I understand the frustration of the developers of Ninja Words, but I do not understand why we keep having these Apple Store rejected app stories on HN.
If Apple is behaving like a jerk, why invest any energy in them? AFAIK there are other interesting developing platforms with interesting hardware. The iPhone might have a nice userbase, but I presume this will not matter in the end since most phones seem to head into the direction of being complete pc's anyway, why bother with a mobile 'desktop' application as new mobile browsers are going to be supporting more and more of the common desktop pc browsers features?
I mean - excuse my ignorance - , but why would a developer voluntarily deal with the ongoing Apple App store dictatorship? Without a healthy ecosystem of applications the iPhone is dead in the water. As is the current silo approach embraced by Apple. Why would a developer invest any energy into their doomed silo scheme?
IMHO let Apple reject applications as much as they want, history has learned us that the most open system will prevail (Video2000 Vs VHS for example) and my bet is on the Web and open OSses like Android, Linux and perhaps Symbian (if the ever get serious about going FLOSS).
The point as I see it is to get developers moving away from the platform, and buying other phones because there is no app-store-draconianism and saying that when they get the phone. Voting with dollars and making it painfully clear why the decision was made is hugely important.
history has learned us that the most open system will prevail
Really? So Linux on the desktop is destroying Mac OS X and Windows? Honestly, I know of 2 developers (yes, developers) that actually seriously are Linux full-time. The rest are on OS X, because it's a better system as a whole. They don't care about the openness of the underlying platform as long as it isn't managed like a POW camp.
The truth is that the iPhone would be a dream to develop for were it not for the draconian app store processes. I love Cocoa, and UIKit (aka Cocoa Touch) is equally clean to work with.
Also, there's no real solid indication as yet that Android is going to be worlds better, ditto for the Pre. We're all hopeful, especially given the heavy OSS roots of those platforms, but in the end they could have similar dumb restrictions on the hardware from the carriers and we'd end up equally screwed.
If Apple is behaving like a jerk, why invest any energy in them? AFAIK there are other interesting developing platforms with interesting hardware. The iPhone might have a nice userbase, but I presume this will not matter in the end since most phones seem to head into the direction of being complete pc's anyway, why bother with a mobile 'desktop' application as new mobile browsers are going to be supporting more and more of the common desktop pc browsers features?
I mean - excuse my ignorance - , but why would a developer voluntarily deal with the ongoing Apple App store dictatorship? Without a healthy ecosystem of applications the iPhone is dead in the water. As is the current silo approach embraced by Apple. Why would a developer invest any energy into their doomed silo scheme?
IMHO let Apple reject applications as much as they want, history has learned us that the most open system will prevail (Video2000 Vs VHS for example) and my bet is on the Web and open OSses like Android, Linux and perhaps Symbian (if the ever get serious about going FLOSS).