The most common words used uniquely in 1-star and 5-star App Store reviews, according to Instapaper and Tumblr developer Marco Arment who wrote a script to collect the data:

5-star: awesome, worth, thanks, amazing, simple, perfect, price, everything, ever, must, ipod, before, found, store, never, recommend, done, take, always, touch

1-star: waste, money, crashes, tried, useless, nothing, paid, open, deleted, downloaded, didn’t, says, stupid, anything, actually, account, bought, apple, already

His analysis is well worth the read.

[Marco.org]

Since the iPad launch on April 3, TiPb's been getting tips about desktop/dashboard/widget-style apps being removed first from the iPad App Store, then from the iPhone App Store as well. There are a number of examples, some well known by now, some relatively unknown. The commonality between all of them is that they've tried to somehow make the iPad or iPhone into a Mac- or PC-like screen filled with mini-apps like browsers, email clients, calculators, weather, etc.

Some look almost exactly like Apple's Mac Dashboard, other like Windows of various flavors. Others don't look like desktops at all but rather place widgets on top of photos or other, more specific backgrounds.

Devs have worked around this by using a much more restricted metaphor, like a double tiled display, or by going the Jailbreak route, or they haven't worked through it and just gotten frustrated at the opacity of the App Store review process and not known how to proceed.

I can't claim any special insight or information on this, but my best guess is that Apple is removing (or advising they will be removing since not all of them have been pulled yet) the apps for the same reason they originally didn't include cursor (arrow) keys on the Mac. It's a pretty well known story and one that's been used a few times in different commentaries on the iPhone and iPad and Apple's direction thereof, but it bears repeating.

The Mac was the mainstream transition from CLI (command-line interface) to GUI (graphical user interface). People had to become comfortable using a mouse to drive the new interface, and Apple felt that if they gave them arrow keys users would just launch text windows, abandon the mouse, and revert to what they were comfortable with at the first opportunity. They'd never learn the new paradigm because they wouldn't have to. So, like the metaphorical bird, they pushed us out the CLI nest and made us madly flap our GUI wings (or risk crashing).

The iPhone and now iPad mark a similar mainstream transition from GUI to multitouch user interface (I'm not calling it MUI). The iPad's display is bigger, but Apple doesn't want it treated like an old-fashion PC or Mac desktop, and they don't want apps in the App Store that encourage users to treat the iPhone or iPad like desktops.

Developers who have invested time and money into building those apps get crushed, of course, and Apple really has to figure out a better way of advising people which apps are on the "unforeseen" list as soon as they can possibly foresee them. I'm not defending Apple's process or policy here -- as I said I have no idea if I'm even right about the reason -- I'm just trying to figure it out. Curation isn't bad, but bad curation is chilling.

Users also will no doubt be upset they can't get these apps, just as users were probably upset Apple didn't include arrow keys on the original Mac. I don't know if Apple realizes that and just banks on having enough momentum and cool tech that users will once again forgive an App Store removal in light of what still remains and is coming. (That bank of user good-will isn't limitless, however, and I certainly hope Apple realizes that).

[Yes, or Apple could be getting ready to announce their own widget platform for iPhone OS as a special feature for that large-resolution iPhone HD/iPhone 4G at WWDC 2010. Those types of things are always possible.]

Go to the iTunes App Store, search for an app you want, and get your results flooded with spam-apps. Its a growing problem as unscrupulous developers keep finding new and annoying ways to try and game Apple's approval process and scam users.

Marco.org highlights some of the worst offenders, but more importantly offers legitimate developers a way to take action:

When an app is infringing on your copyright or trademark, the proper procedure is to send a clear notice to appstorenotices@apple.com citing your intellectual property and which apps are infringing it (provide their iTunes URLs to eliminate ambiguity). As part of this notice for trademark infringements, you can request that apps not be allowed to use your trademark to market themselves in search results (keyword spam).

Hopefully Apple will save developers the frustration and wasted time it takes to complain and take that App Store rejection hammer out of a spin. For a good cause this time.

[Marco.org]

Frasier Speirs, one of several well-publicized developers to leave the iPhone over objections to Apple's App Store policies and controversy surrounding app rejections, has decided to return, post iPad, and his reasons are intriguing:

I suspect that the days of everyone buying a MacBook to get online are soon to be over. I've already written about how I see our three-Mac family turning into a one-Mac, three-iPad family over the next hardware cycle and I imagine that scenario repeated industry-wide over time. Already the ratio of iPhone OS devices to Macs is 5:2.

He believes Apple can and will reject apps, and that the frontier days of computing are giving way to the mainstream, appliance future.

iPhone OS is the first mass-market operating system where consumers are no longer afraid to install software on their computers (I’m not counting read-only media software platforms like games consoles here). In a conversation recently, a friend recounted a scene that he passed by in an airport. Four fifty-something women were sitting at a cafe table discussing the latest apps they had downloaded on their iPod touches. New software can’t break your iPhone OS device and, if you don’t like it, total removal is only a couple of taps away.

Speirs also thinks iPads are cheap enough you can buy each year's new model and still save money compared to traditional computers. And he wants into that ecosystem.

[Frasier Speirs via Daring Fireball]

UPDATE: According to the WSJ, Apple has contacted Fiore:

Apple called the cartoonist Thursday and suggested that he resubmit the app, Mr. Fiore said in an interview. “I feel kind of guilty,” he said. “I’m getting preferential treatment because I got the Pulitzer.”

Preferential perhaps but not uncommon. Several controversial app rejections have been reconsidered when publicity brought them to the attention of higher-ups at Apple. Unfortunately, the "review team rejects, executive team reconsiders" is not a scalable or likely desirable strategy for Apple.

ORIGINAL: Mark Fiore, the first online journalist to win a Pulitzer Prize (for editorial cartooning), has had his iPhone app, NewsToons rejected from the App Store because it violates Apple's policy against "ridiculing public figures".

This follows similar rejections of Bobble Rep, which contained political caricatures by Tom Richmond, and MSNBC.com Cartoons by Daryl Cage. Both of those apps eventually made it into the App Store, and it's possible NewsToons will as well (though Fiore isn't going to bother fighting on its behalf), but the situation highlights another problem with the highly regulated store model.

There will always be cases where legitimate artistic and/or social expression gets caught up in policies designed to exclude extreme, abusive, or otherwise inappropriate content for the general audience. Just as all nudity isn't porn (or isn't intended to titillate), political satire isn't the same as political attack or public ridicule for partisan purposes.

And just like rejection can have a chilling effect on developers, it can have a chilling effect on the press that holds their editorial freedom near-sacred.

We've seen signs of Apple considering an Explicit category for the "sexy apps" removed from the App Store earlier in the year. A satire category sounds less wieldy, however and points out once again the types of problems Apple will have with both content creators and simple scale as the App Store continues to race towards 200,000 apps.

[via Niemanlab, thanks for the tip Fassy!]

Marco Arment raised a flag on the iPad App Store field today and called foul over Apple using private APIs in their first-party iBooks app.

Private APIs are meant to be exclusive to Apple's OS and built-in apps (like Safari, Mail, iPod, etc.) because they're experimental, transitional, or otherwise not something that developers should count on being there in the same form in the next OS update. They're still works in progress. Public APIs on the other hand are an agreement between Apple and developers that they can be used to build apps safely and confidently because they won't be changed in a future update (Apple won't break existing apps).

Up until now, Apple has played by their own rules and all of the apps they've not built into the iPhone (Remote, Keynote Remote, MobileMe Gallery, etc.) have been based on public, no private APIs. Reportedly Pages, Keynote, and Numbers were careful to stick to public APIs as well. That's only fair. If Apple could do things in the App Store that competitors like QuickOffice or Documents to Go couldn't, developers could rightly call it unfair, and that could lead to trouble.

However, according to Arment and backed up by oldmanuk, iBooks does make use of private APIs for functions like the in-app brightness control, a feature that would get a competitor like Amazon's Kindle app rejected from the App Store.

Developers are understandably upset about this seeming break in Apple's policy.

Thing is, Google famously got away with using private API for their Google Mobile App in late 2008 only to have those API made nice and legal in 2009.

So for TiPb's part, we're going to wait for the iPhone 4.0 event in 2 days and see if the private vs. public API landscape doesn't change when the next SDK beta hits the streets.

[Thanks Dev for the tip]

Apple is about to add a third device to their iPhone OS family, the iPad, but so far developers are still limited to 100 UDID "slots" for ad-hoc distribution (aka beta testing), leading Craig Hockenberry of the Icon Factory to wonder on his Furbo.org blog if the "crunch" is coming.

Let's say you (or your company) has a developer account with Apple, two popular iPhone/iPod touch apps, and are about to release an iPad app. That's three apps total. But all you get are 100 slots total -- not per app, not per-user, not 100 for iPhone and 100 for iPad. Total. So if you have 5 developers in-house and each wants to test on all three iPhone OS devices (iPhone, iPod touch, iPad), that's 15 slots gone already. If you want to maintain compatibility with older devices like the iPhone 2G or the iPod touch G1, you might need slots for those as well. If anyone has replaced a lost or broken device, or had one swapped out under warranty, that means a new UDID and another slot taken. We could be up to 20 slots gone already.

If you have beta testers, the problem scales. Each device each tester has comes with a UDID and takes a slot. If you want to maximize your beta testers, that could be 3 slots each (one for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad) and perhaps more if they have old iPhones or iPod touches, or if they're replaced a device. That means 15-20 beta testers can consume every slot you have left. Sure you could stretch that out by only having each tester register 1 device but that adds complexity and still only delays hitting the limit.

Further compounding the problem is that Apple only frees up the UDID slots once a year, so any lost devices, developers who have left the company, or beta testers who have dropped out can equate to wasted slots just sitting there for up to a year.

With the iPad launch, it means any developer whose already maxed out and whose slots don't free up before April 3 is in a tough spot. They can't register any new UDIDs, which means they can't register any iPads to test on. That's not only bad for them, it's bad for users who expect well-tested, well-polished apps and games.

Hockenberry thinks there's a better system for Apple to adopt:

A tweet from Mike Piontek crystalized this thought: the limitation for Ad Hoc provisioning should be based around individuals, not the devices that they own. It makes more sense to regulate Apple IDs rather than UDIDs. I want John Gruber to be able to run my apps on whatever devices he currently owns. I want to put my own name on the provisioning list and enable the five iPhone OS devices sitting on my desk. All that Apple cares about is that are only 98 other people besides Gruber and me.

And he points out it's not just developers but those same Fortune 100 companies Apple often touts who would benefit:

(I suspect that Enterprise IT has similar problems and would welcome a solution based on employees rather than the hardware they own. I can only imagine the headaches of managing thousands of devices.)

If you're a developer, let us know if the ad-hoc crunch is a concern and what, if anything, you're doing to handle the oncoming iPad UDID storm.

TechCrunch is reporting that companies who mass produce (or provide tools and templates for the mass production of) "cookie cutter" apps are hearing that they need to add differentiation and functionality or risk Apple not allowing them into the iTunes App Store. Jason Kincaid says:

Between the developers I spoke to, the consensus was this: Apple doesn’t appear to be opposed to ‘app generators’ and templates per se, but in the last month or so it has started cracking down on basic applications that are little more than RSS feeds or glorified business cards. In short, Apple doesn’t want people using native applications for things that a basic web app could accomplish. For some of these services that’s bad news, because that’s exactly the sort of application they produce; any new applications they submit are going to get rejected. But all hope isn’t lost for them, provided they can make their apps more useful.

Kincaid says Appmakr for one has taken suggestions from Apple to improve things like in-app purchases, instant notifications, offline access, and landscape viewing modes and describe the process as positive. Other services apparently haven't had as much luck.

The move seems to be part of Apple's ongoing efforts to increase the quality of the App Store experience and protect the brand. Much like the removal of sex-based apps last month, "cookie cutter" apps could seen as low value, sometimes verging on spam. For consumers it could result in a cleaner App Store and ultimately better apps (more than just re-packaged RSS feeds) but at the expense of quantity and choice. For developers, it's likely another in a list of things they'll consider before building on Apple's platform.

If Apple is indeed working on revamping the mass produced app, what think you?

UPDATE: Or not, as this dialog's been around for a while as per 9to5Mac's @llsethj. Sad now.

ORIGINAL: Developer Frasier Spears posted the above "curious" iTunes dialog to Twitter. It appeared when he hit "Update All". We have no way of knowing exactly it means, but we're hoping it means upgrade pricing is finally coming to the app store.

As background, one of the problems still facing developers has been the inability to offer paid upgrades. Either they had to give away new versions for free, or they had to create new apps with no way to discount the price to existing users.

That's led some developers to slow down or stop making major improvements to their apps (since they can't count on upgrade revenue), and it's led to backlashes when releasing new versions as new apps.

In an ideal App Store, developers could choose to give existing users a discount when they upgraded.

Cult of Mac reports that Apple has begun removing apps from the iTunes App Store that scan for Wi-Fi access points. It looks like these apps are being removed due to their use of private APIs, which is prohibited by the iPhone SDK agreement. This would make it similar to the recent removal of apps that misused the iPhone camera DCIM folder to store and exchange documents.

There's been some suggestion, however, that list reflects a policy change from Apple closer to the recent removal of sex-based apps.

Our speculation is that Apple has either added the Wi-Fi private APIs to their static analysis tool, or has just finally gotten around to checking for them. That would make it appear like a new policy when it's actually the originally agreement finally being enforced.

Some developers believe long term lack of action by Apple equals tacit approval for private API use. Those beliefs likely have to start changing. When Apple makes an API public, they're guaranteeing that developers can use them and have faith Apple won't break them (and the apps built on them) in a future update. Private APIs are the opposite -- Apple can and will change them at any point, breaking apps that try to use them when they shouldn't. In some cases Apple is working on public versions of private APIs and will release them in future versions of the iPhone OS. In other cases they aren't -- sometimes for security, other times just for proprietary reasons.

In either case, this isn't the first and likely won't be last set of rejections. While we feel for developers, we feel more for users who may have come to depend on the functionality of these apps.

If you're a developer who's dealing with this and have a better take on the situation, please let us know!

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]

Cult of Mac is reporting that Apple has added an "Explicit" category to iTunes Connect, the portal through which developers submit and manage their App Store apps. According to their developer source:

“It’s available for selection when adding a new app to iTunesConnect although I can’t see any sign of it in the actual App Store yet.”

MacRumors says they've confirmed the information, so where does this leave us now? Apple removed 5000 sex-based apps last week and stirred up a ton of reaction (cheers and jeers alike), only to come up with an organizational alternative a few days (and hundreds of blogs posts, thousands of tweets and comments) later? If it wasn't a reconsideration, wouldn't they have just added the category and reshuffled the apps without all the fuss and muss? Or did they want to force a re-submission to start the new category off with a clean slate?

Either way, hopefully this will include a better ratings implementation to go with it, so parental controls can turn off "explicit" apps without turning off apps that access the web along with them.

What think you?

Yesterday at Macworld two events helped clarify something I've been discussing with Dieter for a while now -- Apple, the iPhone and iPad, and closed vs. open systems, control vs. chaos. These two events were a presentation by John Gruber of Daring Fireball concerning the 10 biggest problems faced by Apple, and a brief conversation with Leo Laporte of TWiT about Google Buzz.

As part of his Round Robin BlackBerry review, Dieter departed on a rant about BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) of epic proportions. A closed communications protocol, he argued, was untenable. BlackBerry users create incredible amounts of content in BBM (yes, chat is content) but it's all completely closed off and owned by RIM. If you leave BlackBerry, you can't take your BBM content with you. If RIM ever disappears, all your BBM content is lost. Something like Gmail on the other hand, works across platform and if you switch from BlackBerry to iPhone to Android, you enter your Gmail account and everything is there. Since you can access it via standard protocols like POP and IMAP, you can also make local copies and upload them to a different service (i.e. upload your mail to a non-Google IMAP folder).

Laporte made a similar comment about Twitter and Facebook. If either Twitter or Facebook were to fail, all your status updates, all your wall posts, all your friends and those you follow and/or follow you would be gone.

