Earlier this week, I detailed a number of things Apple could learn from how Palm handles its phones, operating system, and applications. Today, news broke out of the first application rejection from Palm’s App Catalog, and from this and Palm’s actions surrounding this rejection Apple can again learn a whole lot.
Earlier today, it was revealed that Palm had not accepted the music player NaNPlayer into the App Catalog. Since this is the first rejection by Palm, it gives us the opportunity to look at how Palm handles these situations, and as it turns out, Palm appears to be a lot more developer-friendly than Apple.
NaNPlayer is a music player which fixes a lot of the shortcomings of the stock webOS one, which is very limited and lacks basic functionality like scrubbing and on-device playlist creation. NaNPlayer has been in development for a while, and its developer aimed to have it included in the App Catalog.
Palm rejected it, for a rather clear reason: NaNPlayer is using private APIs, and these APIs are very much in flux, and not set in stone. These APIs are also used by the stock music player application, and aid in indexing and querying the metadata attached to music files. The use of private APIs is a breach of the SDK agreement, but more importantly: using APIs that are not yet finished means applications can beak at any given time, deteriorating the user experience.
Now, let’s look at what Palm is doing right, as compared to Apple. First of all, the reason for rejection was clearly communicated to the developer – he knew exactly why his application was rejected, and has a clear understanding of how to possibly fix it. Of course, you can (rightly so) argue that APIs to query and index music metadata should’ve been part of the SDK to begin with.
The second thing Palm is doing right is immediately responding to this issue publicly. Chuq Von Rospach, Palm’s Developer Community Manager, responded publicly to the PreCentral news item in which the rejection was announced, and in clear detail explained (again) why the application was rejected, that Palm is listening to the community to help prioritise which APIs and features end up in the webOS, and, most important of all, that Palm is happy the application will continue its life as a homebrew application – until the APIs are finalised.
That last thing also happens to be the third thing Palm is doing right: blessing the homebrew community. This way, the community can still use the applications they want, whether they are in the App Catalog or not. It makes sure that it is the users who decide which applications they run, and not Palm, Apple, or whatever.
The fourth thing Palm does right is actually having something called a “Developer Community Manager”, who handles these issues quickly and efficiently, explaining carefully the why and how, so that stories can not get out of control. Palm has clearly learnt from the total lack of communication and transparency from Apple towards its developer community.
Now, you could argue that Apple’s App Store is a whole lot larger, with a whole lot more rejections going on. This is not an excuse – the App Store is the size it is, and its size is not an excuse to mistreat your third party developers. Apple could’ve seen this coming. They could’ve hired more people. They could’ve appointed a developer community manager – instead of having the acting CEO send out a few emails for marketing purposes to quickly sooth the community.
Of course, Apple could also scratch itself behind its ears, and take a long and hard look at its set of magical, indefinable rules of which only they seem to have a copy, and maybe remove some of those rules to lessen the number of rejections.
The list of things Apple could learn from Palm is growing. Many people think that the success of the App Store means Apple’s model is perfectly valid and successful, but let me point out that popularity is generally not a valid measurement of quality. If it was, Windows would be the best desktop operating system, and Mac OS X would be a total mess.
Isn’t Palm itself using some undocumented methods to sync with itunes?
Yeah, but they own the platform, so they can do what they wish with it.
Yes they obviously own their own platform, accept they don’t own iTunes. They’re using hacks to communicate with iTunes, then bitch when Apple locks them out when they could just as easily write their own sync software and interpret the iTunes library xml data themselves. Meanwhile, they reject an app from their app catalog for basically the same reasons and for doing similar things to what Palm themselves are doing with Apple. Ironic and rather two-faced of them, eh?
(emphasis: mine)
They do? I haven’t seen any statements from Palm about iTunes sync that could be interpreted as a complaint. The closest I can think of are notes in WebOS updates mentioning that iTunes sync has been restored – but that strikes me as Palm patting themselves on the back for restoring sync, rather than Palm criticizing Apple for having broken it.
How are the two situations comparable? I’m not aware of any Palm-developed audio players that have been rejected from the iPhone app store for using restricted APIs.
Even in the broader sense the situations aren’t comparable. On the one hand, what Palm has essentially done is say to the developers of the rejected app “we aren’t going to endorse/distribute what you’ve done – but we’re not going to try to prevent you from distributing the app or prevent anyone from using it.”
