Merry Christmas, tiny little media-un-savvy kids: rudolf just ran down granny!

Well, that’s the story Gizmodo reports, anyway:

Yesterday’s episode of Santa Live featured the song “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer.” Apparently, children young enough to care about Santa are also young enough to have trouble understanding the jokey song about grand-matricide. Parents complained, and Majewski, already $12,000 in debt (that’s a lot of bribed commenters!) was forced to pull the app. He remains the only one baffled by his lack of success with Santa Live.

Majewski, already controversial since the discovery he was paying for good reviews via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, is likely not having a great holiday season himself now, even absent joyous vehicular homicide carols.

Did the parents over react? Should Majewski better have known better? Or did some one just get a little revenge paying parents to complain via Mechanical Turk?

Daring Fireball’s John Gruber, in an attempt to get to the bottom of the PodcasterGate’s latest controversy, namely Apple reportedly slapping “NDA” (Non-Disclosure Agreement) on the rejection notices and discussion there off, confidentially polled developers and came to the following conclusion:

My conclusion is that as [redacted] up as this entire situation is, both with the App Store rejections for “duplication of functionality” and NDA frustrations, it does not seem as though Apple has changed its policy regarding whether rejection notices are confidential.

Indeed, some Mac (but not iPhone) developers reported all their communications from Apple, going way back, bore non-disclosure language. This latest wrinkle does indeed appear to be inconsistent legal notices from different Apple developer reps, rather than any substantive change in response to PodcasterGate.

Still, resentment levels among iPhone developers are still soaring, and due to the NDA, the public displeasure ain’t nothing compared to what’s building internally.

Seems it wasn’t a hair that broke the blogerati’s back, it was an App. Or more precisely, it was Apple’s denial of the Podcaster App that let loose the floodgates of negative internet reaction. Or even more precisely, it is the continued lack of certainty among developers as to what can and will be denied by Apple, leading many to reconsider the return on investment of hours upon hours of coding with 11th hour rejection hanging perpetually over their heads, like a virtual Sword of Damocles.

According to Read Write Web, Podcaster will be turning to Ad Hoc to distribute their App for nowwhile everyone from Daring Fireball to Roughly Drafted cover (and in some cases, recover from) the various comments and implications flinging back and forth across the blogsphere, the New York Times has decided to escalate the attention level:

I can’t see how distributing the program will hurt Apple. If anything it will make the iPhone a tad more valuable. On the other hand, treating developers capriciously is most certainly going to discourage them from spending nights and weekends working on new and useful applications that may give more people reasons to buy an iPhone.

Sure, the App Store is growing twice as fast as iTunes Music (though starting from zero is an easy way to generate an opening curve), and may well hit a billion units moved by 2009, but with Android’s open marketplace on the horizon, and Microsoft me-too’ing their way in with Skymarket, there could be alternatives. If Apple doesn’t take a page from their MobileMe fiasco playbook and rapidly standardize and clarify the rules of the game, they could lose their early lead. And that could cost them the Mobile Internet Platform dominance they so currently crave.

Don’t get us wrong. It’s Apple’s platform and they, like a Nintendo with the Wii, have the absolute right to approve or deny anything developed for their platform. But developers have the same right to stop developing for a platform they don’t think serves their best interests. And consumers have the same right to stop buying it for the same reason. As with the Blacklist push-back, that will be the ultimate officiator of this debate.

And a terse one-line email from Steve may not fix things if Apple waits too long…

It started innocently enough. Prince Mclean over at Apple Insider commented in passing:

Data transaction security in MobileMe’s web apps is based upon authenticated handling of JSON data exchanges between the self contained JavaScript client apps and Apple’s cloud, rather than the SSL web page encryption used by HTTPS. The only real web pages MobileMe exchanges with the server are the HTML, JavaScript, and CSS files that make up the application, which have no need for SSL encryption following the initial user authentication. This has caused some unnecessary panic among web users who have equated their browser’s SSL lock icon with web security. And of course, Internet email is not a secured medium anyway once it leaves your server.
If Apple applied SSL encryption in the browser, it would only slow down every data exchange without really improving security, and instead only provide pundits with a false sense of security that distracts from real security threats.

And the web went wild. Daniel Eran Dilger, took the crown off to retort them all over at Roughly Drafted:

For the record: Apple’s MobileMe desktop email can be secured via encrypted SMTP and IMAP; Apple presents details on how to ensure this is set up, as users may not have this enabled by default. Address Book and iCal sync on Mac OS X is secured automatically when it transacts with Apple’s server cloud. Windows apps use the same security when syncing their data via Outlook through iTunes for Windows. The iPhone and iPod touch also support encrypted email and all push messages are also secured via encryption.

Our take? If you’re super sensitive about your data, only ever browse via SSL over a VPN while sending with a strong PGP key, and hope no intelligence service is willing to spend serious money and assets on snooping in your general direction.

Other than that, use common sense. Don’t risk information you can’t afford getting out, and take advantage of every security feature your chosen system implements.

A few posts back we got into a few App Store early growing pains/gripes, including that some less-scrupulous — or more marketing-savvy, depending on your point of view — developers were prepending spaces and symbols to their App names in order to get them to sort higher in the alphabetical listings. Well according to MacUser (via Ars), seems like Apple called shenanigans on that one and has put an end to the practice.

Visiting the App Store now, I see that Jirbo’s titles, as well as quite a few others, still have a space in front of them, but are simply alphabetized by the following letter.