I don't know if Google Buzz will prove to be an open protocol and system for sharing status, location, and relationships, and certainly it's implementation shows signs of the typical Google "release now, fix later, polish never" model, but something needs to.

And this brings me rather circuitously back to Apple and the iPhone. As much as a certain segment decries Apple as "closed", in terms of protocols they're remarkably open. They use IMAP for mail, and open-sourced CalDAV and CardDAV for calendaring and contacts. They use WebDAV for web directories and WebKit for Safari. iChat supports most IM protocols, including Jabber. They use BSD Linux and the Darwin kernel for the core of Mac and iPhone.

Apple is generally built on top of open technologies, and one of their core strengths is melding that open architecture with tightly controlled (i.e. proprietary) user interface layers (and developer APIs, and App Store review processes).

For some, that last part is an absolute deal breaker. But they have Ubantu and Open Moko. (Yes, even Android is closed -- you can't muck about with Gmail or Google Maps apps). For mainstream users, however, the front end, the user experience, "just works" to the point where it's become a cliche.

I said it previously in my Round Robin summation, to use Google you must give up privacy, to use Apple you must give up control. (I don't even want to think about what I'm giving up to use Google on Apple!)

So proprietary interfaces to open technologies -- how does that work for us? What happens when we use something not controlled by Apple?

John Gruber suggested AT&T as an example. Indeed, he listed it a one of Apple's problems. Now, some people get great AT&T service while others have connection problems that have become near-legendary. Either way, it's hurt media and mainstream perceptions about the iPhone.

Gruber also mentioned Big Media (movie and TV studios, music labels) as a problem. They want to charge more than the market will bear (certainly enough to make free-as-in-torrent an alternative) and make less available via iTunes than via a retro 1980s corner video store.

Is it a coincidence that some of the main aspects of the iPhone and iTunes that Apple has absolutely no control over are some that cause the greatest amount of user frustration?

(The App Store and its review process mostly create developer frustration, and Gruber listed this as a problem as well, though one that's slightly improving since the holiday shut-down).

So, we come back to and down to Apple liking to control the user-facing aspects of the iPhone (and iPod touch, and soon, iPad) but using and promoting open standards for a lot of the technology underneath. While this approach might clash philosophically with some users (and again, Android, Palm, etc. aren't open, they're just more open) and practically for others (power users who want the control themselves), its proved remarkably effective for casual, mainstream users, and for power-users willing to give up some control for a better experience.

Except for that part about AT&T and Hollywood, but then those are controlled with little concern for user experience...

TechCrunch is reporting that Apple has started sending developers invitations to take a satisfaction survey with regards to the App Store in general, and the App Store approval process in specific.

Apple asks you to answer with: “Very dissatisfied,” “Somewhat dissatisfied,” “Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied,” “Somewhat satisfied,” “Very satisfied,” or “Don’t know.”

They also ask, “What one thing could Apple do to make the iPhone Developer Program better?” and give you a text box to write anything you want. A few months ago they certainly would have gotten some interesting responses there.

Indeed and as we suspected, "wait for developers and bloggers to get really ticked off and then have Phil Schiller email them" wasn't a scalable solution. TechCrunch speculates that the improvements in the App Store approval process starting 2010 involve more and better trained staff, since approval speed has improved and reportedly even communications between Apple and developers is better.

So, if you're a developer, what will you be telling Apple? And if you're not a developer, does it matter to you that Apple is trying to improve their developer relations?

UPDATE: PatternMusic reveals that the issue is (mis)use of the DCIM folder (digital camera image folder -- where your camera roll pictures are stored) to transfer non-image related files.

Apple, however, precludes apps from reading or writing data files to any other place except the app’s “sandbox” document folder through their developer agreement.

ORIGINAL: TechCrunch reports that the latest update to the Amazon-owned Stanza eBook reader [Free - iTunes link], version 2.1, removed USB sharing as demanded by Apple's iTunes App Store:

Just for your reference: the feature enabled users to transfer books in the ePub or eReader format to their mobile devices using a USB cable.

I’m sure Apple has good reasons to prevent people from being able to transfer files to iPhone and iPod Touch devices using a USB cable, and I believe this isn’t the first time they’ve asked developers of apps with this or similar features to remove them for new users. That said, I’m not 100% certain which rules were broken here, and since Apple requested Lexcycle not to discuss specifics we’re left guessing why Cupertino had an issue with the USB syncing features.

Existing Stanza owners who want to keep the feature should, of course, ignore the update. Give us your take in the comments!

(Thanks to Fassy for the tip!)

Think this GigaOm visual representation of the iPhone and iPod touch App Store Economy is massive? Check out that economy itself. (And we're guessing there are far more devices on the market now, given how 50 million was nearly 2 quarters ago).

TUAW recently remarked that the App Store approval process seemed to be working much faster lately. TiPb has been in contact with numerous application developers and the general overall feel we are getting is the same -- Apple is finally coming around when it comes to the app approval process. Much has been said about Apple and their App Store over the past few years but things have seemingly changed for the better.

TiPb sometimes gets access to beta applications for feedback or review anywhere from a month to a week in advance. Generally we've seen the same 2 week delay Apple advises before the apps show up in the App Store (though sometimes it's been up to 4 weeks or more in the past). Lately we have received an app only to find it released only a day later, sometimes hours later depending on the app itself.

What has brought about this speed boost we have no idea but we welcome it regardless and hope it continues.

[Thanks to Chris for the link!]

Apple has announced they have surpassed the 3 billion download mark within their App Store. Somewhere in Cupertino Steve Jobs must have a huge smile on his face as it was just this past September where downloads reached 2 billion:

“Three billion applications downloaded in less than 18 months—this is like nothing we’ve ever seen before,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “The revolutionary App Store offers iPhone and iPod touch users an experience unlike anything else available on other mobile devices, and we see no signs of the competition catching up anytime soon.”

So let's stop and think about this, iPhone and iPod touch users in 77 countries downloaded one billion applications within a 4 month period. That's pretty impressive and with no signs of slowing, it's a safe bet Jobs is right about the competition.

Making our collective jaws drop today is Tapulous, who are claiming sales approaching $1,000,000 (that's on million) dollars a month, and news that even those inside and around Apple had no conception of just how successful the iPhone app ecosystem would be.

First, Reuters reports that Tap Tap Revenge maker Tapulous, a 20-person iPhone development team, has seen 20 million installs and 600 millions games played, adding up to sales approaching $1 million a month.

Tapulous' chief executive said he expects it to ride a wave of exponential growth in mobile app commerce in the next two years, similar to that seen recently by social gaming companies like Zynga, Playfish and Playdom. Playfish was recently acquired by Electronic Arts for $275 million in cash.

Second, the Financial Times reports that even insiders weren't expecting this level of success. Says Kleiner Perkins partner Matt Murphy, manager of the then $100m iFund announced alongside the original iPhone SDK:

"We had no idea there would be 2bn downloads by October. Most people within Apple, if you had told them it would be a fifth of that by now, they would have been pretty happy."

Part of this is attributed to Steve Jobs, of course:

Even more important was Mr Jobs’ willingness to demand that AT&T and other network carriers give up control over what sorts of programmes could operate over their airwaves. He argued that the iPhone was a computer, not a phone, and that consumers expected to be able to do many things with computers. History had shown that this kind of freedom was what drove the more profitable “ecosystems” of computers – where sales of hardware were dependent on a wide variety of useable software.

So, remove the carriers, treat smartphones like real, mobile computing platforms, and everyone (mostly) benefits? Who could have imagined that?

There appears to be a bug on Apple's iTunes App Store that's causing apps to show up as having updates available even after they've been downloaded over and over again. We've gotten quiet a few readers writing in about it now, and there's the usual huge thread up on Apple's discussion boards.

Here's what it looks like -- the App Store on your iPhone, iPod touch, or iTunes on your PC tells you you have an update for an app. You tap or click to update, enter your iTunes password, and the app downloads -- but it still shows the app in the update list. You tap or click update again, it downloads again, but again still shows the app in the update list. Or worse (as happened to me a few weeks ago), iTunes pops up a Checking for Available Downloads dialog then proceeds to try, over and over again, for days, to download 1.3GB of turn-by-turn navigation app update.

Of course, the problem seems intermittent and random -- different users experiencing the it with different apps at different times. It's also unclear if everyone is having the same problem. For some, Apple's iTunes app servers may not be properly providing the updated app file and so the new version is not successfully getting installed on the device. For others, the file might be getting installed but iTunes doesn't recognize or register it so keeps offering the same update.

Possible solutions include rebooting your iPhone or restarting iTunes on your PC, or just waiting and trying again in a day or so. On rare occasions it looks like it takes a few days to sort itself out, which for small apps isn't a show-stopper for those 1GB apps (or large games), it can be untenable, especially for people in countries with tight data caps on their home internet.

Some developers are hearing enough feedback on this that they're contacting Apple in hopes of some server-side fixing (see image of Twitter conversation above). We're hoping for some as well.

If you're having this problem, let us know in the comments, and let us know what (if anything) is fixing it for you.

Apple has begun rolling out an update to the way the iTunes (on Windows or Mac) shows the App Store, including fewer words and more screenshots. Rather than the lengthy app descriptions of old, iTunes now shows only the first two lines, with a "more..." tag that needs to be clicked to reveal the rest (time to tighten up that text, developers!). Instead of one screenshot at a time, iTunes also now shows a series of scrollable screenshots, similar to how the on-device App Store began showing them with iPhone 3.0.

iTunes 9 gave media a makeover, so it's nice to see Apps get the same treatment. iTunes 9, also like iPhone iTunes and App Store, transitioned to WebKit and HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for the UI. So, Apple can update it at any time without needed to provide a new version for users to download. This is exactly the reason they're promoting WebKit UI for apps in general (when and where they make sense) during their Tech Talk World Tour.

Again, it's rolling out, so a lot of apps still show the old pages. If you can find the new look, however, let us know what you think. Better for buyers? How about developers?

(via TechCrunch)

TiPb had a chance to talk to some developers who attended Apple's recent iPhone Tech Talk World Tour (San Jose, Seattle, New York, Toronto, Paris, London, Hamburg, Bejing, and Tokyo), where they promised expert advice at cities near developers. So how has it gone? The T-Shirt's given away say it all they "came, saw, and coded".

There were different tracks for developers to choose from, and one of the complaints we heard was that the devs wished it had been longer so they could have attended them all. Still, we have some notes they were willing to share, after the break!

(And if you think this is just for geeks... well it is, but it explains some of why the iPhone does what it does, and what developers could do to ease some of our frustrations).

WebKit

• One dev who was new to Apple technologies found WebKit and their specific CSS (-webkit-gradient, -webkit-mask, webkit-box-reflect) to be "astoundingly powerful". (If you run WebKit or Safari, check out the http://westciv.tools.gradients demo.
• Apple stressed the advantages of using WebKit and embedded WebView. The AppStore app is an example of a native app with a WebKit UI made by Apple.
• A button made in CSS is much lighter than an image file and also scales elegantly (resolution independent).
• Even a JPG that's only 50k in size will take up 10 times more memory when it's decompressed and rendered in a UI.
• WebKit interfaces can be updated outside of the App Store approval process, so no resubmission just to change UI elements.
• Client-side database storage API in HTML 5 saves state locally and reloads the next time you view the page. (Again, http://webkit.org/demos/sticky-notes/ demo.)

App Performance

• Apple believes every developer should be obsessed about performance.
• For the end user experience, every fraction of a second is important. They want to load and go, not invest time in waiting for an app to load.
• iPhone uses 12MB for graphics, 32MB for kernel, 12MB for daemons, 4MB for phone, so for iPhone 2G and 3G, half the memory is gone before any 3rd party app even loads.
• There's no swap file, so the size of binaries matter since they'll be loaded into memory.
• When a low-memory situation occurs, there's a warning. On second warning, background apps are killed, on third warning (95%), front-facing app is killed. (Think Safari disappearing and getting dumped back onto the home screen).
• Apple stressed that developers need to handle these warnings elegantly and free up memory as/when appropriate.
• A user should never be warned about memory or asked what to do (hello AnDROID!).
• Where a developer stores cache is important. If a developer stores cache in a location that iTunes backs up, it creates slow iTunes backups for users. They should cache in temporary areas instead.
• The iPhone uses a single core processor, but can handle multiple threads. In the future these devices may be multi-core so starting now and building them for that future is a good idea.
• Apple believes that great apps come from developers who pay attention to details beyond just what's necessary to get the job done.

What About Those Rejections?

• The most common reason for a rejection, according to Apple, was when an app crashed on launch.
• Developers tended to know that if an API was private, they shouldn't try to make an app that depended on it since it would likely get rejected.
• No specific rejections were brought up or addressed.
• One dev we spoke to liked the App Store and Apple as "gatekeeper" because it created greater end-user trust -- people were more likely to trust that App Store apps would work and not mess up their phone or do anything criminal.
• Another dev, when asked about iPhone development vs. another platform, liked that Apple handled all the transactions and getting all the apps in front of all the users, which would be a huge chore and expense otherwise.
• Yet another dev just thought the size and reach of the App Store made it the best place to develop at the moment.

All in all it sounds like developers enjoyed the free event, and the free coffee, pastry, and t-shirts. Hopefully Apple will continue to provide them next year, and going forward.

If you attended an iPhone Tech Talk World Tour session and have any additional notes for us, please send them our way!

UPDATE: Stephen Rayner Jr. let us know he's putting his lengthy, detailed notes from the Toronto Tech Talk online via blog.nuthatch.com.

The New York Times had a huge, gushing, front-page-of-the-business-section story this weekend about the iPhone App Store titled Apple's Game Changer, Downloading Now.

Now the App Store, with over 100,000 apps and 2 billion downloads is a runaway success, no doubt about it, but given the continued problems with developer relations and capricious approval processes, seeing Apple Senior VP of Marketing Phil Schiller, and VP of iTunes Eddy Cue, attack public relations via the New York Times, and not help restore faith the developers via a come-to-jesus-phone open and honest airing of grievances and non-opaque plans for improvement just comes off as... awkward (and perhaps a tad insulting). And the New York Times -- really? If you don't have the guts to go for the story and ask the tough questions of Apple, who's left?

Anyway, here's what we did get from the Apple brass:

There's a 24" (20 LED screen) display in the lobby of 1 Infinite Loop displaying 20,000 top-selling app icons, and each time one is bought, its icon jiggles and ripples the adjacent icons. Yeah, that's pretty cool.

First up, Schiller says the review process is a necessary evil to ensure customers trust that apps won't crash their iPhones, steal their data, or contain illegal content, and that most apps just sail through the process. They received 10,000 apps a week.

“I absolutely think this is the future of great software development and distribution. The idea that anyone, all the way from an individual to a large company, can create software that is innovative and be carried around in a customer’s pocket is just exploding. It’s a breakthrough, and that is the future, and every software developer sees it.”

“I think, by and large, we do a very good job there. Sometimes we make a judgment call both ways, that people give us feedback on, either rejecting something that perhaps on second consideration shouldn’t be, or accepting something that on second consideration shouldn’t be.”

“We care deeply about the feedback, both good and bad,” he says. “While there are some complaints, they are just a small fraction of what happens in the process.”

“Our goal is very simple: We want to have the best platform for applications that there has ever been on any product. We know we’re not perfect, but we know we’re better than anything else that has been and we want to keep improving it.”

Apple is typically considered to be a perfectionist when it comes to aesthetic and experience, however, so a "good enough" argument is hard to process -- that small fraction should be keeping Steve Jobs up at night.

The Times does mention the controversies and offers some developer comments about apps almost a year in limbo, and large gaming companies being treated the same as hobbyists. They also cover the jailbreak alternative. When it comes to Cue, however, we get:

“A rocket ship is even too small of an analogy. We’ve been able to leverage a lot of our iTunes technology for the App Store. But it’s completely different. We’re reviewing all of those apps. We really don’t have to review each and every song.”

Apple told the Times they're "trying" (?) to increase the number of reviewers and streamline the process.