On the other hand, the stance that Apple has taken towards Pre/iTunes sync is essentially “we’re not going to support what you’ve done – AND we’re going to go out of our way to break it at every opportunity.”
IMHO, that is why its slightly ironic. FYI, that quote above compares the two. Thus making them comparable,albeit more of a comparison between an apple and an orange rather than a Macintosh and a Fuji or between a Hammer and a Dolphin.
How is it ironic? The only way I can see that situation being ironic is if the app Palm blocked was an eBook, co-written by Palm staff, describing why cellphone makers should never block applications from an online software store.
Although, to steal a quote from RvB, “while not exactly ironic, it IS odd in an unexpected way that defies normal circumstances.”
Yes, I probably should have used “not equivalent” or “not analogous” instead of “not comparable.” In this case, I was using “not comparable” in the colloquial sense: as a shorthand for “not a valid/useful comparison.”
You have an interesting habbit of not parsing my grammatical flurishes, while assuming that I don’t understand yours. I understand what you are saying, you don’t understand what I am saying.
Oh well. Its not the end of the world. Have a good day.
Eh? Possibly, although that would be surprising given that my literary preferences mainly favour writers who are/were big on grammatical flourishes (Umberto Eco, Martin Amis, Raymond Chandler, etc).
That was actually the more charitable of the two assumptions I could have made – as opposed to assuming that you were just being pedantic
I would certainly appreciate being enlightened.
Indeed. Cheers!
Sorry. You understand or you do not. An online forum is not an adequate grammar flourish explanation conduit.
So, essentially, your rather long ramble boils down to this:
“a minnow can fit through a 1cm gap, but whale probably can’t.”
In the beginning Apple’s rejections were extremely well documented (as I remember it) but the volume of apps diluted the feedback. Yes, this is not good. Bit, Thom, there’s an awful, awful lot of information you are not seeing because you aren’t a developer and don’t have access to the iPhone developer’s portal. You should maybe look in to it – write a piece? Compare the three major players?
So are we just ignoring the fact that he clearly addressed the issue in the article?
No, we’re pointing out that bad information leads to poor journalism.
Thom often sees the bad in Apple related situations because Thom simply does not know everything, especially when it regards the Appstore and being an Apple iPhone developer.
I was also pointing out that the volume of app store submissions is directly related to the problems that people perceive with Apple and App submission. That also, for the volume of apps submitted, those rejected are only a smaller proportion and that rejection does *not* mean total exclusion – often resubmission will fix the issues.
If they have lots of apps they just need to hire more people. They get 30% of every paid app for that PERIOD
There is also a flaw in this logic. It seems a large part of the issue with app rejection is INTERPRETATION of Apple’s rules regarding apps. Two people will read the same thing and sometimes come up with completely different interpretations. Take this to 100 people and there will be even more variations, 1000 people and… Well, you get my point.
By having more people dealing with this process there is even more room for misinterpretation, and we’ve already seen people screaming about how the same rule seems to be applied differently in different cases. Can you imagine what it would be like if there were even more people putting their slant on things?
To some degree this is a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation for Apple. And by the same token, lets see how well Palm do if / when the number of Apps being submitted to them gets within the same ball park as the quantity being submitted to Apple…
So then Apple need to simplify/clarify the wording of the rules so that there’s no difference of interpretations.
I’m sorry, but that just strikes me as making excuses.
Apple’s app submission process is broken – this we know as fact.
So the overly simplified answer is it needs fixing.
Everything else is just excuses – particularly when you consider that it’s the developers that are the backbone of the iPhones success.
Then the professional way to handle that situation is to improve the guidelines to make them as clear as possible, update them to include specific examples of what to do/what not to do, and make a sincere, public mea culpa along the lines of “We acknowledge we screwed up, we’re genuinely sorry, and we hope that [list of specific changes] will address the problem and make things better in the future.”
But, to all public appearances, Apple has done the exact opposite – if anything the situation is getting worse (rather than improving), yet Apple has barely even acknowledged the problem (much less given details on what efforts they’re taking to correct it).
It’s interesting to note that, if you take that paragraph and replace “Apple” with “Windows” & replace “Palm” with “OS X,” you would have the exact same argument that Microsoft advocates use to justify the disproportionate amounts of malware/malware infections on Windows and OS X.
