Apps, those wonderful little bits of software that turn your smartphone into a digital Swiss army knife, have been called the biggest time-killers in tech. Thousands of them turn the screens of mobile devices into videogames or mindless animations. But many are undeniably useful. An app from Comcast delivers TV listings and lets you program your DVR remotely. Schlage, the lock company, just released an app that can lock or unlock your front door. Even the Hilton offers an app for ordering room service.
Apps cost an average $30,000 to create, so no surprise that developers get irate when their apps are delisted. Earlier this year, Apple ejected 5,000 apps from its store. Suddenly banished were iWobble (which made a downloaded photo of a woman's chest bounce) and Daisy Mae's Alien Buffett (an explicit version of Lara Croft, since reinstated). In many cases, the reason given to developers was objectionable sexual content. Some made it back to the store after the developer retooled or deleted such content--or after enough bloggers complained.
Critics unleashed fury at Apple over the mass delistings, some blaming an arbitrary--or worse--review process by Apple. Craig Grannel, designer of the Cult of Mac site who runs iPhoneTiny.com, a Twitter review blog for iPhone apps, calls Apple's stance "uncomfortably hypocritical and hostile to developers." A developer might work on an app for months, only to be nixed by a reviewer enforcing a shifting line of standards, says Grannel.
Apple's crackdown on smut might make sense if it also delisted apps for Playboy, Penthouse Variations, Call Babe or Seven Minutes In Heaven--all of which include erotic content and are still available at the apps store. Apple has delisted apps deemed guilty of simply bad taste, but here, too, its enforcement appears selective. How else to explain the nine apps now available using the word "toilet" in their title?
A few developers have gotten guidance. Australian developer Shifty Jelly blogged that its app, My Frame, would be banned by Apple's app store because it let users arrange photos in a picture frame that could be customized with images of objects like lamps and clocks. Shifty Jelly e-mailed Apple Chief Steve Jobs directly to complain, reportedly prompting this response from Jobs: "We are not allowing apps that create their own desktops. Sorry."
A vast army of developers has built the apps ecosystem. They are offered by "platform" stores from Apple and Google Android or "carrier" stores like those of Verizon or Vodafone. Apple's app store now offers 225,000 apps; Google's Android carries 50,000; GetJar 14,000.
Mark Beccue, a senior analyst at ABI Research who has authored a series of reports on apps, says that like any store--be it Wal-Mart or Ann Taylor--Apple can decide what it wants to offer. Soon, it may not matter. "People are getting apps from places other than apps stores," he says. In fact, Beccue predicts that in 2013 app store downloads will begin to decline.
Another typical case of how APPLE retards the growth of technology.
It is amazing how such technologically locked down / hindered devices are so popular amongst the masses.
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