Check out the full article, which also features RIM/BlackBerry, Palm, Microsoft, and Google's take on the App Store and apps in general. And let us know what you think!

9to5Mac brings word of Unity's latest update:

Unity iPhone 1.5.1 includes improved XCode support and improved AssetBundle support, but more importantly Native APIs (NSGetEnviron and exc_server functions) have been removed to comply with new Apple requirements.

“The main reason for this is to avoid problems with applications breaking when Apple releases new versions of the iPhone OS,” the company explains.

In case you hadn't been following the story, Apple is using a new static analysis tool to find and reject apps using private APIs, and in so doing flagged a bunch of them caused by some calls inside the Unity game development engine (and the Three20 framework, perhaps among others).

On the flip side, it's possible the same static analysis tool is also generating false positives when it comes to apps using Apple's own recommended backward compatibility guidelines.

According to Apple's Dev Center:

By using “weak linking” in your Xcode project, you can include frameworks you’ll need for the newer features, and check for API availability when your application is running. This technique provides you with the broadest possible audience for your application.

Yet developer Juicy Bits Software speculates that:

we’ve been bitten yet again by the static analysis tool. 3D Camera Lite runs on iPhone OS 3.0 or later, and we check the OS version before calling any of the new 3.1 APIs…

So, basically, Apple's not acknowledging the OS check, and rejecting based on 3.1 APIs being used for apps that run on earlier versions of the iPhone OS that don't include those APIs as public.

If correct, that's certainly "frustrating" as they put it, and yet another sore point Apple will need to address and quickly.

[Thanks to Jordan for the Juicy Bits tip!]

Swing by the iTunes App Store, pick a category, and get/go to the Sort by: Release Date listing and it may look like Apple hasn't added any new iPhone and iPod touch apps since November 19 -- only they have, and it's just the iTunes listings that are broken.

Rewind: We started getting questions from users who thought no new apps were being released, or that Apple had somehow frozen the App Store. Then we got reports from developers saying their apps weren't showing up in the release date listings even though they'd been approved and put into the store. Finally, we got reports of the release date listings being flat out busted, and that's what looks to be the case.

What does this mean? For users looking to find new apps in iTunes, good luck with that. Absent sort by release date, you'll have to hit up third party tracking sites like AppShopper until Apple fixes the App Store proper. For developers who were hoping for the brief spotlight that listing provides for those users, well you're out some primo free marketing. And for many, that's going to hurt.

So, to sum up, yes Apple is still posting new apps, but no they're not updating the release date lists, and yes this sucks for both user discovery and developer exposure.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in -- in all forms!]

UPDATE: As expected, Rogue Ameoba's Airfoil Touch has been approved, with the original graphics displayed from Mac OS X. Meanwhile, Gx5 tells us it took over a year to get their one-touch search portal app, iClueless approved following a string of time-consuming (given Apple's process) rejections. Again we wonder if having a "big voice" makes a big difference?

ORIGINAL: Apple Senior VP of Marketing, Phil Schiller, has once again stepped forward to address growing concerns about the iTunes App Store approval process -- but this time he's avoided developers and their complaints about opacity and inconsistency, and instead gone to BusinessWeek to get ahead of the story going mainstream.

Let's think about this for a moment. Schiller's previous, highly publicized comments have been emails addressed to bloggers and Mac developers, and wrung truthy enough to give a tiny glimmer of hope to those who just assumed Apple's upper management was oblivious to the problems around rejected apps. These comments read more like spin; like instead of fixing the App Store, they're worried concerns are spreading beyond developers and the blogsphere, and instead of earnestly working even harder to fix them, they just want to minimize and marginalize the complaints in the minds of the general press and public, who might be hearing about it for the first time following Facebook developer Joe Hewitt's high-profile exodus from the App Store.

The problem is, Apple has historically proven they're terrible at handling bad PR. From the original iPhone price cut to MobileMe's disastrous launch to Steve Jobs' health to everything involving the App Store approval process to date, they come off as wrong-headed and out of touch until it seems almost too late. Case in point, Schiller's comments to BusinessWeek today, where he cites 90% of rejections being related to technical bugs in the app (and contends developers are happy about the "safety net" Apple QA provides). 1% which fall into gray areas Apple hadn't previously considered (example given, apps that help cheat at Casino gambling), and an undisclosed amount that violate trademarks or copyrights:

• "We've built a store for the most part that people can trust. You and your family and friends can download applications from the store, and for the most part they do what you'd expect, and they get onto your phone, and you get billed appropriately, and it all just works."
• "Whatever your favorite retailer is, of course they care about the quality of products they offer. We review the applications to make sure they work as the customers expect them to work when they download them."
• "There have been applications submitted for approval that will steal personal data, or which are intended to help the user break the law, or which contain inappropriate content."
• "We had to go study state and international laws about what's legal and what isn't, and what legal exposure that creates for Apple or the customer."
• "We've had a lot of eyes on us. We've had inquiries from governments and political leaders asking us what we were doing to protect children from inappropriate content,"
• "If you don't defend your trademarks, in the end you end up not owning them. And sometimes other companies come to us saying they've seen their trademarks used in apps without permission. We see that a lot."

Rogue Ameoba's Airfoil Touch rejection is used in the article, and Schiller responds in the abstract:

• "We need to delineate something that might confuse the customer and be an inappropriate use of a trademark from something that's just referring to a product for the sake of compatibility. We're trying to learn and expand the rules to make it fair for everyone."

Apparently it will work out, however, as Airfoil Touch is being re-submitted with the original Mac OS X-pushed artwork restored. And some of Schiller's points are fair enough, we suppose, they're just addressing the wrong forum, and overall (still) avoiding the real problem. And no, it's not Apple being a "gatekeeper".

If Apple wants to run a boutique instead of a flea market, good for them -- the market will decide if end-users ultimately prefer that to the webOS, Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Symbian, and WebApp alternatives. Just stop being a bad "gatekeeper*. Talk to your developers. Get a dedicated developer point man like Palm has. Take questions about the App Store (especially at WWDC). Spend less time with BusinessWeek and more talking to the great developers, so end users get those great apps. B'okay?

Gameloft -- and other developers according to Gameloft -- are cutting back on development for Google's Android platform due to the "weakness" of the Android Market. According to Reuters, Gameloft finance director Alexandre de Rochefort said:

We have significantly cut our investment in Android platform, just like ... many others. [The Android Market] is not as neatly done as on the iPhone. Google has not been very good to entice customers to actually buy products. On Android nobody is making significant revenue."

Ouch. Harsh words. Meanwhile, with iPhone generating 13% of Gameloft's revenue (400 times more than Android), we'll no doubt see plenty more on the iTunes App Store.

While we've heard developers and pundits talk about the business advantage of the iPhone before, and while Android's numbers may be rising and soon, in the short term the bigger houses like Gameloft might just stick with where the money is.

[Thanks to the Reptile for the tip!]

A little while ago we posted about Apple's new use of a static analysis tool to find private API calls and reject the apps that make them. Rather than Storm8 or Unity this time, however, it's former Facebook developer Joe Hewitt's pioneering Three20 framework that's getting caught.

Daring Fireball has some details:

One popular open source framework, Joe Hewitt’s Three20 (linked here on DF back in March), played a bit fast and loose with private APIs, and so now there are numerous developers with apps getting flagged for private API calls made from the Three20 framework. This Google Groups thread [link] covers the problem and the work that’s being done to create a branch of Three20 that’s free of private API calls.

Gruber also links to RogueSheep, whose Postage app has gotten caught via Three20, and has some suggestions to help them help Apple help them avoid getting rejected for unintended private API calls in the future:

Making the static analysis tool available to developers would indeed be helpful. But I suspect it wouldn’t work in terms of game theory. Honest developers could make good use of having access to the tool, to help ensure their projects are free of private API violations. But dishonest developers would use the tool to figure out ways to slip private API calls past the checker. Parrish’s second request, for Apple to run the tool against submissions far sooner in the review process, strikes me as a good and reasonable one.

Us as well.

Instapaper and Tumblr developer Marco Arment riffs on the NYT's article on Palm webOS' trouble wooing developers, and it's predictably good stuff.

His major point is that with its huge install base (which topped 50 million iPhones and iPod touches months ago), it makes more financial sense to develop for Apple's platform, rather than Google's Android or Palm's webOS which might have on 5% to 10% as many devices on the market.

Giving developers an app store is the easy part. The hard part is bringing us enough customers. The iPhone is so good that it built up a huge installed base without any third-party apps, but no Android or webOS devices can say that yet.

Arment points out that the iPod touch makes a huge difference as well, giving developers a similar device to work on without the need for an expensive cell phone contract. He also echoes Fake Steve's comments on different hardware complicating development, though he thinks if Android popularity continues to grow, the platform might justify the investment one day.

Is the Android Marketplace a more open alternative for developers compared to the iPhone App Store, or does the growing diversity of hardware, software, and overlays make it just as frustrating in its own way? Okay, so Fake Steve is likely to be more pro-Apple than a Fake Eric would be, fair enough. And, yes, some high-profile developers have taken issue with Apple's draconian incompetent App Store approval process, well taken. But as much as Fake Steve is funny, the real Dan Lyons (of Newsweek) behind him is an equal opportunity offender, happy to take the p*ss out of Apple at any opportunity, often anti-Linux, and just as often insightful when it comes to things like Old Media and, yes, competing platforms. So take this with a giant-sized fake grain of salt, but take it:

There are just a bunch of different devices that have a lot in common with each other but aren’t quite the same. Trying to turn that into a “platform” is like trying to build a porch using three hundred pieces of wood, none of which are the same size. From the [Gadget Labs] story:

A slew of problems have made managing Android apps a “nightmare,” they say, including three versions of the OS (Android 1.5, 1.6 and 2.0), custom firmware on many phones, and hardware differences between different models.

Dear friends, this is only going to get worse, not better. Think about it. Every handset maker wants its device to be different. And special. So they intentionally tweak the OS to give themselves what they think of as an “advantage,” when really it’s nothing of the sort, because all it does is prevent ISVs from writing apps for them. Even if the handset makers weren’t totally short-sighted and evil, there’s the competency issue.

No doubt Apple's App Store can make developers tear their flesh off in frustration, and GPS/CPU/GPU/Camera/etc. issues fragment the iPhone/iPod platform as well, but at the end of the day, does 50+ million "compatible enough" iDevices that are gate-keeper'ed still offer developers a better experience than a wide range of quasi-competitive, free'er devices?

(Yes, Google is closed as well, just not as closed...)

After submitting a minor .1 bug fix for Airfoil Speakers Touch 1.0.1 [Free - iTunes link] for iPhone and iPod touch, longtime Mac developers Rogue Amoeba waited for what they assumed would be a routine App Store review. Three and a half months, three rejections, and the unsuccessful intervention of a champion at Apple, the app is finally in the store, but the developer has decided the process is too odorous to continue with the iPhone platform.

Don't stop us just because you've heard this before over and over again.

The issue this time was Rogue Amoeba discovering the type of Mac and exact application that was being used as audio source, and displaying the corresponding Mac OS X-provided image of the machine and icon for the app.

Though standard -- intended -- behavior on the Mac, Apple's App Store policy branded this a trademark violation and they requested it be changed. Rogue Amoeba assumed the request was erroneous and tried resubmitting, tried escalating via email, even had a champion inside Apple try help get it through. In the end, the App Store policy was an immovable object, and Rogue Amoeba had to remove the Mac and app icon images. Airfoil Speakers Touch 1.0.1 was then approved and placed in the app store.

(And during the whole process, Airfoil Speakers Touch 1.0, buggy as it was, and using the exact same artwork Apple had issue with in 1.0.1 was left untouched in the App Store for users to download and use).

In the future, we hope that developers will be allowed to ship software without needing Apple’s approval at all, the same way we do on Mac OS X. We hope the App Store will get better, review times will be shorter, reviews will be more intelligent, and that we can all focus on making great software. Right now, however, the platform is a mess.

The chorus of disenchanted developers is growing and we’re adding our voices as well. Rogue Amoeba no longer has any plans for additional iPhone applications, and updates to our existing iPhone applications will likely be rare. The iPhone platform had great promise, but that promise is not enough, so we’re focusing on the Mac.

Add our voice to the chorus: fix. this. More after the break...

While many of these developers point to Apple acting as App Store gatekeeper as the issue, we'd submit right now the actual issue is Apple continuing to act as a capricious, illogical, unpredictable, often stupefying gatekeeper.

Curating a store is just a business model. It may well cost them developers philosophically opposed to the idea, even incredibly talented ones like Facebook's Joe Hewitt, but every decision has an opportunity cost. Choosing to curate a store, even one growing so fast it has 2 billion downloads and 100,000 apps, and continuing to suffer from poor communications, overzealous legal oversight, unclear guidelines, and the crap shoot that seems ultimately at the core of any given app getting approved on any given day... it just doesn't work.

Getting rid of the gatekeeper might treat the symptom but is it the cure? Apple legal could just as easily issue a DMCA demand notice for an app using artwork they felt was a trademark violation, and have it taken down -- even under Google's more open, publish-first, investigate-if-flagged App Market system. The problem is Apple shouldn't think using that artwork is a problem on the iPhone if it isn't on the Mac. That, and the dozens of other so-obvious-it-hurts-our-brains-issues, are what needs to be fixed, and what are driving developers to question the platform.

Like Palm, Apple could allow developers to skip review entirely, leave them off the storefront, but give them a direct download link to market and distribute on their own. That wouldn't fix this issue. They could extend Ad-Hoc to infinity so there'd be no update notification or over-the-air (re)downloads, but developers could make binaries available themselves and users could drag and drop them into iTunes to install, along with beefy warning flags for "unapproved apps". They could create those $999+ "pro" developer accounts, along with dedicated App Store point-of-contact and accelerated review process (levels of partnership program exist on many other platforms and in many other businesses).

Or Apple could just spend some of that 35 billion on hiring a legion of reviewers (rather than just 40ish), training them to the standards of Apple Retail, creating a second team dedicated to communicating with developers, and third team focused solely on whatever tiny percentage of cases, like the one above, spiral out of control.

Yes, Apple is making incremental improvements like email escalation and better review status messages, but every step forward always seems to be met with an equal and opposing step back.

2 billion downloads, 100,000 apps -- Apple touts the growth and size of the App Store in press releases, they need to start respecting that size in practice. Observably respecting. It shouldn't take a champion inside Apple. It shouldn't take emails from Apple Marketing SVP, Phil Schiller. It shouldn't take an open letter from Steve Jobs. (Though it might help restore some developer confidence at this point). It should just work, and Apple needs to invest whatever they need to invest at this point to make it work.

Why is it easier to make a great Twitter client for Apple's iPhone than for Google Android phones like the new Verizon DROID? After Robert Scoble wrote a typically impassioned post entitled The Droid fails AS A PRODUCT when compared to Palm Pre and iPhone, and used Twitter clients as an example, Thomas Marban of Android's premiere Twitter client, Twidroid, responded:

one of the main reasons why UIs are unequally inferior are not only the way you build apps (open vs. closed hw/sw system) and the SDK itself but also marginal to non-existing UI standards, no ready-made drag & drop UI items, variations in carrier- & device firmware, hard- & software input, screen sizes, international customizations, modded phones, rooted phones and last but not least completely different expectations among users and the linux'ish target group itself. in a nutshell: beautiful mess. obviously, all these reasons eat up a huge pile of time that one could better spend with improving UX and polishing the interface. those who started early with android development have learned and are still learning it the hard way, just like they did with win 3.1 back in the days.

John Gruber of Daring Fireball, in Lots of Excuses comments:

That doesn’t sound like someone who plans to ever ship something of the caliber of Tweetie, Birdfeed, or Twitterrific. From what I’ve seen of Twidroid, it’s not even as good as Craig Hockenberry’s original version of Twitterrific for iPhone, which was written as a jailbreak app before the iPhone officially supported third-party software. If Android hardware diversity is already a problem for third-party developers, it’s only going to get worse.

