If you really want Apple to change, how about NOT developing for iOS? Articles like this aren't really going to make them change their policies.
Certainly convincing other people not to develop for iOS would have more of an impact than just swearing off it personally. More generally, I dislike the idea that we shouldn't write this sort of thing because "the market will sort it out anyway". This sort of post is the market sorting it out.
Apple reserves the right to accept or reject applications from the app store.
Sure, they're probably legally entitled to do almost anything. That doesn't mean they can't (or shouldn't) be criticised for it, though, and it doesn't mean that criticism of them can't have any impact on anyone's behaviour.
What is striking is none (or I haven't come across one) of these articles end with the developer washing their hands off the App store and vowing never to develop another iOS app. Instead, most of them seem to be aiming to generate publicity so that Apple takes notice and hopefully approves the app.
Articles like this made me avoid Apple altogether and judging by the general sentiment here on HN at least some other people capable of software development have made a similar decision (to various degrees.) I'd wager this article probably has much more power than jwz quietly dumping iOS development.
The problem is: the store is mandatory. Side loading is the OS equivalent of net neutrality.
This is like car companies deciding which supermarkets you may shop at, and then suggesting only their own.
Unfortunately, Mircosft and Amazon are going to do, or are already doing, the same thing.
They want to be the new cable companies. Extorting content producers, by selling or blocking access to consumers.
Otherwise, he should just put up a sign in his club about no cover / free pizza for a member of the iOS team who's willing to put in a good word for xscreensaver. I mean, he _is_ in SF. Even I know several people on the iOS team, at least one of whom has gone there, and I don't even live/work in that area.
Oh, the deep irony.
He's now finding out the hard way that "openness" may have been an attribute the importance of which he underestimated.
And just like the tens of other iOS developers that came to whine here when the same happened to them: you knew what you were getting into and chose to ignore it at your own peril.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/the-fart-app/id370742001?mt=8
Also, a "fart button" is not physical object, can we still call it a "button" (Ceci n'est pas une bouton de pet.)?
Do you mean they are not right because the app does not save a screen from anything? What if you are using your iPhone to project something on an plasma screen where a screen saver can save a screen from "burn ins".
I am really interested in your thoughts.
As such, yeah the name is a little misleading.
The reviewer wasn't even capable of telling me the build number of the binary they were reviewing and kept redirecting me to Apple's DTS.
So after using one of my paid DTS inquires for this nonsense the problem got fixed and I had to wait only 2 more weeks for the next review date. The Apple engineer was very capable and friendly though - so no criticism there.
The problem is that the reviewers have no idea of development. They are clueless and I guess Apple hires some low paid college students for these positions. It's like talking to some immature AI or a 5 year old kid. They have their guidelines and rules and aren't capably of any interaction outside of this framework. Wasting our time and money.
The goal to avoid user confusion and scams is a good goal. Even if there are a few millions XScreenSaver users (wow) on another platforms, there are orders of magnitude more potential new users who should not be mislead. How to avoid confusion is a good question, but accepting the old name doesn't appear to be a provably best solution.
Can't the name be different but the application appear in searches based on the reference to the name of XScreenSaver somewhere in the description?
With the recent App Store search result changes, this may be of little help anyway. If you search for the name of my app, for instance, it comes up near the bottom of the results where nobody looks. I went from averaging multiple downloads per day to just two sales since the changes were put into effect.
* Linus Torvalds
* Daniel J. Bernstein
* Theo de Raadt
* Jamie ZawinskiScreensavers aren't saving any screens these days - their function is merely to provide pretty pictures. And xscreensaver provides LOTS of pretty, if retro, pictures.
The two issues are completely orthogonal.
Off topic: As a child I loved to look at screen savers that I manually started for hours wondering how they work and how long it took to build them...
My point is that XScreenSaver is a proper name, and by now should be considered to have earned its name.
iOS does not support screensavers. The app's name is misleading. It seems pretty cut and dry to me.
To protect their investment, "bending over" may have been the most sensible, if painful, option.