Perhaps at the very beginning. But the extant history clearly shows that simply assuming the worst is invariably dead on.
I am glad that the reason is NOT “duplicate app”. For iPhone, this app would have been definitely rejected (indefinitely) because it is duplicating the music player.
Only that Apple just approved Spotify…
Edit: Ok, ignore my comment. I see what you mean. Spotify provides access to music not on your device, so you are probably right.
Edited 2009-09-11 01:50 UTC
Actually I think you where right to begin with. From what I have heard, the iPhone version of Spotify can store tunes locally (encrypted) for playback at a later time without Internet access.
Cheers,
Emil
I just read through some of the comments on the linked page. Peoples reading comprehension is amazing.
Palm plainly states that they did not *reject* it forever, they are just not willing to accept it currently because the API used it not finished.
It is pretty sound reasoning and I’m sure Palm has a pretty good idea *why* the API is undocumented, currently.
People will whine over everything. They want it all NOW! NOW! NOW! Screw any reasons! Evil company!
bah.
And they can have it now. They are free to install it themselves.
Of course, they are the entitled generation.
…the App Store model IS “perfectly valid and successful”. Not saying that I like it, but the reality is here that Apple did learn lessons from someone when it comes to the App Store as seen from a dev’s perspective – Microsoft. The lesson? You don’t have to produce the best product to sell the most, its how you market it that counts.
But then again, for the tens of millions of users out there who don’t read forums like this, and don’t give a flying flick about what it takes to get an app onto the App store, it arguably is the best product. From a user’s perspective it provides a fantastic tool where they can easily, quickly and relatively inexpensively obtain all these shineys to make their toy even cooler. And when it comes to the crunch, it’s popularity that sells the software, so the majority of devs will put up with the crap to make the dollars…
The only reason its the best is because there are no other options (without breaking the law)
People can always choose other mobile platforms that offer installable apps. The App Store is the only (legal) option for the iPhone – something that people who buy an iPhone agree to in the conditions of use – so if they don’t like that they can choose not to use the device.
Just like Py… No wait, that will just (re)open another can of worms…
Your quote:
You cannot equate the usage of the appstore to how much people like it, because it is the only option if you own an iphone. This is a correlation vs causation thing, the “well they could always just use another kind of phone” argument does not hold water in this context because people could very well just be putting up with the app store because of how much they love the iPhone, even if the store is a pile of crap. I’m not saying thats the case, I’m just saying your reasoning here is faulty.
I know that Apple has discouraged jailbreaking, but as far as I know it is not illegal.
It is. It breaks the DMCA, and Apple is actively trying to keep it that way.
http://www.osnews.com/story/21913/Apple_Jailbreaking_Could_Crash_Tr…
That’s US law, not EU law.
For us Europeans, jailbraking the iPhone is no more illegal as changing the CD player on you car
Except, the iPhone is still has a relatively small global market share.
So users have already voted with with wallets and picked other handsets.
Just speaking for myself here, but I see that as a negative object lesson – rather than one that should be emulated.
True enough. And by the same token, if a typical consumer wants an application that is in the Palm app store (or the Android app store, etc) but was rejected from the iPhone app store, they’re not going to care one whit about why Apple rejected said hypothetical app ( to allude back to your earlier post – http://www.osnews.com/thread?383350 ). All they’re going to care about is “This device has what I want, and this other device doesn’t.”
That strikes me as an extraordinarily bad long-term strategy. The result is that Apple has people who develop for the iPhone only grudgingly, and who will likely jump ship to any alternative as soon as it becomes viable.
“Now, let’s look at what Palm is doing right, as compared to Apple. First of all, the reason for rejection was clearly communicated to the developer – he knew exactly why his application was rejected, and has a clear understanding of how to possibly fix it. ”
Fron what i saw in the Apple developer mailing list, this is what it does. If there is a bug, they show where it is, If the app violates the SDK agreement, they say you why. If it duplicates some sort of functionality, they say you why they think so. I am sure that Apple has maybe not done that perfectly for some cases, but pretending that Apple never does it is plain wrong. Are you are member of the iPhone developer program so that you can bring some personal experience and not relying your argument on “this other guy says that”
I am developing an app for visualizing 3D data from physics simulations on the go with an iPhone, and having communicated with Apple directly concerning some implementation issues, i did not get the feeling that they treat me bad. They were on the contrary very helpful fixing my problems and i therefore i can’t imagine that they won’t also be open to help developers so that their app gets approved.