This also highlights the advantages Apple has given iPhone developers. Not only is the iPhone based on OS X, but the development tools are based on Xcode and Interface Builder, and while not as many developers are likely already familiar with Cocoa touch as, say, developers might be with Android's language(s) (or web developers may be for the Palm Pre), existing Mac developers can make those tools sing. And, given the SDK Apple provided, even new developers get a huge head start in terms of functions and user interface elements.

Sure, that means there's a lower barrier of entry to creating poor iPhone apps, but it also means great developers aren't wasting their time re-inventing UI wheels, or fighting the OS to do right by their apps. They investing that time in making great apps.

Speaking of tiny, incremental improvements, Erica Sadun over at TUAW highlight a new addition some developers are seeing when entering iTunes Connect -- a submission history:

Appearing near recently reviewed items, this option opens a detail table showing how your application has worked its way through the App Store review process, and on to the shelf. Stormont details this update on his site.

Sadun also states that the amber status bubbles are slightly more verbose now, adding "waiting for review" for the freshest uploads.

If you're a developer and you're seeing these, or any other changes in iTunes Connect, let us know, and let us know what you think about them, and what else you'd like to see.

Umpteenth verse, same as the first -- Macworld turned their iPhone ebook into and app and submitted it to the iTunes App Store. It was rejected. Several times. Finally editor Jason Snell expressed his frustration on Twitter and several high profile blogs picked it up. Apple called him immediately to try and make it right.

Good for Macworld. Bad for all the developers who lack the same megaphone by virtue of their job and connections.

Granted, with 100,000+ apps, the non-sensical and erroneous rejections remain a tiny percentage, but even a tiny percentage of 100,000+ represents many developers' time, effort, and money. It's frustrating for them and embarrassing for Apple.

Tim Cook and Phil Schiller claim they're making improvements, and no doubt they are. From a pure perception point of view, however, this is one issue that needs fixing sooner rather than later.

Apple has just announced that there are now, officially, over 100,000 iPhone and iPod touch apps in the iTunes App Store:

“The App Store, now with over 100,000 applications available, is clearly a major differentiator for millions of iPhone and iPod touch customers around the world,” said Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “The iPhone SDK created the first great platform for mobile applications and our customers are loving all of the amazing apps our developers are creating.”

Effusive developer quotes abound as well:

“The App Store has forever changed the mobile gaming industry and continues to improve,” said Travis Boatman, vice president of Worldwide Studios, EA Mobile. “With a global reach of over 50 million iPhone and iPod touch users, the App Store has allowed us to develop high quality EA games that have been a huge success with customers.”

“With 10,000 downloads a day, worldwide customer response to our I Am T-Pain App has exceeded our wildest expectations,” said Jeff Smith, CEO of Smule. “The App Store has given us a unique opportunity to create and grow a very successful business, and we’re looking forward to an exciting future.”

Serving 77 countries, with well over 2 billion downloads, jokes, whines, complaints, and rejections aside for the moment, that's a massive milestone for Apple. Congrats.

The internets are a rocking with posts about the iPhone's App Store unofficially hitting 100,000 apps, but while we wait for official word from Steve Jobs, the blogsphere is also debating the important of the sheer quantity of those apps, and whether that's more important that quality.

It isn't.

Scoble (and others, I think MacBreak Weekly covered this earlier) suggests that the huge number of apps makes for a greater chance each individual user will find that unique assortment that best fills their needs. In other words, while everyone has the same iPhone, they don't all have the same apps, and those apps essentially create a personalize experience -- a different iPhone -- for each user.

What's more, those must-have apps, and the money, effort, and time spent in acquiring, setting up, and becoming proficient in them, creates a cost that prohibits users switching to another platform. To go from iPhone to Android, in Scoble's example, means you lose Tweetie, Tap Tap Revenge, Photoshop.com, NASDAQ, etc. (Never mind if you've bought Navigon or other, high-priced content).

John Gruber, for his part, asks if the App Store is popular because the iPhone is great, or is the iPhone great because the App Store is popular.

The number of apps already in the store — and, even more so, the momentum with which new ones are being added — almost certainly guarantees the continuing popularity of the iPhone and iPod Touch for the next few years. But Windows is proof that popularity doesn’t guarantee market-leading quality.

But the iPhone isn't Windows. Neither popularity levels not quantity of software can be used to balance that particular equation.

Unlike the iPhone, Windows has never been a poster-child for great user experience (Windows 7 may alter that, but it's just going to market now). Fact of the matter is, the iPhone debuted in 2007 without an App Store at all, and sold for the entire first year (until the launch of the iPhone 3G and iPhone OS 2.0) without an App Store. It sold on the strength of its user experience.

It's that focus on usability that makes the iPhone great, and that in turn makes many of the apps great. Just like with the Mac, Apple has built in core technologies and development tools to handle a lot of the heavy lifting. So, while it still takes the very best developers to make the very best apps, even fair-to-middling developers can make apps that are surprisingly usable.

Those great apps, combined with a large quantity of usable if not inspired apps, is what makes the iPhone so compelling. The App Store itself is proof. Where Palm, Windows Mobile, Nokia, and RIM have had apps -- many thousands of them -- as well, it took Apple to create a single place, with a single home screen icon, to find and acquire them all. If it was just quantity, Apple would have had a hard time catching up to them.

One of TiPb's favorite iPhone games, indeed the game that cost some of us fingerprints on our index fingers, StoneLoops! of Jurassica has been pulled from the iTunes App Store following a copyright infringement complaint from Luxor-maker MumboJumbo. According to the developers' blog Casual Games Harmony:

About 3 weeks ago we have learned that MumboJumbo supplied Apple with a formal complaint and a request to remove StoneLoops! from the AppStore. The reason? Infringing Luxor copyright, confusing customers, stealing Luxor’s look & feel and even stealing their source code! This might sound absurd to anyone who knows both games but apparently Apple decided otherwise as we’ve been requested to prepare a formal response, which we did. We described how ungrounded each claim is and supplied various materials to back our claims.

The developers responded, denying all but one complaint (the word Luxor appeared in the text of a quoted review, which they offered to remove). Apple, it seems, removed StoneLoops of Jurassica anyway. This led to the developer further pondering that:

if Apple stands by its decision this will create a dangerous precedence. If you are a developer and have an application in the AppStore you should quickly request Apple to remove the apps of your competition, before someone else requests to remove you! I don’t believe this can get any more absurd, but this is exactly where this reasoning is getting us.

Copyright and infringement is a messy, litigious business, one which Apple puts itself squarely in the middle of by virtue of acting as sole App Store custodian. How can they determine merit all on their own, and avoid action by either affected party regardless of what they decide?

We love StoneLoops! We want it back immediately, but more than that -- we need a better way for these disputes to be handled. Is there one?

[via AppAdvice, thanks Tyler!]

One of the many, many "great unknowns" of Apple's iPhone App Store is how the top-grossing list is calculated, specifically whether or not it factors in revenue from in-app purchases. While we could theoretically wait and see if, now that they too can use in-app purchase, a free app makes its way up the list, the folks at Freeverse wanted an answer now. And they think they've found it:

Top Grossing Freeverse Apps are Skee-Ball (#17), Flick Fishing (#97), and Top Gun. Now, interestingly, the Top Paid Apps Chart lists Top Gun as #60 and Flick Fishing as #72. How does this happen? The games are priced the same...but Flick Fishing features DLC. This leads us to conclude that the Top Grossing Apps list seems to include In-App Purchases in its calculations.

What if anything does this mean for developers? Will they be able to land on the Top Free and Top Grossing lists at the same time now? And so what if they do?

Interesting times...

[via Daring Fireball]

Gizmodo has an interesting post up on Apple's iPhone App Store, and how it might be headed straight down the road to oblivion. Their basic take is that downward price pressure, users conditioned by iTunes to expect $1 songs and $2 TV shows, Apple recommending (and wanting) cheaper prices, high development costs with low chances for visibility, all combine to put iPhone (and iPod touch) development on the endangered species list. Further, yesterday's announcement of in-app purchase for free apps, they argue, makes things like the Top Lists nebulous going forward.

And it doesn't just apply to the iPhone:

don't forget, Palm and Android fans, this App Store Effect sends ripples well beyond the App Store. Customers expect to see functionally identical apps priced the same way across platforms, because to us, that's what makes sense. Can devs really afford to port an app to the webOS to sell to the tens of thousands of Pre owners, when they're expected to tag it with iPhone prices, calculated for a base of millions? Whether by Apple's design or totally by accident, everyone who doesn't own an iPhone will suffer for it.

See their chart, above, showing the pricing differences between platforms. Some would argue the market can correct for anything. If premium developers leave in frustration, users will tire of CrApps, a premium developer will sense the voice, fill it, make a killing, and other premium developers will flock back. Others believe Apple controls the market and so it's their job to make it as good a market for developers -- and ultimately users -- as possible through proper policies and procedures (BlackBerry, for example, won't allow paid apps under $2.99 into the App World).

We've all discussed this a lot in the past, and no doubt will continue to discuss it moving forward, but give Giz's article a read and let us know what you think.

An update from the folks Cerulean Studios on the status of the iPhone version of their popular IM client, Trillian:

It’s been 60 days since our initial and only submission to the App Store. Unlike many of the horror stories you may have read about, we haven’t yet received a rejection notice and we’re not frantically going back and forth with Apple fixing reported problems. Despite sending a steady stream of emails to Apple requesting status updates, we continue to receive generic form letters in response – frustrating, to say the least. As developers, we absolutely understand and appreciate Apple’s need to quality control applications – including the need for additional review time when warranted – but being kept in the dark for two months is a strange way to accomplish this. Cerulean remains ready and willing to work with Apple to ensure the software meets all necessary requirements.

We're hoping they hear back soon as well. We're also hoping Apple understands that their lack of communication continues to hurt what's otherwise a fantastic success story with the App Store. Step up to the mic, will ya? Everything can't be dead silence and boilerplate on one end, Phil Schiller email on the other...

[Thanks Robert for the tip!]

Is Apple's iTunes App Store broken, a combination of developers racing to the bottom and users getting conditioned -- and feeling entitled -- to pay less than what an app is worth? Or, are some developers not yet savvy enough in terms of planning and marketing to take advantage of the App Store business model?

Since we covered Ramp Champ this morning, it's timely to cover both the thoughts of the developer, Gedeon Maheux, and a response from Tumblr and Instapaper developer Marco Arment that are currently surrounding it.

The crux of Maheux's post, Losing iReligion, is that the App Store is broken, that it's too hard to gain visibility, and that if you miss the immediate exposure-on-landing of hitting a top list or featured spot, you're doomed to obscurity.

In order for a developer to continue to produce, they must make money. It’s a pretty simple concept and one that tends to get lost in the excitement to write for the iPhone. It’s difficult for me to justify spending 20-50 hours designing and creating new 99¢ levels for Ramp Champ when I could be spending that time on paid client work instead. I would much rather be coming up with the sequel to Space Swarm than drawing my 200th version of a magnifying glass icon. But I’d also like to have some assurances from Apple about reducing the length of the App Store approval process, having the ability to respond to factually incorrect iTunes reviews, not be limited to 100 beta testers, or that large, prominent developers won’t always get preferential treatment. In short, I’d like to know things will be fixed and I don’t mean merely posting a page of marketing text in iTunes Connect.

Arment, argues that there are The two App Stores. The first is superficial, geared to Top Lists and $0.99 apps that are basically disposable by both users and their developers alike. These make quick money and then disappear. The second are the profound apps, which flourish only from user word-of-mouth and online coverage, and while they don't get the initial boom, they have a longer tail before it comes to bust. He further argues that it's when developers mistake one App Store for the others, and miss-target their efforts, that frustration occurs.

The Iconfactory’s apps are able to compete strongly when people choose apps based on research, reviews, or feature comparisons. But that’s not how App Store A’s customers operate. Whether Ramp Champ is a better game than Skee-Ball is irrelevant to them because they’ll never take the time to find out.

Anyone interested in development and why we get the apps we do (and the ones we don't) should take the time to read both posts (linked above). Then come back and let us know what you think. Are there two App Stores? Which one do you shop at? And why?

Developers Bjango posted an interesting -- and informed -- reply today to Newsweek's sensationalist scoop on the iPhone App Store goldrush, and how the "rushies" might not be finding them much gold any more.

Could it be, the era of the fart-app fortune is... over?

Um, yeah. Anyone (other than the few who first staked their claims) banking -- literally -- on an everlasting gold rush to make their app fortune, rather than a clear, calculated business plan, is playing the lottery. And we all know the odds of winning those. So what's the alternative model for the iTunes App Store? The same as it is anywhere, and with anything, else -- focused effort and luck, with those who have better focus and more effort finding themselves luckier on average.

Countering Newsweek's assertion that it takes six months, full time, and costs between $20K and $150K to make an iPhone app, Bjango and indie developers who shared their own stats averaged only a few months, a couple developers, and a mix of full and part time work. Moreover they point out that good ideas are a dime a dozen, and that people passionate about their projects, realistic about their potential, and smart about controlling the bottom line, may just fare better. The best advice, however, is at the end:

There is a mid-point between overnight hit and disastrous failure. However, if money is your primary motivator, then you’ve probably already lost the battle.

Users -- the people who buy the apps -- don't care a hoot about some pseudo-devs get-rich-quick crApps. They care about great apps, and developers who make great apps probably want great apps themselves, not lottery tickets. If a great developer gets hugely successful along the way, everyone benefits.

[Thanks Melwan for the tip!]

Dan Moren of Macworld has an interesting post up about this year's C4 Independent Developers Conference, and how the indie devs seem to have cooled towards iPhone development and turned their attention back to the Mac. Why? Not the technology, of course. They're up on the handset and almost everyone had at least one. No, it was dissatisfaction with the state of how Apple runs the iTunes App Store, of course.

Lack of control over elements like release times was cited as one issue. Profitability, another:

The problem is that the prices in the App Store, which tend towards the lower end, make it harder to recoup the investment put into developing the program in the first place. Sure, there have been over two billion downloads from the App Store, but remember there’s more than 85,000 apps available. Even if your 99 cent application gets downloaded 10,000 times, after Apple’s 30 percent cut that’s just $7,000 in revenue—not profit, mind you, just revenue—and if you spent the last six months of your life working on that application, you better hope you’re still working a day job if you want to cover living expenses.

Rather than abandoning the platform, however, some devs had suggestions for how Apple could help make things better, including upgrade pricing (to avoid Tweetiegate situations), creating a mechanism for demos, and something we've heard before from Craig Hockenberry -- having a higher-priced developer account option that comes with a better service level from Apple ($999 platinum account, for example, in addition to the current $99 version).

With the current volume market, Apple may not care since they'll make their 30% off Apps and CrApps alike. But here's hoping their pride wins out, and Apple decides they don't merely want the most successful App Store, but the very best one as well -- for users and developers.

We were going to post some long preachy editorial about Tweetie 2.0 being a paid upgrade but it looks like everyblog and their siblingsite has already done that. So here's our quick take:

We're buying it, and happily. We asked developer Atebits why they went the route of a new app vs. an in-app purchase, and the response is worth quoting:

If all I were adding were features, then the in-app purchase route would have been an option (but then again, if all I were offering were features, I'd probably release it as a free update). Tweetie 2 is a fresh start, 100% rewritten, shares no code with the original . The only thing they have in common is the name.

So bottom line, Apple doesn't (yet?) provide a mechanism for paid upgrades, and in-app purchase allows for more content, not for replacing an old app with a whole new one. So, yeah. This is the option Atebits took, and it works for us. New great app, same great price. And it is a great app, one which took considerable time and effort to make, and we want to support that because we want the developer to be successful enough to make Tweetie 3.0 just as big an update next time.

Sure, scale factors into that -- $3 is a no brainer, so if you ask us what we'll do if a GPS app wants $100 again next year, well... We'll light those torches when and if we come to them.

Apple.com has gone and souped up their iPhone app promotion page, carrying forward the "Apps for Everything" tag from their latest rough of commercials.