If you're a new developer choosing whether to target Android, iOS, or both, your perspective may be different. But people won't care about your blog posts.
Probably because that's a foolish approach as a developer. If your app is worth a damn, then preventing it's use by potential customers simply because of your personal opinion is fairly inconsiderate. Should someone be deprived the use of an app simply because they bought a different phone then the one I approve of?
That's a hard line to take, I understand, and realize not everyone will agree with that. =) I just feel that from the customer perspective, the only thing that matters is the developer. And if the developer choose not to release on the platform I am using, then the developer is essentially telling me I do not matter.
If someone doesn't release on iOS because the money they get from sales isn't worth the various negative aspects (e.g. frustration of dealing with reviewers, giving support to a business model they disapprove of), that also seems a perfectly reasonable approach to take.
I don't own a Windows box, or an Xbox or PS3. If I said I was being deprived of video games because Call of Duty doesn't run on "linux on a netbook from 2008", I don't imagine I would get much sympathy.
I was also careful to specify: "If your app is worth a damn". Call of Duty is not worth a damn. I'm talking about meaningful apps that actually making a difference.
I was specific, because the opinion is specific. If your app isn't worth a damn, then it doesn't really matter, does it? It's a toy, nothing more.
It only would have been ironic had jwz elected to develop for iOS because he thought the Android app store policy sucked, to find that the Apple app store policy sucked more. Which is not the case here.
[Edited to include clarification]
1) He disses Android harshly, yet ends up complaining about Apple not that much later. 2) He disses Android for "sucking", yet the area he complains about is one where iOS sucks compared to Android.
I think this qualifies as irony: incongruity between the actual result of a sequence of events and the normal or expected result.
That a platform sucks doesn't mean that it cannot have some strong points compared to some other platform.
Is it "ironic" if I say: "The North Pole sucks as a place to live", and then move to Miami and get a sun burn? Does that fact suddenly make the North Pole any more habitable?
No irony.
It would only be ironic if he had said that without knowing that the iPhone "sucks more" in regards to openness --but he made the above statement fully knowing the iOS situation re: openness.
He is no RMS --it's not like he's gonna use a sucky (according to his tastes) mobile OS just because it's open.
Doesn't make much sense to use an inferior (to your tastes) phone platform just because you could add your own apps to it. Except if your primary motivation for having a phone is tinkering with it.
> - in-app purchase does not provide a restore button (which I've never seen in any other app btw)
Really?! Every app I use has a restore button. As a user, I'm happy they reject your app. Otherwise, if I buy that "thing" from you (via IAP) on my iPhone, it's not available on my iPad, iPod touch, or even iPhone if I restore it to factory settings. The point of IAP is: you purchase it once, it's available on all your personal devices. But your method is: every new device must purchase it again and again and again. I'm not saying you're scamming, but you're not playing by the rules customers have come to expect.
So, I'm with Apple in this specific case. In my view, your app "deserved" to be rejected. But, a 2 week interval between review results? That really sucks. Shame on them.
I couldn't find an appropriate reference for that specific case, and besides, I changed the purchase button to check for a restore first, an failing to find that, ask the user to pay. But that still didn't cut it with the reviewers, they wanted an explicit button named restore.
I think even in this case, yes, it should be there.
But if you've changed it (to something even more elegant) and they still rejected it, shame on them!
And in any event, the App Store contains products of similar functionality, e.g. live wallpaper.
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/live-wallpapers-pro/id4994091...
Why they approved "live wallpapers", but not "xScreenSaver"? I don't know. It sucks, it seems that their reviews are not consistent.
But just because they made a mistake (like approving "live wallpapers", which IMO is a misleading app created solely for the purpose of milking a few hundred dollars from naïve App Store customers) does not mean that it's okay to do it again.
Edit: look at the other apps created by the same developer: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/color-texting-for-message/id4... and http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/color-keyboard-pro-pimp-color... and http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/icon-skins-with-builder/id429... - all of them are misleading, making you believe you can do things on the iOS that you actually can't.