Imagine you’re the developer of a complex application with many moving parts. It’s been released, and by all metrics it’s a homerun: customer satisfaction is through the roof, new customers are flocking to it in droves, and the product is efficient and scaling well.
But there’s a bug in the system. It’s breaking things, but in a very small way. It’s not effecting the business bottom-line at all (although it could in the future). It’s easy enough to fix in isolation, but you’re not sure how your fix will influence other dependent components. And if this bug begins effecting the business, you’ll have plenty of time to fix it before it registers a serious impact.
What do you do? Wait, of course. You wait until either the bug presents a risk, or until you devise a way to fix it that presents no risk. When things are going well — beyond all expectations — the last thing you want to do is introduce risk where it’s not needed. Just sit on it.
Ok, now imagine you’re an executive at a large public company with millions of customers and tens of thousands of business partners. You have a products for which customer satisfaction is through the roof, and new customers are buying it in droves. You are decimating the market. Profits are through the roof and shareholders couldn’t be happier.
But, some of your business partners are telling you that there’s a problem. This problem isn’t really effecting your business, and fixing it carries the risk of impacting other parts of the product and business in undesirable ways. And, despite the fact that your partners aren’t fully satisfied, they’re continuing to work with you and tons of new partners are scrambling to set up partnerships.
You see where I’m going with this, don’t you?
When I say “please stop whining about App Store review”, what I’m really trying to say is: focus your effort on something more productive. Apple hears you, they’re just not going to do anything about it. (Or at least not what you want them to do about it.)
The classic argument for loosening App Store review is that Apple is harming their product more than they’re helping. By hand-cuffing developers they’re preventing bug fixes from going live, they’re making developers unhappy, etc — you know the story. And then, the argument continues, that hurts developers and customers both indirectly and directly.
Here’s the problem: the numbers disagree. There is no metric or indicator I’ve seen that demonstrates that the App Store review process is hurting Apple in any way. So from a business perspective why should Apple make any dramatic changes to its review process? All that does is add risk they can’t quantify. There’s a risk they know about, and it’s not yet harming the business. They’d be crazy to act on that risk in the name of adding an unknown (and potentially much larger) risk.
So if you want Apple to change its ways, you can do the following: 1) demonstrate that there is actual risk to the business, or 2) suggest ways to fix the problems that don’t introduce risk.
Opening the iPhone for unrestricted access isn’t going to happen. Consider the history of the PC with spyware, viruses, and worms. Or consider phishing and lack of recourse on the web. Yes, Apple is the sole gatekeeper. In some cases, they’ve abused that power. In the vast majority of cases they’ve benefited customers, as demonstrated by the fact that the iPhone’s App Store isn’t a vast wasteland. They have zero incentive to open up.
To fix the App Store, you have to answer this question: how does one open access for legitimate, quality developers while keeping the scummy or incompetent developers at bay? There are answers, and I’d wager that Apple is already working hard on new and innovative solutions. But the house isn’t burning down, so there’s no rush those solutions to market. They may never arrive, depending on how things go.
So until the App Store is fixed, discontent developers are best-served doing something productive with their angry energy. Go develop apps for other platforms. Or write up enhancement requests with inventive solutions. While it may not seem like Apple listens, they do. The just don’t always respond.