In other news, hell freezes over, and Microsoft embraces open source.
http://www.microsoft.com/opensource/
Go get a light sweater.
Apple Relaxes iOS Restrictions On Development Tools, Publishes Review Guidelines
121–130 of 240 posts
Re: Apple Relaxes iOS Restrictions On Development Tools, Publishes Review Guidelines
#122Some of the app review guidelines seem weird: Apps larger than 20MB in size will not download over cellular networks (this is automatically prohibited by the App Store) Don't many games cross this threshold? Apps that browse the web must use the iOS WebKit framework and WebKit Javascript Opera Mini - which was accepted by the App Store - would seem to fail this rule.
> Don't many games cross this threshold?
Yep, and they don't download over cellular networks - you have to do it over wi-fi.
> Opera Mini - which was accepted by the App Store - would seem to fail this rule.
It seems to get round it on a slight technicality. It goes via the Opera proxy server and isn't actually reading HTML (the stream is compressed and encoded) so you could argue that it's not strictly a web browser. In a sense it's closer to something like Instapaper - it takes a chunk of the web, encodes it and passes it to the app to use.
Re: Apple Relaxes iOS Restrictions On Development Tools, Publishes Review Guidelines
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
What are you talking about? Target the Dalvik VM and Google doesn't care what you do, what language you do it in, or what tools you use to build it. Sure there are some parts of the system that you can't access without root privileges, but that's an entirely different issue.
But it's their platform. Maybe they don't care today but how do you know they, or the carriers wont care tomorrow? That risk seems at least as big as Apple going back on today's announcement (for the record, I would view both small).
It's OSS. If they do that, fork it. Every project, ever, has that exact same risk. Or am I missing something.
Re: Apple Relaxes iOS Restrictions On Development Tools, Publishes Review Guidelines
#124Some of the app review guidelines seem weird: Apps larger than 20MB in size will not download over cellular networks (this is automatically prohibited by the App Store) Don't many games cross this threshold? Apps that browse the web must use the iOS WebKit framework and WebKit Javascript Opera Mini - which was accepted by the App Store - would seem to fail this rule.
A lot of games put a lot of work into reducing their size below the 20MB threshold. The big games out there are probably over 20MB, but a lot of games are able to get below 20MB as long as they use compressed resources.
Re: Apple Relaxes iOS Restrictions On Development Tools, Publishes Review Guidelines
#125Earlier quoted context omitted.
The difference is that Apple has enacted many policies that limit developers while Google has, to my knowledge, never done anything of the sort. In fact, it seems like they go out of their way to be fair to developers (for instance: every app they built for Android uses only the APIs that are available to everyone). Edit: My point is that Google has never shown an inclination towards policies like these, and I think…
Google doesn't let you release an app that allows wifi tethering without rooting your phone. I'm sure there are other examples. Google/Apple = the same. They all bow before the carrier gods. Edit: I can't reply to the child for some reason (too deep), but I just wanted to let you know that you're wrong: 2.2 as distributed by Verizon does not have tethering unless you use their carrier replaced version which bills you…
It's built into Android 2.2. Additionally, if you can think of a way of exposing the ability to wifi tether, without requiring root that doesn't fundamentally compromise the security of the underlying Linux system... well I think there would be a lot of Linux gurus who would be quite intrigued.
Re: Apple Relaxes iOS Restrictions On Development Tools, Publishes Review Guidelines
#12612.3 Apps that are simply web clippings, content aggregators, or a collection of links, may be rejected Does this mean you can't just wrap your website in a native app and try to charge for it? What about feed readers? Also interesting, they say the more you charge for an app the more thoroughly they review it. Maybe you can sneak things through if you make it free. :b
There are plenty of feed readers in the store and they do fine.
The key word is simply. If you're providing additional functionality to allow people to better use or manage web content (the way any halfway decent RSS feed reader does) then that's fine.
Re: Apple Relaxes iOS Restrictions On Development Tools, Publishes Review Guidelines
#127No one has mentioned what seems to be one of other most seemingly positive developments of this -- the App Review Board [1]: "We’ve created the App Review Board to provide you the opportunity to appeal the rejection of an application if you believe that the functionality or technical implementation was misunderstood. You will be able to submit details that the App Review Board will use to determine if the rejection o…
Sending emails also work rarely. You don't even have to resubmit!
Yes, I've asked Apple to fast-track the review of my app several times (for good, although selfish, reasons), and 50% of the time they've obliged! They are actually quite friendly.
Re: Apple Relaxes iOS Restrictions On Development Tools, Publishes Review Guidelines
#128Some of the app review guidelines seem weird: Apps larger than 20MB in size will not download over cellular networks (this is automatically prohibited by the App Store) Don't many games cross this threshold? Apps that browse the web must use the iOS WebKit framework and WebKit Javascript Opera Mini - which was accepted by the App Store - would seem to fail this rule.
The 20MB size limit over cell networks has been published for a long time. It used to be 10MB and they raised it last year, so nothing new on that one.
Re: Apple Relaxes iOS Restrictions On Development Tools, Publishes Review Guidelines
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well, it looked plenty for very small values of plenty, from where I stand. There were some very well reasoned arguments against the restriction - arguments like the fact that many libraries and game engines require the flexibility that scripting allows; or like the fact that there are languages and environments that are more conducive of tackling certain types of problems. Those, however were drowned in a sea of pet…
> "I know language XYZ and now Apple are making me learn their sucky ObjC" That's a very valid complaint imo, except for the 'sucky', was that present in the original? > "Apple just want to prevent you from porting your app to a competing platform, them Nazis" Are you sure about the 'them Nazis' bit in this one ? Otherwise, again, that's a valid complaint. > I'm also not saying we shouldn't complain. I am saying we s…
>That's a very valid complaint imo, except for the 'sucky', was that present in the original?
While 'sucky' isn't up to HN's style standards, and a more reasoned response is always preferable, I personally don't think the prohibition Apple put in place was sufficiently reasonable to merit a reasonable response.
Re: Apple Relaxes iOS Restrictions On Development Tools, Publishes Review Guidelines
#130Strange. Didn't Steve Jobs mention he doesn't want another software layer? Because it leads to bad apps and they can't push API changes as fast, because these third party layers have to update?
"We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform." http://www.apple.com/hotnews/thoughts-on-flash/
I get the feeling that if the dev tool / framework you are using doesn't exactly act like the native framework they will reject your app. Particularly if your app draws its own UI without using the native widgets.