“The second thing Palm is doing right is immediately responding to this issue publicly.”
You can’t be serious. Why the process of improving applications which a technical process should be exposed publicly? That does not make sense at all. Do you believe that Apple should respond to every report written by some non-competent pundit out there? And we all know the numbers, don’t we? Apple gets 8500 apps for reviewing every week, 20% of them are not approved as originally submitted. Do you believe that Apple should make a public announcement for every of those 20%? Be serious please.
“It makes sure that it is the users who decide which applications they run, and not Palm, Apple, or whatever.”
That makes little sense because the world is not the Disney world that you have in your mind. We are talking about phones, a new terribly huge market for malware, virus, data stealing, etc, there has to be an authority that makes sure that the user is not using a dangerous applications and any application is potentially dangerous.
“Palm has clearly learnt from the total lack of communication and transparency from Apple towards its developer community.”
Apple has not been perfect in that regard, granted, but calling a total lack of communication when precisely an executive of the company (Shiller) has started to address some concerns is quite showing your lack of information. And cf my personal experience mentioned above.
“Now, you could argue that Apple’s App Store is a whole lot larger, with a whole lot more rejections going on. This is not an excuse – the App Store is the size it is, and its size is not an excuse to mistreat your third party developers. Apple could’ve seen this coming. They could’ve hired more people. They could’ve appointed a developer community manager – instead of having the acting CEO send out a few emails for marketing purposes to quickly sooth the community.”
Yeah sure Holwerda knows how to do it! You are surely the one that should manage all of that. OK so go on, go to teach experienced people (who are not perfect, fairly enough) how to manage the review of 8500 applications a week. Sure they should hire more people, that so easy to say from a guy who never worked in a company, what do you know about hiring people? And do you believe that it is that easy? It is not hiring them only, it is to make sure they are competent, those people are engineers.
You are far to have this level of education, so please just don’t talk about what you don’t know. I mean are you really serious that you feel yourself conformable to give advises about something that you don’t understand? You have no idea (i do not either as i am not working at Apple) what it takes to operate the App store, no idea.
And you seem to be sure that Apple mistreat its third party developers. What do you know about that? Are you developing for the Mac or the iPhone, what do you know about dealing with Apple as a developer? You are not writing any software for those platforms, what is your experience on the matter besides basing your reasoning on sensational press.
And put the things in perspective, Apple approves 95% of applications within 14 days, this number is from the report that Apple gave to the FCC. How can this interpreted as mistreating developers? I don’t get it, i don’t get your reasoning. I am sorry, you say non sense.
Put things in perspective, looking at App stores numbers, we have here a rejection rate of less than 0.03% out of 65,000 apps, how can be this interpreted as mistreating developers?
You miss everything because you don’t know what you are talking about.
“The list of things Apple could learn from Palm is growing. Many people think that the success of the App Store means Apple’s model is perfectly valid and successful, but let me point out that popularity is generally not a valid measurement of quality. If it was, Windows would be the best desktop operating system, and Mac OS X would be a total mess.”
Quality? To what it comes to users, the App store is the best out there, no question. To what it comes to Palm, their store is just here to say to the world that “we also do it”, and so far it does not work very well for them. And i find funny that you praise Palm in the way they operate when in comparison their store is ridiculously small compared to the App Store, and by definition they are facing an extraordinary less complex challenge in order to manage the sort of infrastructure which is behind the App Store.
And oh, yes Palm is so nice that the only thing that they came up for their users in order that they can sync their devise to a computer is to steal someone’s else software and violating the rules for using USB devises.
Well yes Apple should definitely learn from Palm, the same Palm that did not see the revolution of the App store coming, the revolution of multitouch coming, etc, etc, being now the one playing catch up in order to survive besides having been on the market for years.
Sure Apple, you should learn from Palm…. Oh even better, Apple, you should listen to Holwerda, he knows so much about how to do it better than you do it know, and this dam Steve Jobs did not even hire Holwerda as Chief executive for the App Store yet, how it comes?