Featured categories include apps for cooks, keeping current, the great outdoors, music, work, students, moms and dads, working out, going out, managing money, traveling, and the fun and games.

Another attempt to provide curated recommendations, along with featured apps and staff picks on the App Store proper, it will no doubt give a boost to any developer who gets the spotlight, but it remains to be seen how much it aids iPhone and iPod touch users still struggling with the discoverability of the App Store.

If you check out their listings, let us know what you think of their picks.

[via Loopinsight]

So you make an app free, get people to download it, then use it to violate your users' privacy by pulling their telephone number off their iPhone so you can call them and try to annoy them into coughing up money for your paid app.

Yeah, that should be a rejection, if not a banning.

(No, we're not mentioning the name of the app, why give them publicity? Picture above is proof of concept code showing how the iPhone user telephone number is retrieved.)

[via Mac4Ever -- thanks everyone who sent this in]

Apple has just announced that their iTunes App Store for the iPhone and iPod touch has passed the 2 billion downloads bar. Boom indeed.

Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO, says:

The rate of App Store downloads continues to accelerate with users downloading a staggering two billion apps in just over a year, including more than half a billion apps this quarter alone. The App Store has reinvented what you can do with a mobile handheld device, and our users are clearly loving it.

Other numbers include more than 85,000 apps now available from 125,000 registered developers, available in 77 countries around the world, for 50 million iPhones and iPod touches sold to date.

Jugger. Naut.

According to developers, Apple has sent them out the following note:

We are pleased to introduce the App Store Resource Center, a single destination designed to make it easier for you to find details on everything you need to know about distributing your app on the App Store — from how to prepare for app submission to managing your app once it's been posted.

Make sure you also check out the News and Announcements section of the iPhone Dev Center for tips on submitting your apps to the App Store, turnaround time for app review, new program features, and guidance on everything from development and testing to distribution and marketing.

Is this one more sign of Apple making tangible improvements to the App Store review process? Developers, let us know!

[Thanks anonymous tipster!]

Last week we linked to an AdMob estimate that the iPhone and iPod touch App Store could represent a $2.5 billion a year economy, which based the estimate off usage stats for their mobile ad network, and a survey of 1000 iPhone, iPod touch, and Google Android users. But not so fast, says Cult of Mac along with developers from Polar Bear Farms, App Cubby, and the Yankee Group.

$2.4 billion divided by the 65,000 apps in the App Store is $37,000 per app, per year. And while some developers earn that, many do not.

They figure it's closer to $250 million to $500 million, or roughly one fifth to one tenth the size.

AdMob is sticking to their original numbers, however, according to the methodology shared again with GigaOm.

To us, it just seems like they're all guestimating how big that really, really big pie is -- just stupid, or goram ridiculous.

[Thanks Icebike for the tip!]

According to developers Bjango, Apple is now telling developers to remove the "Free Memory" function -- the ability to clear data from RAM without force quitting or rebooting -- from their iPhone (and iPod touch) applications or those applications will be removed from the App Store.

Bjango, who makes iStat [$1.99 on sale - iTunes link] had to do just that for their latest version:

Stat’s Free Memory function was removed at Apple’s request. This decision was completely out of our hands. Please note that all other apps with Free Memory appear to have been removed or updated without their Free Memory function too.

After eliciting feedback and considering their options, Bjango went ahead and removed the feature. (Bjango advises users who want the feature to NOT UPGRADE their copies, and reminds Mac users with Time Machine how to downgrade to the old, "Free Memory"-enabled version if necessary.)

To rub salt on their wounds, negative reviews are now piling up for iStat in iTunes, of course, despite Bjango explaining Apple requested the removal in the app's "What's New in This Version" section.

What Apple's rationale may be (if Phil Schiller deigns anyone with another email) is unknown.

[Thanks Scott for the tip!]

Does the App Store represent a $2.5 billion a year economy, with 26.4 million iPhone users, 50% of whom pay for apps to the tune of $9.49 a month, or $125 million in August alone? That's the story AdMob's latest figures (via GigaOm) are telling, with 26.4 million iPod touch users, at 40% who pay, averaging $9.79 or $73 million rounding out Apple's mobile platform.

Some other interesting metrics include iPhone users downloading 10 new apps a month, 18 for iPod touch. 8 apps are freebies for the iPhone'rs, 16 for iPod touch'ies.

Any wonder everyone and their carrier is trying to get into the App Store game?

[Via Gartenberg]

MobileCrunch has a huge post up detailing the latest, and potentially one of the most brazen cases of fake iPhone reviews (astroturfing) to date.

To sum up, MobileCrunch claims PR firm Reverb Communications has been using fake iTunes accounts to deliberately and strategically post fake App Store reviews for their clients -- some of which are fairly recognizable names in the iPhone and iPod touch development space. According to an anonymous tipster:

Reverb employs a small team of interns who are focused on managing online message boards, writing influential game reviews, and keeping a gauge on the online communities. Reverb uses the interns as a sounding board to understand the new mediums where consumers are learning about products, hearing about hot new games and listen to the thoughts of our targeted audience. Reverb will use these interns on Developer Y products to post game reviews (written by Reverb staff members) ensuring the majority of the reviews will have the key messaging and talking points developed by the Reverb PR/marketing team.

Reverb has responded-ish to the claims, and MobileCrunch to the response, so check out the full article for all the annoying details.

Bottom-line remains, however, that if you make great apps, people will tend to find them. If you make great publicity absent a great app, people will only find disappointment and hold a grudge against the next app. So, stick to making great apps, and leave the game playing to the users, b'okay?

As part of their response to the FCC's investigation into the rejection of Google Voice, Apple stated that they 1) receive about 8500 apps and app updates to review each week, 2) each app is reviewed by two reviewers, and 3) employ more than 40 full-time, trained reviewers.

Assuming that (3) doesn't mean there are scads more part-time, untrained reviewers doing grunt work in the dark, sweaty back room (more on that in a moment), some math has been run by Mike Ash:

With 17,000 [8500 x 2] reviews per week and 45 reviewers, that means each reviewer performs 378 reviews per week. At 40 hours per week, this is 9.4 reviews per hour, or one review every 6.4 minutes.

Ash points out how this means months of work by a developer is left to the tender mercies of less than 10 minutes (counting overtime) with someone tasked to look at almost 400 other apps that same week. Can we get a "yikes!"

Back to part-time, untrained reviewers, Marco.org hazards to guess:

There could be 41 full-timers and 40 more part-timers. There’s a lot of evidence to indicate that most (if not all) of the front-line reviews are by non-native-English speakers and on schedules that strongly imply that they’re offshore. This may be the cause of a lot of the frustrating rejections in which the reviewer didn’t understand something about the application or description that seems clear to most Americans.

To recapitulate. Between iPhone users and 8500 weekly app submissions (each reviewed twice), stands possibly an unknown number of outsourced, untrained frontliners, 40 odd trained, full-time second liners, an unquantified star-chamber of executive reviews, and ultimately one Phil Schiller who may or may not email the developer or a blog (or two) about it?

Oh, and Steve Jobs.

• Our podcast feed
• Download Directly
• Subscribe via iTunes

Join Rene, James, and Chris for more iTablet, iPod touch, and iTunes 9 rumors, Apple VP Phil Schiller's email spree, the latest competition from BlackBerry and Microsoft, and all the news. Listen in!

Featured Accessory

• Plantronics Voyager PRO Hardcore Bluetooth Headset

News

New Product Watch

• Apple Shoots Top Secret Commercial for New Product?
• Updated: Apple Going Social? More iTunes 9, “Social App”, and App Organization
• iTunes 9 to Add iPhone App Organizer, Blu-Ray?

App Store

• Apple VP Phil Schiller Responds to Ninjawords iPhone App Store Incident
• Apple VP Phil Schiller Emails Steven Frank, No E-Book Rejection Policy, Working to Improve App Store
• Google to Launch Google Voice on iPhone as WebApp
• iPhone 3GS-Specific Apps Start to Land in App Store

The Competition

• Zune HD to be Priced $100 Less than iPod touch?
• BlackBerry to Get iPhone-Class Web Browser… Next Summer
• Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.5 Caught on Video
• Sony, Warner, Universal and EMI to Launch iTunes “Cocktail” Album Competitor?

More News

• Would You Give Up Using Your iPhone in the Car for Increased Safety?
• Deposit Checks Via iPhone Photos
• Still No MMS on AT&T — But Would You Use it Anyway?
• Patent Watch: Apple Taking Stand Against Abused iPhones

Forums

• From the Forums: iPhone Jailbreak?, Yahoo vs Gmail, Tom Tom Car Kit, Wallpapers & Ringtones

Credits

Thanks to the the iPhone Blog Store for sponsoring the podcast, and to everyone who showed up for the live chat!

Our music comes from the following sources:

• I Called You -- iPhone Remix by Pete Leidy
via Sneakmove iPhone Ringtone Challenge

Mac developer and Panic luminary Steven Frank's public break-up with the iPhone over Apple's capricious App Store policy was one of the few so grounded in rationale and reason we couldn't discount it, and neither could Apple's Senior VP of Marketing, Phil Schiller.

While Schiller previously responded to Daring Fireball's John Gruber over concerns about the Ninjawords app, Schiller's response to Steve Frank was different in kind, if similar in sentiment:

I haven’t sought Phil’s explicit permission to republish the letter, so I won’t do so here. But to summarize, he said: “we’re listening to your feedback”. Not all of my suggested solutions were viable, he said, but they were taking it all in as they continue to evolve the app store.

He went on to say that the rumors of widespread e-book app rejection I’d heard were false — that specifically one e-book app had been rejected because it facilitated iPhone-to-iPhone sharing of (potentially copyrighted) books. But that otherwise, there was no sweeping ban on e-book readers.

First, it's interesting to see such high level and yet fairly intimate intervention by an Apple executive when it comes to the App Store. It's not an open letter by Steve Jobs -- it's something subtler, and yet seemingly targeted to engender the type of good will that could give Apple the time and good faith they need to fix the App Store approval process if -- and it's a huge if -- they truly take the time to fix it. And that's the fulcrum of actions and results upon which Schiller's intervention will ultimately succeed or fail.

Second, Steven Frank is now left to wonder whether to continue his boycott of the iPhone given the lack of those observable actions visible results, or to extend his hand back to Apple and give them that same second chance.

It will be interesting to see what happens next...

Let's just ask it: is it time for an open letter from Steve Jobs concerning the state of the iTunes App Store? Apple's CEO has written several of these over the course of the last few years -- rare public statements typically addressing wide-spread perceptions of critical problems or situations facing Apple. He's taken on DRM in music (but not video) to prevent the EU from forcing Apple to license FairPlay DRM, offered $100 to early iPhone 2G buyers incensed by a rapid post-launch price drop, addressed the lack of native apps on the iPhone amid massive developer dissatisfaction, espoused Apple's commitment to the environment given Greenpeace's constant PR pressure, and spoken about the uncertainty surrounding his health prior to Macworld to help assuage investor panic. There was even a "leaked" internal letter regarding the troubled MobileMe launch, one of the worst customer relations situations Apple has faced in recent years.

While the App Store is not yet a large-scale consumer facing problem like the iPhone 2G price cut or MobileMe were (some consumers don't even use the App Store, many others don't follow any backstage news about), nor a regulatory issue like DRM-music threatened to be (Apple is hardly a monopoly in the smartphone space) or Jobs' health might have been to investors, it is and will continue to cause Apple pain in one very important area: tech savvy, power users (and media) who typically influence friends (and readers) and generally presage public perception.

Jason Calacanis, who's frustration at this point clearly overcame his reason (see Marco Arment's retort), and Mike Arrington, who might again garner Leo Laporte-esque responses himself, are easy to dismiss given their bombastic personalities, passion, and self-interests. Others aren't so easily dismissed. Long time Mac developer Steven Frank is one example. Daring Fireball's John Gruber is another. Dieter's ranted about it on iPhone Live! and Jeremy and I have even written a word or two. Heck, even Apple's highly operational COO Tim Cook and perennially affable Senior VP of Marketing, Phil Schiller, have mentioned it.

But Steve Jobs hasn't.

Granted, Jobs is just getting back to work after an extended leave of absence and has been letting his team do their share of heavy lifting, but despite Apple's highly innovative, world class executive team, Steve Jobs is still the voice of Apple, and there's likely very little else -- aside from carefully watching and tracking tiny improvements over an extended period of time -- that will help ease the growing concerns about the App Store and grant Apple a little renewed faith along the way.

An open letter from Steve Jobs in Apple's news feed, symbolic though it may be, stating a clear "we want a delightful App Store experience for developers" manifesto, reflecting an understanding of the current concerns, offering a "Mobile Me News" olive branch of openness -- doing what he did for DRM, the $100 credits, the green initiative, the native apps SDK -- would not only address the immediate perception problem, but could start fixing the root cause. Even a "leaked" letter like the one that followed MobileMe's launch would be a start.

Apple's often effective, often decried, culture of secrecy is widely thought to emanate from Steve Jobs. He's shattered it before for Apple's benefit. Is it time for him to shatter it again?

Daring Fireball received a response from Apple Senior VP of Marketing, Phil Schiller, regarding the App Store incident involving the Ninjawords iPhone dictionary app.

Gruber quotes "the salient parts" of the email in full, but the gist seems to be that, unlike other dictionaries approved for the App Store, Ninjawords drew from Wiktionary -- an open internet source -- and thus the App Store suggested they wait until iPhone 3.0 was released with parental controls before re-submitting it. Not knowing the release date of 3.0 and not wanting to wait, the Ninjawords developers went ahead and filtered it themselves, thus ending up with a filtered app that took long enough to approve it timed itself into the 17+ rating anyway.

However, other dictionaries with the same "objectionable content" haven't been flagged as 17+, so the capricious nature of the App Store -- the very thing developers fear most -- remains. Check out the above link to Daring Fireball for more on that aspect.

For his part, Schiller closes his response as follows:

Apple’s goals remain aligned with customers and developers — to create an innovative applications platform on the iPhone and iPod touch and to assist many developers in making as much great software as possible for the iPhone App Store. While we may not always be perfect in our execution of that goal, our efforts are always made with the best intentions, and if we err we intend to learn and quickly improve.

On the heels Tim Cook's comments about improvements needed to the App Store, if observable actions follow the sentiments, perhaps developers and users alike will begin to regain some faith in the approval process. Until then, it remains an unsightly blemish on Apple's otherwise brilliant mobile platform.

(No word yet on whether Gruber asked him about Google Voice...)

• Our podcast feed
• Download Directly
• Subscribe via iTunes

Join Dieter, Chris, and Rene for iPhone 3.0.1, iProd 1,1 speculation, more App Store craziness, top 5 jailbreak apps, and a dramatic reading! Listen in!

Featured Accessory

• Jabra SP200 Bluetooth Speakerphone for Hands-Free iPhone 3G/3GS Action

News

iPhone 3.0.1 - SMS Fix

• iPhone OS 3.0.1 Now Available Via iTunes
• Fixes SMS Security Vulnerability
• iPhone 3.0.1 redsn0w & ultrasn0w Safe for Jailbreak, no more Purplera1n

iPhone 3GS Watch

• Rogers Canada to Start Selling 8GB iPhone 3GS?

Apps and App Store

• App Store Insists Ninjawords iPhone Dictionary Remove “Objectionable” Content, Still Classifies it 17+
• Apple Adds “App Store Review Status”, Escalation Email, to iPhone Dev Center
• FCC Investigating Google Voice Rejection from Apple’s iTunes App Store, AT&T’s Involvement
• AT&T Issues Non-Denial Denial on Denying Google Voice Entry into App Store

iTunes & iTablet

• iProd 1,1 Once Again Seen in iPhone Firmware
• Crazy Rumor: Apple to Turn iTunes Accounts into Paypal Competitor?!
• Apple Launches iTunes Store (Music) in Mexico!
• FCC Investigating Google Voice Rejection from Apple’s iTunes App Store, AT&T’s Involvement

Jailbreak Central

• Apple Officially Warns Against Jailbreaking
• Top 5 Must-Have Jailbreak Apps: Post iPhone 3.0 Edition

Carrier Talk

• TiPb Poll Results: Verizon Couldn’t Handle the iPhone Either
• T-Mobile UK Offering Unlocked iPhones to Retain High-Value Customers?
• Rogers/Fido Canada Extend 6GB/$30 Data “Promotion” to September 15

The Competition

• Microsoft Gives Devs Guide to iCloning iPhone Apps for Windows Mobile
• iPhone developer revolt brewing, what can Palm learn?

