. It's just faster than hunting through a store.

Re: Apple: Make a desktop, your iPad app is toast

#78
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, Microsoft has been trying to do the opposite. Remember "DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS?"

You're saying Windows' appeal to developers is mainly due to Steve Ballmer embarrassing himself onstage and little or nothing to do with how many users the platform has? I find that quite incredible.

No, I'm saying that Microsoft believes that by bringing the best developers to their side, good apps will be made, and then users will follow. That's why he was screaming that.

Now, you may disagree with the way that they're going about doing that, but from what I understand, tools like Visual Studio really are best of breed. I don't use IDEs or Windows, so I wouldn't know, but that's just what I hear.

Re: Apple: Make a desktop, your iPad app is toast

#79
post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, Microsoft has been trying to do the opposite. Remember "DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS?"

You're saying Windows' appeal to developers is mainly due to Steve Ballmer embarrassing himself onstage and little or nothing to do with how many users the platform has? I find that quite incredible.

Microsoft has a long history of bending over backwards for developers, even going so far as to put one-off patches in its own libraries to fix bugs in 3rd party applications.

Re: Apple: Make a desktop, your iPad app is toast

#80
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the iPhone Human Interface Guidelines - Creating a Great User Interface: "As you design your application, be aware of the metaphors that exist in iPhone OS and don't redefine them." I wasn't aware of this specific guideline/rule until just now, having looked for it in response to your question. But I do think it's an easily intuited rule, given a basic understanding of usability. Still, I don't think these guys…

I just don't see it. If I sat down today to make an app like this, and read the sentence you quoted, it wouldn't even cross my mind that I might get in trouble. What is the existing metaphor for "picture frame that shows the time, weather, and some other useful info"? For that matter, where does it say anything about desktops? It's about as useful as a Rorschach test, or staring at the clouds to understand the shape…

> What is the existing metaphor for "picture frame that shows the time, weather, and some other useful info"?

A desktop with a customizable background and widgets. Seriously, if you take a screenshot of that app and go around showing it to your friends, do you think their first impression is going to be, oh, it's a picture frame with widgets?

> For that matter, where does it say anything about desktops?

The "desktop" is a metaphor. You don't have an actual, literal desktop on your computer.

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