Edited 2009-09-11 07:38 UTC
Yes, yes, yes!! If I hadn’t already commented, I’d have voted you up.
Thom – this is exactly what I was trying to say. You do NOT know what goes on because you are NOT part of the paid developer program. Your information is also mostly hear say. Yet, I have never seen you print a retraction. Following you on Twitter, all I see is pure hate towards Apple and Apple products and extreme Palm fanboyism when ever a story appears.
“My” information comes from top-class iPhone developers who are thoroughly dissatisfied with the way the App Store is handled. “My” information comes from Tim Cook himself, who, in his emails, detailed that yes, the App Store process is not working as well as it should. “My” information comes from people like John Gruber, whom you can hardly accuse of being anti-Apple, now, can you?
This isn’t “my” information – these are plain and simple facts. High-profile App Store developers and Tim Cook himself are not satisfied with the way the App Store is handled, and you think it’s all “hearsay”? Me thinks you need to look up said definition.
Edited 2009-09-11 11:39 UTC
No one is denying that it is not perfect, but holding up Palm at such an early stage as a shining example of doing it “right” is laughable. It’s a little like the insane babblings I heard when Obama was elected – like it was earth shattering and would change everything.. ah, no. The only thing that changed was that the US has had its first non white president – something that it probably should have done 30+ years ago.
You’re a nice guy Thom, but you don’t come across as unbiased and that is what stings you a lot here. More staff might help the problem… is OS News looking for more staff? More staff and less “blog” style opinion pieces and things would be dandy.
My apologies to all the valid comments stuck in thee, but I’ve taken the axe instead of the scalpel and removed the entire thread, which did nothing but completely derail the story.
This has nothing to do with disagreement – if you want to disagree, then do so like f. ex. Hakime does – make an informed post.
Please continue on-topic.
but I’ve taken the axe instead of the scalpel and removed the entire thread
Now I am really annoyed. Not everything in the thread was worth deleting, and I find completely destroying comments an unnecessary harsh thing to do anyway.
Really, this sucks.
Honestly, it’s done as rare as possible, and it is annoying to lose the good posts; but when you get trolls who always insist on having the last word, no matter how wrong they are, it just derails the whole discussion and you good people end up pouring out lots of great comments on a worthless person and an irrelevant topic. We mean no harm to you good commenters and thank you for your support.
Is it not possible to simply “lock” a particular thread by preventing any further replies to it? IME doing that (along with leaving an admin/moderator note on why the thread was locked) is much more effective than just deleting the posts – if nothing else, that can act as a good deterrent because the offending posts act as a visible example of what won’t be tolerated.
Disgraceful.
Isn’t the moderation system meant to take care of this?
I’m no programmer or business man. But i was wondering, if the Palm is not supposed to sync with iTunes. Isn’t there a way that Apple can block it indefinitely? I mean, i understand reverse engineering. But theoretically speaking if you were Apple how would you completely block the Palm?
[RANT]
Also, i read that someone suggest palm use the xml files and create their own music player. Whose to say that Apple has not already taken steps to prevent competition? One day both sides will be on the other.
Palm will not want to jail break and Apple will wish they were more lax with their policies.
IMO, Palms backing is community/consumer driven. Apple on the other hand is long money and lawyers.
I use itunes for music playback. Not to purchase. I got nickel and dimed on xbox360 two years ago. If i owned a pre, i wouldn’t care about itunes as long as i can put my music on my device. It’s faster sometimes too.
Im done ranting. Sorry so long.[/RANT]
This article is uninformed nonsense. The issue was one of use of private API, not a “controversial” issue of duplicated functionality or network overuse or age-rating and censorship. There is nothing Palm have done here that Apple do not do when a developer uses undocumented API.
Comparing iPhone sales to Palm sales, I’d say Apple could give two craps about what Palm does.
I’ll bet there are people who used the exact same reasoning back in the early-mid 80s: “Comparing Mac to IBM-PC sales, I’d say Apple could give two craps about what IBM and Microsoft do.”
And I’m sure that RIM, Palm, Google, Symbian, Microsoft, ec, are hoping Apple takes exactly that sort of short-sighted approach. Maybe they’ll all get together and send Steve Jobs a “thank-you” card when Apple repeats history and squanders their market lead by being neurotic control freaks.