In Other News

• Netflix Next to Stream to iPhone?
• Google’s Eric Schmidt Resigns from Apple Board of Directors
• Nintendo: iPhone May Damage Sales

Help and How To

• Want Easy Google Voice Access on Your iPhone? Go Old School with a Bookmarklet!

Forums

• From the Forums: iPhone 3.0 Jailbreak Apps, Overheating, 3GS Photos, Battery Tips

Credits

Thanks to the the iPhone Blog Store for sponsoring the podcast, and to everyone who showed up for the live chat!

Our music comes from the following sources:

• I Called You -- iPhone Remix by Pete Leidy
via Sneakmove iPhone Ringtone Challenge

A couple new and interesting cases of App Store rejection, including the stripping Perfect Acumen and owner, Khalid Shaik, of their developer account, and ejecting their 900+ application already in the store, and the blanket rejection of E-Books -- both nebulously tied to copyright infringement or the fear thereof.

Details after the break...

First one comes via MobileCrunch and tells of the aforementioned Khalid Shaik who, using a team of 26 Indian and Pakistani based programmers, turned out a mind-numbing (in more ways than one) 943 apps in the last year. These apps aggregated text or images from the Internet around topics like army news, wrestling news, sexy ladies, etc. and typically sold for $4.99. The only problem, of course, is that Shaik didn't own the rights to the content he was using, and when you start trying to profit off racy pictures of young starlets you pull from the internet, the copyright police will come knocking. (Though apparently other developers were incensed over his marketing methods, and many users were none to pleased with the quality of the apps they purchased).

Apple claims it received complaints about more than one hundred of Shaik's apps, and since Shaik has failed to respond, they've stripped his company, Perfect Acumen, of their developer license and removed his apps from the App Store.

MobileCrunch points out similar developer, Brighthouse Labs and their 1000+ apps have yet to be removed, though Apple may simply be at an earlier point in their internal, infamously opaque ejection process for Brighthouse.

Second, Erica Sadun at TUAW has learned that Apple has begun a blanket rejection of E-Books and E-Book readers due to concerns about copyright infringement. TUAW says there's no evidence to suggest Apple is trying to bully the deck clear in order to launch E-Books as part of iTunes to coincide with their mythically rumored iTablet.

Apple could be responding to the recent Amazon Kindle debacle, where 1984 and Animal Farm were yanked from the service due to copyright infringement claims -- not all books enter the public domain in all countries at the same time, apparently.

Says TUAW:

Apple cannot police the developers and will not allow possibly fraudulent postings on their store. Apple does not want to be in the position of vetting rights claims.

By letting E-Books and E-Book readers into the App Store, Apple will no doubt get DMCA (or equivalent) take down letters by publishers who believe their rights are being infringed. However, this is a cost of doing business everyone from YouTube (which is built into the iPhone) to niche forums (many of which can be access by the also built-in MobileSafari browser) have to face.

Set yourself up as lone gatekeeper, it's hard to feel sympathy when you start cutting corners to get your job done...

Ninjawords [$1.99 - iTunes link], a delightfully crafted dictionary application, was rejected from the iTunes App Store no less than three times of "objectionable content" and still slapped with a 17+ rating before being approved in mutilated form in just the latest of Apple's stupefying, infuriating, frustrating, and ultimately disappointing blunders that haunt their mobile platform.

Daring Fireball casts a scathing light on the Ninjawords situation, and sums it up brilliantly:

The list of omitted words includes some which have utterly non-objectionable senses: ass, snatch, pussy, cock, and even screw. (Ass and cock appear throughout the King James Bible.)

Every time I think I’ve seen the most outrageous App Store rejection, I’m soon proven wrong. I can’t imagine what it will take to top this one.

Apple requires you to be 17 years or older to purchase a censored dictionary that omits half the words Steve Jobs uses every day.

Yes, you cannot find words for donkeys, cats, roosters, or hardware in this one dictionary on the App Store (though you can, of course, in Apple's own Mac OS X dictionary). Gruber also rightly points out that App Store reviewers would have had to deliberately search for words like f--k and c--t to find them, given the care taken by the apps developers in filtering results, which mirrors the rejection of e-book reader Eucalyptus when not one but two App Store reviewers deliberately searched for Kama Sutra, apparently just so they could reject an app. (Maybe because they duplicate functionality of Mobile Safari?)

Steve Jobs is back. Could we desperately suggest nothing, not Eric Schmidt, not iTablets, not AT&T should be higher on his priority list than forcing sanity upon the App Store and now? Or does Apple really want the influential, tech-savvy apperati to start considering competing platforms?

TUAW reports that Apple has taken a few more baby steps down the long, winding road towards App Store fix-land, adding a new App Store Review Status widget to let developers know the current wait-time for the app approval process, and giving them access to a new escalation email address for high priority questions.

Along with the addition of keywords and improved search, it looks as though Apple chief operating officer Tim Cook was serious when he said Apple was working on improving the now 1-year old App Store.

We sincerely hope they continue. Good faith is like cash. Once you've spent it all, you -- or your platform -- is broke.

Techcrunch got a hold of a letter sent by the FCC to Apple seeking more information on the rejection of Google's Google Voice app, and removal of third party Google Voice apps already in the iTunes App Store.

Specifically, the Federal Communications Commission wants to know why Apple rejected the apps, and which apps exactly were rejected, whether Apple alone made the decision or whether AT&T played any part, what role -- if any -- AT&T plays in the App Store approval process, what makes Google Voice any different than VoIP apps Apple has already approved, what other apps have been rejected and why, whether or not there's a list of verboten apps and how that list is made available to developers and consumers, and other timing and statistical information concerning the approval process and rejections.

Basically, it reads as a wish list of every question every frustrated developer, consumer, and -- yes -- even blogger has ever wanted Apple to simply, plainly, and consistently answer. There is, however, a proviso for Apple to request confidentiality, which given Apple's penchant for secrecy, likely means we may never see those answers.

Similar letters were sent to Google and AT&T.

Opinions always vary about when and how much government should intrude into business. Some will think never, some will hope always, and we like to think there's a balance in between. App Store rejections currently annoy developers and the more tech-savvy consumers who read blogs and technology columns. Unfortunately, until it breaks the confidence of the average consumer and suffers immediate, painful consequence, Apple likely thinks most users aren't even aware of the issue and it can take its time and follow it's own agenda.

If nothing else, the FCC has just thrown a monkey wrench into that strategy.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]

Apple Insider is reporting that iPhone developers have been contacted by Apple and asked:

enter up to 255 characters worth of keywords, separated by commas, which will be used for search in the App Store on the iPhone and iPod touch.

They're told this must be completed via iTunes Connect "as soon as possible so your application can continue to be successfully located on the App Store". What, if any measures are in place to prevent more ethically challenged developers from misappropriating key words (i.e. using names of competing products or unrelated yet popular terms) remains to be revealed.

Additionally, Apple Insider says search results have improved in general, a query for "EA" now returning 18 results for Electronic Arts games rather than previous results that included unrelated games using an abbreviation for "each".

Baby. Steps.

As Jeremy posted earlier, Apple wiped the iTunes App Store clean of all traces of Google Voice, both the official Google version and third party clients like GV Voice. (Rumor has it at the behest of AT&T)

GV Voice, however, didn't take their removal lying down. Nope, they (meaning developer Sean Kovacs) picked themselves right up, marched over to Cydia, and promptly made themselves available for Jailbreak.

And, weirdly, it's getting to the point that we're wondering if this isn't "the plan" all along.

Apple provides a closed appliance with strict and nebulously enforced rules for its App Store, placating carriers, and making a device so simple it's become the first true consumer smartphone success. At the same time, Jailbreak provides a de facto "expert" or "pro" version of the iPhone for those willing (and able) to do the work, at no training or support cost to Apple, and with complete deniability in terms of carrier and media agreements.

Whether we think Apple and/or AT&T are evil, Google is competitive, or whatever, with GV Mobile, Qik, and all the other apps available via Jailbreak, are iPhone users actually getting the best of both worlds...?

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]

According to developers, Apple has reversed it's previous decision and will now allow Promo Codes to be generated for iTunes App Store apps rated 17+ -- which includes any application that embeds a browser or otherwise allows unfettered access to the internet.

TUAW adds that:

While Apple has not made any official comment on the issue, it appears that they have quietly conceded this battle to the developers, once again enabling them to distribute promo codes as needed for all of their apps.

Promo Codes are the mechanism Apple uses to allow developers of paid apps to generate 50 tickets for free downloads, typically used for give aways or send out review copies. During the brief era of prohibition, everything from Twitter clients to internet data front ends had to either go without, or cut into their beta-testing pool by using some of their 100 ad-hoc build licenses, which still suffer from restrictions all their own.

So, good on Apple, let's keep the problem-solving momentum going.

• Our podcast feed
• Download Directly
• Subscribe via iTunes

Join Dieter and Rene for Apple's Q3 iPhone results, and Chris, James, and Rene for App Store redux, more third gen iPod touch, and iTablet rumors. Listen in!

Sponsored by the iPhone blog Store

Thanks to the TiPb iPhone accessory store for sponsoring the podcast. Check out the Jabra BT2080 Bluetooth Headset for iPhone, now in stock!

News

• Apple Q3 2009 Conference Call - 5.2 Million iPhones Sold
• iPhone and iPod touch: Now with 45 Million Unit Install Base
• Apple: We Knew Traditional iPod Sales Would Decline, That’s Why We Developed iPhone
• Dear Apple: How About that Premium App Store?
• iPhone — 20% Profit Share of Mobile Industry?
• AIM Push Problems - Hacktivated iPhones to Blame?
• Third Generation iPod touch to get Camera… and Microphone?
• No Promo Codes for Apps Rated 17+ — Including Browsers?!
• Developer: Serious Doubts About App Store, Does Apple Care?
• Rumor: Subsidized Apple iTablet Coming to Verizon this Year?
• UPDATED: Amazon Remote Wipes Kindle Copies of 1984, Animal Farm — Redefines Irony
• Microsoft Store to Compete With Apple Store — By Not Selling Anything

Forums

Help and How-To

Credits

Thanks to the the iPhone Blog Store for sponsoring the podcast, and to everyone who showed up for the live chat!

Our music comes from the following sources:

• I Called You -- iPhone Remix by Pete Leidy
via Sneakmove iPhone Ringtone Challenge

Just prior to iPhone 3.0 there were rumors that Apple would introduce a Premium App Store which would let high quality apps in the $10 or $20+ range enjoy some breathing room away from the "race to the bottom" pressure of the current cheapy novelty app crowd. Why is this still a good idea? Well, AppCubby has run the numbers and it looks like $5 (down from $10) is the new ceiling for App Store apps:

With the average price in the App Store now at $1.39 for games and $2.58 for all apps, the App Store is killing the value perception of mobile software shoppers. Some would argue that this is just market economics at work, but I think there is a very strong case to be made for Apple being directly responsible for this trend. Whether they did so deliberately or inadvertently is still up for debate, but either way, the future of iPhone platform and of the entire mobile software industry hinges on the direction Apple takes with App Store 2.0. The downward spiral in app prices caused by the Top 100 list and Apple's relatively hands off approach during the first year of the App Store has created completely unrealistic pricing expectations that may haunt the entire mobile software industry for years to come.

The logic is this: if developers can't earn a fair living making great iPhone apps, they aren't going to make great iPhone apps. (Think about it, would you work day and night if you couldn't feed your family at the end of the week?)

Gizmodo adds in the gaming angle:

There's no easy solution to this, which means that iPhone users shouldn't expect much more complicated games than what's already on there now. All the talk of the iPhone competing with the DS or the PSP in terms of quality may be moot if there's nobody there to spend the effort developing that level of games.

We here at TiPb have long held that we don't mind paying higher prices for higher quality apps. Why? Because we want them, we love them, and are happy to support them so we get more and better for years to come. The iPhone itself isn't cheap and the idea that we can't afford $10 (or more) for an amazing new game or innovative new app is just ludicrous.

Apple mentioned on their Q3 2009 conference call yesterday that they had room to improve on the App Store. A Premium App Store (or App Store Plus, or whatever name it goes by), perhaps combined with Craig Hockenberry's idea of a premium developer membership, could be a great place to start.

Macro.org, from the developer behind Tumblr and Instapaper, has a post up highlighting the latest App Store controversy -- that all web-embedded apps must be rated 17+ and now don't get Promo Codes -- and comes to this conclusion:

Apple thinks reviews can take 8-30 days and web-capable apps need nudity warnings and the management interface can be buggy as s**t and they don’t need us to be able to reach them and nobody really needs to take any of this very seriously. Because it’s working for them. They’re making a killing taking their 30% commission on the 1.5 billion copies of $0.99 top-25 games that they’ve sold. Who cares if the App Store discourages good developers from putting serious effort into it? Apple doesn’t need to care. And, clearly, they don’t.

The whole post is definitely worth reading, and brings to mind the classic riff -- "any incompetence sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from malice".

Here's the the thing, though: Apple is not only serving developers. They're being served with lawsuits. And their hyper-vigilant legal departments are no doubt saying -- perhaps rightly -- that if someone uses a Twitter client that embeds a WebView and happens to see the f-word or a nipple, they'll sue Apple.

Ridiculous, sure. A poor solution, of course. But it's the kind of rolling triage Apple seems to be doing as the App Store grows beyond even their expectations.

Don't get us wrong, all the problems marco.org mentions are real, frustrating, and need to be fixed yesterday. For Apple to force 17+ Ratings on these apps, and remove Promo Code functionality, is intolerable -- and we wonder why Mobile Safari, Mobile Mail, iPod, etc. aren't forced to pop up the same warning under that logic.

It's entirely Apple's fault, setting themselves up as editors to the App Store, and then not implementing the policies or staff necessary to keep up with the content requiring editorial approval.

But we don't think Apple doesn't care. They surely do, and will no doubt continue to make slow, steady improvements and address developer and user concerns, while at the same time making other clumsy and what look like bone-headed decisions and mistakes. Lots of them.

Twitterrific developer Craig Hockenberry has written a long, considered essay on Furbo.org framing the changes Apple has already made to the iTunes App Store, what problems it still presents to developers, users, and Apple itself, and proposes some interesting solutions.

From the differences between selling music and apps, to the long delays and uncertainty surrounding the approval process, lack of viable upgrade options, ill-defined rules, inability to provide demos, inability to respond to iTunes reviews, and the lack of discoverability for apps, Hockenberry leaves few stones unturned -- nor does he throw those stones, turned or otherwise, in Apple's direction.

He comes off as a veteran developer more than a little frustrated not just at what is, but at not yet reaching the potential of what could be. One solution he proposes might be controversial -- and we've heard it from him before -- but is still more than promising:

Charge [developers] $999 for premium service. For professional developers, this cost is not prohibitive and would allow Apple to provide additional services...

He does, rightly, chastise Apple for not communicating effectively with developers -- for failing to hold up their end of the platform partnership. However, by pointing out how far the App Store has come in just one year, it leaves us with hope that given Apple's and developers' shared passion for the iPhone, it can go further still in year two.

Right Apple?

TiPb will be back tomorrow with our Picks of the Year, and Editors' Choice in honor of Apple's iTunes App Store one year birthday -- and yes, we're really calling it our Appy Anniversary coverage.

1 billion+ downloads and 56,000+ apps are the figures, but just how many of those downloaded apps have made it onto your iPhone or iPod touch?

Barely an extra screen worth, more than the expanded 180 even iPhone 3.0 allows, or $143K and change for the whole shebang? How many does iTunes show, and how many are actually on your device?