Nicely done. Would that all App Store problems were so easily solved…

We likewise mentioned that one of the big problems with the App Store, given its locked-down distribution method and gagging NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) was that it effectively prevented developers from doing proper betas, collecting crash or other bug data, and testing fixes. That is if, unlike Iliumsoft, you can even get your App into the Store!:

Wow. If you think waiting for eWallet is painful out there, try being in here. We were really fired up for the big launch and now we’re just pulling our hair out wondering what is happening (and if you’ve seen pictures of me, additional hair removal is a serious problem in my case.) We were told that the app would appear by the 11th, talked to “thrice-removed from the actual AppStore” support personnel, emailed every person we can think of, and stared endlessly at the status screen willing it to change. Still, nothing.

Twitteriffic‘s Craig Hockenberry (unsurprisingly via Twitter) posts that the length of time it takes Apple to push out updated Apps can lead to buggy versions still being downloaded even after they’re fixed:

A few minutes ago, the first line of the Fit description was “* THIS VERSION OF FIT HAS SHIPPED WITH A CRASHING BUG *” The next line was: “We have uploaded a fix in version 1.01, but Apple has not deployed the update to the App Store at this time.”

What’s more, the Review feature in iTunes for the App Store has become a vehicle for more than just reviews, with some apps getting literally flamed for dozens of posts (e.g. BoxOffice getting blasted in post after post by irate Canadians for only providing US Zipcode support, nothing international). Others just get nonsense. Again, via Hockenberry:

Another fine review: “Make sure you have this app when you’re digging your bomb shelter or spying on your neighbors’ subversive activities.” This is a real shame: it could be a wonderful way to collect ideas and feedback. Instead, it’s just frustrating. One can only hope that someone at Apple eventually figures out that software is not music. I’ve never had an MP3 crash or lack features. Flagging the reviews as inappropriate seems to have no effect.

Some developers have gone so far as to suggest a mass boycott from App Store (reportedly they can withdraw and terminate the distribution agreement at any time) as a way to get Apple’s attention. (Because, of course, Steve Jobs has always been easily swayed, right?)

Especially if, according to Tech Crunch, for-pay apps are increasing in popularity on the App Store. We hands out our money, we wants our awesome user experience.

Hopefully Apple will respond quickly and improve the system for both users and developers alike. Proper beta and QA, never mind a system for demos, would go a long way towards making better Apps all around.

The App Store went live last week (what day exactly depends on whether you snuck in to iTunes 7.7 and snooped around on your own, or waited for the official links to surface), tying in to the iPhone 3G and 2.0 software launches. How’d it do? According to Steve Jobs:

“The App Store is a grand slam, with a staggering 10 million applications downloaded in just three days. Developers have created some extraordinary applications, and the App Store can wirelessly deliver them to every iPhone and iPod touch user instantly.”

Probably why Apple has finally started putting a dent in its backlog of developer acceptances, eh? But is all happy in App Land? Nope. Find out why after the break…

Never mind the almost spam-like proliferation of ebooks-as-apps (public domain, yet packaged and charged for). There are complaints from both Daring Fireball and TUAW that some developers are engaged in App naming shenanigans, putting spaces or symbols at the beginning to sort higher:

On Twitter, Tim Wood points out that the problem is endemic to alphabetical sorting — if Apple merely disallows spaces and punctuation, the scammers will just switch to “AAAA Solitaire” to get to the top. Dave Dribin points out that Amazon avoids this by not even offering alphabetical sorting as an option. Apple should let you choose between popularity, release date (newest on top), and user ratings.

They suggest negative reviews by way of retaliation. I suggest feedback to Apple.

UPDATE: More gripes today, this one from developer Erica Sadun about how iTunes is imporperly managing App syncing — backing up entire apps (even graphic and sound chunky games) every time, greatly increasing the length of cycle:

I don’t know about you, but those new longer iPhone syncs are just killing me. Once an App has been backed up, I don’t see why Apple doesn’t just back up the Documents and Library data rather than backing up entire applications every single time the iPhone connects.

Me neither. Backing up changed states would be far more efficient. If backups take too long for a mobile device, people will start skipping them, defeating the purpose. Imagine if it treated +300MB movie files this way?

There have also been widespread reports of App’s being buggy and causing crashes, though some developers are pushing back at this, telling TUAW that Apple may have rushed 2.0 out the door before it was as stable as it needed to be:

Anonymous developer sources are reporting that they’ve been poring over crash logs and discovering that the reported crash has nothing to do with their application. There’s a growing consensus that Apple has released a highly unstable “final” version of the 2.0 firmware. So, maybe it’s more of a shame that Apple, who laid the groundwork for a multitude of useful and exciting applications, rushed development and failed to build a better foundation.

Some 8 betas since introduction, could the deadlines really have been tight enough on either side to lead to a poor Gold Master?

UPDATE 2: Apple Design Award winner Craig Hockenberry of Twitterrific fame chimes in on just how hard it is to debug iPhone apps, and why, which may explain some of the problems:

The big problem here is that the only way to install software on an iPhone or iPod touch is with the App Store. There are also no provisions for beta testing. Without the ability to sign code, there is no way for a user to get code onto a device: most users fall into this category. The only way to “test” a fix is to release the changes to tens of thousands of users. It’s the developer equivalent of playing Russian roulette.

Arguably the “killer feature” of iPhone 2.0, we’ve certainly not heard the end of this.