Last week the first iPhone (and iPod touch) app to feature nudity was live in the iTunes App Store. Technically, however, it was simply a change in the server behind the app -- the developer added nude images.

Subsequently, however, the app became unavailable. The developer first reported that their own servers couldn't keep up with demand for the newly nudified images, but it turns out Apple laid the hammer down on the "soft-core porn" app:

Apple will not distribute applications that contain inappropriate content, such as pornography. The developer of this application added inappropriate content directly from their server after the application had been approved and distributed, and after the developer had subsequently been asked to remove some offensive content. This was a direct violation of the terms of the iPhone Developer Program. The application is no longer available on the App Store.

Given that Apple has included new parental controls and App Store restrictions in iPhone 3.0, including a declaration for nude content, and given the eternal argument that nudity is available for age-appropriate viewers via iTunes movies, is there some contradiction still at work? Or is Apple drawing the line artificially close for now while it watches and gauges reaction?

[via CNN]

Way back in the elder days of iPhone 3.0 Beta 5, there was some discussion on Twitter about how apps would have an incorrect icon, or would be missing an icon altogether. Since the iPhone 3.0 betas were private and not public, TiPb didn't post about it as that's just not how we play cricket. Private betas will have bugs, get those bugs reported, and hopefully have those bugs fixed by the time the software goes into general availability.

However, TUAW highlights that this particular bug is still biting iPhone 3.0, even in the release version. Now, as then, if you have an app that's missing an icon or has the incorrect icon, you can try to reboot your iPhone, delete the app and download or sync it back on, or wait for Apple to fix it in a 3.0.x update.

Meanwhile, you can let us know the funniest app mishaps iPhone 3.0 is giving you in the comments below.

(Mine is the little AIM dude swiping my 1Passwords Pro!)

UPDATED: Dominik Balogh from PoweryBase, developers of the iPhone 3.0 Push Notification-powered NotifyMe reminder app wrote in to let us know:

We have just received (now, sunday morning in Cupertino) an apology from Apple App Store Staff.

It's looking more likely that Apple is working behind the scenes to make sure their servers can handle the Push Notification load before they let 40 million potential users light up their network. Once they're confident, however, will the push apps roll?

ORIGINA: Sure, some have trickled out of the App Store during the last week, but given the high profile iPhone 3.0 release, and given that we know some high profile push-enabled apps were submitted to the iPhone weeks ago, TiPb has to wonder -- where are all the Push Notification enabled apps?

Due to server load and battery life, is Apple putting them through even more stringent and lengthy reviews? Is there some concern about Apple's Push Notification server load capacity so they're releasing them a few at a time so as not to suddenly have a MobileMe-style post-launch crash? Or are they just more seemingly random victims of the still-opaque, ever mysterious iPhone App Store review process?

Hopefully it's reasons #1 and #2. We can handle minor delays now to ensure solid apps on a solid push platform going forward.

But please Apple, keep developers in the loop and -- hey! -- throw us a bone. Or push us a notification. Something.

Meanwhile, which Push Notification app are you waiting for the most?

Tim Daley let us know via Twitter that his app, What Would Chuck Do?, was rejected by Apple's iTunes App Store for the most terrifying reason imaginable. Because they said so:

Thank you for submitting WWCD - What Would Chuck Do to the App Store. We've reviewed the Application and, consistent with the criteria considered in our approval process, we have chosen not to publish this application. As you know, Apple reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to reject an application for any reason.

Regards,

iPhone Developer Program

While as a publisher, this is absolutely within Apple's rights, as a platform that needs to nurture and maintain the support of both its developer and user base, it's suicidal. And what's worse, it's stupid. In this day and age, especially for a company as connected as Apple, poor communication causing bad PR is as astounding as it is inexcusable.

Steve Jobs and Eddy Cue need to pull out whatever flame-thrower they marched the halls of MobileMe with last year and turn them full-throttle on whatever passes for the current App Store rejection policy. If any reviewer even thinks of typing "because we said so" they should immediately be transfered to whatever passes at Apple for Siberia.

It's getting tiring to keep typing this, but developers deserve clear, consistent guidelines, users deserve top notch reviewers to make sure we get the best technical quality in apps, and Apple deserves a happy developers and PR experience that matches the phenomenal success of the App Store.

It's such an easy thing to fix, which makes it all the more stupefying Apple not only hasn't fixed it, but hasn't even reached out to developers to show they understand the frustration level and are working to fix it.

For more examples, see TUAW's recent reports from Christina Warren on MiniPops and Erica Sadu on iLaugh Lite.

Stupefying.

Short story: GP Apps made iVidCam, a video recording app. Apple rejected it for using undocumented APIs. The developers appealed on the grounds that other camera-related apps also use undocumented APIs and demanded Apple allow it in, and let them sell it for 2 months before Apple released their own video recording functionality, as anticipated for WWDC 2009. Apple thanked them for pointing out other API violators, said they would investigate, and let the rejection stand.

Long story, including personal response from Apple VP of marketing, Phil Schiller: See GPApps.com.

It's hard not to sympathize with GP Apps given the amount of hard work and obvious passion they've put into iVidCam. They've made 680(!) other apps already and had them approved in the App Store.

It's hard to sympathize with Apple, whose App Store approval policies remain opaque and seemingly capricious to the point we're amazed developers have any hair left.

But here's the thing: the app is in clear violation of App Store policy. If Apple keeps the other violating apps in the store, GP Apps could clearly argue fairness, but if Apple investigates and removes the other apps, that's a done deal. Basing significant development resources on the shaky foundation of others getting away with something is harder to sympathize with. It's more of a gamble than an investment.

In other words, if several people jaywalk in front of us, and we get caught, we're still getting the ticket. And demanding that the cop not give us the ticket, and give us two months of unmolested jaywalking privileges on top of it... Well, we admire the hutzpah, but when the cop's name is Apple, we don't see it getting us too far.

Still, we wish GP Apps good luck. If those APIs are made public (as happened with the undocumented API's Google was using), and Apple restricts their built-in video functionality to third generation hardware, we expect it will iVidCam may still appeal to a lot of iPhone 2G and iPhone 3G owners.

What do you think?

Daring Fireball has posted a bitingly satirical look at Apple's iPhone App Store review process which, like the best of comedy, is firmly rooted in both tragedy and truth. That Apple hasn't posted clear guidelines for developers is frustrating enough. That they apparently haven't imposed them on their own internal staff raises the flabbergast bar to dizzying new heights.

With 35,000+ apps and a billion downloads Apple is well on their way towards building that next great platform. Until they fix the app approval process, however, that building is a house of cards.

Enough of the choir preaching. Here's Gruber bringing the painful funny:

MONDAY MAY 18: The dude who wrote that game with the iPhone icon seems very upset. Says that the iPhone image is used to explain that the user must tilt the device in order to play the game, and so how can he show this visually without using an image of an iPhone. And he has a list of other apps already in the Store which use similar graphics. I reply with the exact same message as last week, word for word. Spend the rest of the day playing Flight Control.

Read the entire Excerpts From the Diary of an App Store Reviewer via Daring Fireball...

A while back we mentioned that an update to popular Twitter client, Tweetie was rejected by the iTunes App Store because, at that particular day and time, ****itlist showed up as a popular trend on Twitter. Later that same day Apple reversed the decision. But they haven't, apparently, reversed the capricious lunacy that led to it.

Latest example: the e-book reader Eucalyptus has been rejected because not once, but twice, an App Store reviewer specifically searched for "the kama sutra of vatsyanya translated fr..." (or at least searching for enough of it to be offered that search term, then selecting it).

Developer James Montgomerie blogs about his frustrations, the continued opaqueness of the App Store review policy, and points out the blatant inconsistency of Safari, Google Mobile, and a variety of other built-in and already approved 3rd party apps providing complete internet search access to pretty much any content imaginable. (And some we'd frankly rather not imagine, thanks!)

Needless to say -- and regardless of Apple's statistics saying 98% of all apps are approved within 7 days of submission, 35,000+ apps in the store, and over one billion downloads -- that simple, clear, and consistent guidelines, and developer support equal to the customer support Apple touts and prides itself on, are still not available some 10 months since launch, is embarrassing.

The App Store is a phenomenal success, no doubt about it, but doesn't matter how fine your tuxedo is if you keep walking around with one or more battered, bloody eyes.

Need more absurdity? Forbes profiles the trials and tribulations involved in getting an app approved about US President Obama's dog in cartoon form...

[via @chokenberry on Twitter, and the Reptile]

A billion apps. Developers getting rich. Apple making a bit of money. Or is it all just a house of cards ready to come tumbling down, with only one sneaky developer and a rule-breaking easter egg to blame?

See, the App Store has rules. You can't, for example, include porn in an application and expect it to get approved and hosted by Apple in the App Store. But lets say your app looks all sweet and interesting, gets approved by Apple, and then lets slip that with one little gesture or secret code -- porn. Or worse, malware or other malicious code.

Sound crazy? Wired (via Ars) tells us it's already happened, albeit with language in an app called Lyrics.

Seems the app had some language that caused Apple to reject it, so the dev applied a language filter to clean that **** up, but added in a stealthy way to swipe the About screen to re-enable it. Said developer Jelle Prins:

“It’s almost impossible for Apple to see if there’s an Easter egg because they can’t really see the source code. In theory a developer could make a simple Easter egg in their app and provide a user with whatever content they want.”

Until Apple reads that quote, begins scouring apps even more closely, maybe asking developers to submit the actual code base, and making current app approval delays look like the blink of an eye.

Geniuses the lot of you.

We love many things about the iPhone. Most things even. One of the few things we're not so chuffed about is the weird, wacky restrictions Apple places on App Store apps, and the sometimes haphazard way in which those restrictions are applied.

So, one edge we thought the other platforms might have would be the relative openness of their competing app stores. Turns out maybe not so much. How so? Our buddy Phil Nickinson over on WMExperts spent his weekend scouring through Microsoft's Windows Marketplace for Mobile restrictions, and at first blush they appear at least as crazy as Apple's:

• No VOIP apps using a carrier's data. (Will WiFi be OK?)
• No apps that replace or modify the default dialer, SMS or MMS apps.
• No apps with an OTA download of over 10MB. (Not sure if that's the app itself, or downloading within the app for, say, a podcatcher or the dreaded torrent downloader.)
• No apps that change the default browser, search client, or media player on the device. (Does that mean no Opera or Skyfire, which let you choose to set them as the default browser? No Kinoma Play, Core Player or the like for multimedia?)

So pr0n's no problem, but don't go trying to replace the rendering farce which is IE6? Of course, Microsoft mitigates this by allowing apps from multiple sources, not just their on store, but then again, they're apparently going to allow the carriers to get their grubby hooks in branded stores to. Sigh.

With great freedom comes great responsibility, people. Never forget your Spider-Man...

Ars Technica reports, with some very nice commentary and screen caps from Equivalence (iTunes link) for iPhone, that:

One of the most requested features from developers, automated crash reports, can now be submitted by users via iTunes 8.2. Developers can access the reports via iTunes Connect.

No code is ever perfect, but anything that helps developers make their apps more solid for more users is certainly appreciated.

According to one of Trent Reznor's latest tweets, an update to the very popular and crafty Nine Inch Nails application has been rejected by Apple.

Apple rejects the NIN iPhone update because it contains objectionable content. The objectionable content referenced is "The Downward Spiral"

For any of you not familar, The Downward Spiral was Reznor's 1994 hit album that featured the popular song "Closer". It's a pretty good guess that is the song that put a halt to this update hitting the App Store. But wait one second... you can purchase this complete album including that particular song right one iTunes?!

Not much to say about this one but wow... just wow.

Update: Our good friend from WMExperts, @PhilNickinson, just sent over a link from the NIN forums where Trent Reznor has posted a bit more information on the rejection. Turns out The Downward Spiral is not even available to listen to in the updated app yet the objectionable content is The Downward Spiral... We are scratching our heads as well.

[Thanks to Juan for the tip!]

We know our readers are far too savvy to ever fall victim to the "greater internet ****wad theory", but a couple posts today made us stop and think about App Store reviews, how the system works (or doesn't), and whether we ever take the time to leave positive reviews for developers of our favorite apps, or just tear off in a fury when we think we've been badly done by?

Last things first, is iTunes stacked against developers? Maniacal Rage (via Daring Fireball) has highlighted an issue also raised today on Twitter by Craig Hockenberry, and submitted to Apple via Radar, namely that the iTunes review system, which may work well for music and other media, breaks down when it comes to the back-and-forth requirement of the app ecosystem.

Says Garrett Murray:

But my favorite part of this whole experience is that there’s no way for me to respond to reviews as the app creator. So I can’t go in and say, “Hey, by the way, version 1.3 fixes all this and we’re just waiting on Apple’s ridiculously slow and convoluted approval process!” I just sit by and watch.

Murray's deeper contention is that, through a one-way review system on iTunes, and a fart-app-driven, race-to-the-bottom rewarded ecosystem, Apple is fostering exactly the kind of that developers don't want to have as customers. Yep, the dreaded appsholes.

Perhaps developers, many of whom treat their creations as dearly as children, aren't thick skinned enough to handle the greater pressure -- and greater odds of negative pressure -- that came with the 20 million iPhone OS (including iPod touch) ecosystem. Maybe users like us forget there are real, living, breathing people on the other end of our "send" buttons. Maybe anger and bad experience are greater motivators than appreciation and great experience. We don't know.

But here's what we're interested in finding out: do you leave positive reviews for the apps you love? Of your top 5 favorite all time iPhone (or iPod touch) apps, how many have you left rave reviews for? And to help grow and support the developers behind those great apps, would you consider doing so now if you haven't already?

We know SlingPlayer for iPhone was built (we saw it in action at Macworld and shot the video above). We know SlingPlayer for iPhone was submitted to the App Store (SlingMedia disclosed that). But its current status is anyone's guess. Users got upset they'd need to upgrade to the latest SlingBox. AT&T futzed with their Terms of Service but then backpedaled. BGR reported that it might or might not have been denied at AT&T's request. SlingMedia responded that they hadn't heard anything yet. So what's changed?

Nothing. TUAW checked in with the folks at SlingMedia and the official word is that there's still no word, and with an app as complex as SlingPlayer for iPhone, there could be no word for quite a while still.

So why post on it? Two reasons. 1) We get asked about it a lot. SlingPlayer is popular with the tech enthusiasts. 2) We hope that the minute blogs start posting that there's no word, Apple will release it just to make the blogs look silly. Hey, it happens!

Maybe we should start a little informal drop pool. Pick the day you think SlingPlayer will finally be released in the iTunes App Store and post it in the comments. Let's see if anyone can nail it!

Keeping it short but sweet, Skype's blog shows once again how crazy-powerful Apple's iPhone software platform really is:

In less than two days, Skype for iPhone has been downloaded more than one million times – around six downloads every second.

While copypetitors are still announcing or coming online (almost daily, with RIM's App World! launch on April 1st -- we fool you not! -- and Microsoft's Marketplace) this showcases the high ground Apple has already seized with their "on every iPhone" ecosystem, and the uphill battle rival platforms might face.

[Via Daring Fireball]

We've talked about this several times before on TiPb, but Jeremy Horwitz over at iLounge takes an interesting journey via the game Peggle, what it's release looks like for the Nintendo DS at $30, how retail sales prices break down, and what it might mean for iPhone gamers if they're forced by market conditions to give us a barer-boned $5 version.

We know Apple said "free apps stay free", so there's still no model for demos to get people hooked, but the idea of ScaleWare, so a low introductory price can be followed by a few level/feature pack upgrades is something we're fond of. Horwitz rightly points out that if devs over use this, however, it could make things worse:

just imagine the commercials showing someone actually playing a full Sony or Nintendo handheld game alongside someone clicking on iPod touch dialog boxes to the sound of a cash register.

iLounge likes the idea of regular games (i.e. cheap) with the in-app option to upgrade to deluxe versions (i.e. full price). Sounds good to us. We want great games on the iPhone, and we're willing to reward developers with fair prices for their work. Are you?

It's interesting to see how developers try to monetize their work in the iTunes App Store. With the downward pressure towards $0.99 or free apps, many turn to advertising to make up the difference, but users are getting increasingly oblivious to advertising at the same time.

i.TV, as part of their recent update, has tried to make advertising more compelling by making it more interactive. It's an interesting strategy:

: i.TV introduces the world’s first “shakable” ad. This limited release “Shake-down 2 Get Down” campaign from Dockers features Dufon, from the dance expressionist group “Circle of Fire.” When you see the ad pop up, just shake your device to make Dufon dance!

Even if that loses its appeal after the first few times, it will likely still make a stronger impact than static text or banners. Can developers keep the pace of advertising innovation in line with that of the apps themselves? That remains a question.

The i.TV update also includes a dedicated tab for Comcast subscribers, the world’s first “shakable” advertisement, AT&T U-verse listings and major performance improvements.

TiPb contacted several developers to find out what was going on. While some were aware of the potential for a 100% refund charge back, none had experienced it. Uniformly, they reported very few refunds, and when they did occur, charge backs only for the same 70% cut Apple had originally passed along to them.

For now, at least, Apple is eating whatever processing, administration, and other charges that occur out of their own, 30% cut.

In general, all the developers we spoke with hadn't seen many returns and didn't seem to consider this a huge problem right now. This might be because the process of getting a refund is not easy to begin with. If that changes, as recently discussed on Twitter, it could become a greater concern.

As to Techcrunch's other charge, that a refunded app becomes unusable, we've been unable to find an occurrence of that in the real world. If you've had a refund on any apps, let us know if it goes dead, keeps working but won't upgrade, or stays the same.

The App Store, even with 25,000 applications, is still a new market and one we're all, developers, users, and media alike, trying to figure out. Developer James Thomson recently did an experiment to see how Twitkitteh, a fun little app, would compare in terms of sales and earnings, to his acclaimed PCalc in the App Store.

The results? Thomson talks about them in a blog post entitled Where Did it All Go Wrong?

Since Twitkitteh released about a week ago, we have sold exactly a hundred and one copies, at roughly 99c each. That makes it about £50 in terms of income at current exchange rates after Apple’s 30% cut. About 14 quid of that went on the domain name for a year, and about another 11 quid on hosting the domain on our existing server.

That leaves us £25 profit for three week’s work. Oh, and minus the 120 or so engineer-hours spent designing, writing, and promoting it that could have been spent on something else. So, depending on exactly how much you rate iPhone engineers at on an hourly basis, you can calculate exactly how much we lost on the whole project.

The good news is, with his grand Twitkitteh experiment completed (for now?), PCalc and PCalc Lite have received updates:

PCalc [iTunes link] gets a brand new engineering layout, with hyperbolic trig functions, hypotenuse, leg, gamma, delta percent and more. You also get a classic theme taken from PCalc on Mac OS X, and six new key click sounds you can choose from too.

PCalc Lite [iTunes link] gets just two of the click sounds, and some other small improvements. PCalc Lite remains completely free however, and completely awesome. If you want to get a feel for how the full PCalc works on the iPhone, just try it out.

Here's hoping quality apps like PCalc and others will sell well enough that developers won't have to spend their limited time working on the next great fart app to makes ends meet.

We mentioned in passing during our pre-iPhone 3.0 rumor round-up that:

G-Maps has mysteriously disappeared from the App Store, and will “return soon”…

While XRoad's website said the US East and West coast maps were being improved, the real reason speculated at the time is that they were perhaps about to re-appear as a full turn-by-turn navigation solution as part of the Premium App Store. Neither of those things happened, and now Gizmodo shares what might really have been going on:

Update: Some developers have told us that the reason G-Map has been pulled is that by including turn-by-turn navigation, it violated the terms of agreement—which is why it was the first turn-by-turn app to come out.

Of course, the App Store terms of service have now changed, allowing for turn-by-turn as long as the developer "brings their own maps" so we'll have to keep an eye on this one and see what happens come "summer" and the official iPhone 3.0 release...

Brian Kim of Proximi wrote in to tell us that BargainBin, arguably the app that coined the term "pocket rejection", caps off one of the stranger and most memorable weeks in App Store confusion by actually getting out of the pocket and onto iPhones everywhere.

Following up on AMBER Alert's approval, and Tweetie 1.3's rejection and almost immediate reversal/approval, we have to wonder if the internet outcry on Twitter and blogs actually made a difference, and something changed deep inside Apple -- or if this is just a cosmically coincidental, Ozymandia-worthy joke.

Heh. Maybe Apple's just trying to get some good faith back from developers before they preview iPhone OS 3.0 and the new SDK on Tuesday...

If you're interested in keeping track of price-dropped apps, check out BargainBin [iTunes link] and let us know how it works for you.

Following up on the story about Tweetie 1.3 being rejected because an Apple reviewer saw the word f**k in the Twitter Trends tab, developer Crowded Road contacted us with the story of their app, Human Weather, which was initially rejected by Apple for a similar reason: someone happened to have dropped the f-bomb in the Twitter-stream while it was being reviewed.

Crowded Road went to the trouble -- and no doubt cost in man/hours -- to implement a filter for said reject-worthy words, and is now available FREE in the App Store [iTunes link]. But so what? As the developers themselves rightly told us:

This kind of policy is doomed to fail simply because it is impossible to police. Apple is only check the app content through a random test as part of their approval process. Of course, looking for “offensive” content as part of an approval process is futile because user generated content is both limitless and unpredictable.

No doubt this is correct, as creative internet users already know. F**k getting filtered? Fug, fukc, fack, fock, f u c k, and limitless other combinations impenetrable to machines but easily parsed by human pattern-matching brains, will easily slip through to offend those easily offended and amuse those easily amused alike.

We'd typically finish up with a rant about how the App Store could be improved, made more transparent with clearly defined criteria, even establish a ratings system for apps as they have for iTunes media, but really, even they must know this by now, right?

Wow, alliteration much? Not sure if it was just a delay (as Apple seems mostly impervious to pressure from the web or customers, open letters included), or some bizarre equal and opposite reaction to Tweetie 1.3 being rejected, but AppleiPhoneApps.com is now reporting that Jonathan Zdziarski’s AMBER Alert app has (finally?) been approved and published to the iTunes App Store:

AMBER Alert [iTunes link] is now available at the [US] App Store for free, and gives users real-time information regarding missing children. Zdziarkski worked closely with the National Center of Missing and Exploited Children to make this the official AMBER Alert tool for the iPhone.

Another app, BargainBin, is still languishing in limbo, however, prompting an interesting question on the same site about whether or not the App Store uses "pocket rejections" at times.

Clearly the App Store process remains anything but clear...

So, who could it be running the approval process for the iTunes App Store at Apple? Hmm. Tough one. Let us put on our little thinking caps here for a moment.... SATAN?!

No, of course, not, nor the Church Lady from SNL, but it must be someone equally cartoonish, how else do we reconcile the App Store rejecting Tweetie 1.3 for containing "offensive language" in search results returned from the public Twitter "Trends" rankings? (via Twitter)

We can search for all manner of unholy pr0n in Mobile Safari, should Apple Reject their own core application because of what it may return as well? Are they expecting developers to become censors and str the fck out of words the way Apple.com does? (see below).

Of course, this could just be one rogue App Store review processor gone horribly wrong, but Apple still bears responsibility for a totally opaque, seemingly capricious review process that creates incidents just like this -- over and over again.

They're likely selling enough fart apps and games to make this a small problem from their end, but they're losing badly when it comes to the good will of truly innovative developers and bleeding edge techies who form the core of any true next-generation platform.

Wake up, Apple. You're better than this.

(And good luck to Tweetie developer Loren Brichter on getting Tweetie 1.3 approved -- as it should be -- and into all of our waiting iPhones quickly!)

Screen shots showing the rejected "language" in Tweetie and others for the sake of comparison after the break (NSFW-L)...

Longtime reader and tipster The Reptile wrote in to tell us about Fortune's coverage of the iPhone Amber Alert app and its problem getting into the App Store:

Now Jonathan Zdziarski, one of the original iPhone hackers and the author of several O’Reilly books, has hit on something that might work. It’s an open letter to Steve Jobs pleading with Apple’s CEO to speed up approval of the Amber Alert iPhone app that’s been sitting in the queue since February 14. The application uses GPS location information to funnel sightings of missing children to the nearest law enforcement agency as quickly as possible.

Has Apple dropped the ball? There doesn't seem to be a duplicates functionality, or official Amber Alert app that could explain the problems this time (see PodCaster and StarPlayr), does there? Is Apple that understaffed and ill-prepared in the face of 25,000 apps, or are the $99 novelty apps and iPod touch-highlighted games making so much money, no one really cares about the rest?

Full text of the letter after the break...

To: Steve Jobs’ Executive Team
From: Jonathan Zdziarski
Subject: AMBER Alert Application

Steve,

The need to send this email represents everything that is wrong with your App Store review process. I’ve been working with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to build an App Store application that revolutionizes how missing children are reported to law enforcement. By using the iPhone’s GPS and some geo-analytics, we’re able to build automated search radii and quickly relay sightings to law enforcement agencies. With an audience of millions of iPhone users, the missing kids that are out there stand to gain a LOT more exposure.

Yet nearly a month has passed since my February 14th submission, and the application continues to sit “In Review”. NCMEC has adapted their infrastructure to handle these submissions and has a call center trained to respond to them, as well as their CIO, regional directors, and many others ready to devote time to making this application successful - yet this entire team continues to wait on Apple to approve this application.

I won’t get into the politics of the App Store review process, or my beliefs about how this has hurt your relationship with independent developers. Instead, I’m simply asking that you pick up the phone and help push this application through. If you had to sit and look at these kids, as I have in the time I did developing and testing this application, you’d realize just how urgent it is to have an application like this be able to get information out (and sightings back in). As a developer and a human being, I’m anxious to see this application released. If I were the parent of one of these missing children, I would be unable to withstand the unreasonable delays Apple has taken in approving this application. The reprobate and fearful world these children are surviving in may very well be prolonged because of Apple’s lack of interest in independent developers like me.

Please feel free to contact me if you’d like to discuss this. Otherwise, I hope you’ll do the right thing and light a fire under someone’s seat in the App Store. If there is any application that should be getting reviewed today, this is it.

Jonathan Zdziarski

As many of us eagerly wait for Twitterrific 2.0 to hit the iTunes App Store, developer Craig Hockenberry has provided an interesting insight into the mind -- and strategy -- behind one of the most high-profile development houses in Apple-dom. Says Hockenberry on being Trendy:

As software developers we often fall into the “just one more feature” trap. We want a 1.0 release to be awesome, and that one more thing will only take a day or two, and people will love it, so why not?

Because that awesome feature could be a very good thing to generate buzz and sales for a 1.1 or a 1.2 release. And by not “doing it all” in the first release, you get your product to market faster. You’ll be making money while you implement that cool new feature.

And holding back can have another advantage: you might find that your users want something different than what you had planned. Their input can often change your idea, so don’t waste time doing something without feedback.

The rest of the article is a worthy read, as is his blog Furbo.org in general.

Seems Emoji aren't the only thing being scrubbed from the App Store today! MacRumors is reporting that old reviews made my users who hadn't actually downloaded the app they were reviewing are also being removed. Apple stopped non-users from reviewing apps a while back, this is just retroactively applying the new policy to the old reviews:

Several long standing apps have seen dramatic decreases in their review counts. SEGA's Super Monkey Ball count dropped from 4197 reviews down to 3710 while Namco's Pac Man dropped from 395 to 122.

Most everyone involved, from developers tired of no-good-nicks trying to game the system, to users tired of sorting through gamed or off-topic reviews, will likely appreciate this move. Maybe this is one rejection Apple's done right?

Pinch Media, who provide metrics/analytics for iPhone users recently gave a presentation on "AppStore Secrets" that highlighted what they're seeing in terms of free vs. ad supported vs. paid, and usage patterns over time. They try to provide developers with some useful number crunching on how and when to determine if their application is "sticky" and modulate price and ad support, but they also show some things that are interesting from the user perspective:

1. We don't use free apps that much. Sure, we download them by the gigabyte-full, but after a few tries, it's buh-bye. If we pay for it, we probably need/want it more, and hence use it more.
2. We keep using games longer than any other type of app.

Things rings true for me. Of all the apps I've downloaded (and they've been many, free and paid), about the only ones I use consistently are casual games and communication clients (IM, Twitter, etc.) The rest of the time, I'm using built-in apps like Safari, Email, iPod, etc. And even among those "sticky" apps, when I've had my fill of one game, I move on to another. When a new Twitter or IM client comes out, I switch to it (and sometimes switch back and forth).

What about you? Do you stop using free apps faster than paid? And what apps do you keep using?

(Thanks to everyone who sent this in!)

In one corner, iFart Mobile and Joel Comm, who are now suing to have a judge rule that "pull my finger" can't be trademarked (honest, we couldn't make this stuff up):

In my app description on iTunes, I have testimonials. One of them is direct from my site, WorldVillage.com, in which I give the opinion, "Way better than Pull My Finger!" Of course, I have the right to state my opinion, especially one I believe to be true! [...] I also used Twitter to search for people who were discussing any of the competing fart apps and engaged in conversation with them. Air-O-Matic didn't like that. Perhaps they believe they own Twitter and the people using it?

In the other, Pull My Finger and Air-O-Matic, who wants to get paid:

we estimate he cost us about $500K in sales. His app leapfrogged ours immediately after he started doing these things. That happened to be Christmas week. He sold hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of his app in the next month, in the spot he kicked us off of. We talked to our attorney, and decided to try to end this swiftly by asking for 1/10 of our estimated lost sales, plus attorney fees. $50K is about one week in the top spot in the App Store. We thought that was about right.

In the audience, whole heaps of developers wondering if the App Store is viable in the face of "gaming", and millions of users who chuckle at cheap flatulence rather than voting with their wallets for innovative, world-changing mobile applications.

(via @chockenberry)

Apple released the iTunes App Store on July 11, 2008. Now, 7 months later TUAW reports they've hit 20,000 apps. For those tracking the darn-near-exponential growth at home, it took 5 month to hit 10,000, so they've doubled again in less than half the time. Scary.

With Windows Mobile still in stasis, Android only sound and fury thus far, the Pre still pre-mature, and BlackBerry blocked by its small on-board memory, is there anything on the horizon that can slow this juggernaut down? (Aside from developer complaints and infinite fart apps, of course).

And how many of those 20,000 apps have you downloaded already? None? Nine screens full? All of them?! Let us know!

There are no demos available in the App Store, we know this. No try before you buy, no download now, pay later. According to Erica Sadun at Ars Technica, even mentioning demo in your verbiage, like beta, will get you a swift kick in the rejection button. Free "Lite" versions are the only way to go.

Zach Epstein over on the Boy Genius Report wonders out loud why Apple, in its infinite usability, can't create a mechanism where Apps get downloaded free, and then expire after a short period of time unless you decide to buy and keep them.

So, does Apple really not know how to handle App Store demos yet? Or do they suspect, as TiPb does, f that demos would kill the $0.99 novelty App (and CrApp) impulse-buy business dead? After all, how many would really not tire of the gags before the demo period expired?

I'll fess up that the Lil John "YEAH!" "OKAY!" "WHAT!" travesty App would never have eaten my $0.99 had there been a demo! What percentage of Apps you've bought, do you think having had a demo period wouldn't have made sure you didn't buy instead?

TiPb has previously mentioned both Wobble and iJiggles as rivals in the... er... boob bouncing space which we gather is rapidly following the inglorious fart app trend to the top. Only neither Wobble nor iJiggles are actually called by those names anymore. Why not? It seems there's some escalation going on:

Wobble became Wobble-3D-jiggles and iJiggles became iJiggles-3D-Wobble (though they may have reverted back, or changed again, or... who knows... by the time you read this), and now the only thing that's really bouncing are the catty/comedic letters and posts back and forth between the developers.

Hopefully the press outweighs the silliness for all?