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by ZachPruckowski 5906 days ago
Apple can't really control for quality when they've got a million apps in the store. I mean, the idea of rejecting crappy apps probably came about when people were thinking "oh, apps will trickle in a few hundred at a time" instead of flood in. So they take steps like saying "must use Apple tools". On a Mac, cross-platform Java/QT/Wine apps that totally ignore UI custom are incredibly annoying, so that's probably where Apple is coming from in terms of viewing "non-Apple tools" as resulting in poor UI.

And it's silly to ask why Apps are censored but movies/music/TV isn't. The answer's obvious - iTunes includes parental controls for media that allow for blocking content based on industry-standard ratings, and there's no such rating/control system for apps. If the App Store contains a Daily Tits Calendar App, then parents have to completely block their kids from getting apps from the App Store themselves, whereas parents can let kids buy PG-13 stuff in the iTunes store without worrying about them buying R-rated movies or explicit songs.
2 comments
orangecat 5906 days ago
On a Mac, cross-platform Java/QT/Wine apps that totally ignore UI custom are incredibly annoying

That's true, but it doesn't really apply to games, where even "native" apps almost always use their own UIs. And it doesn't apply at all to frameworks like MonoTouch, which call exactly the same native UI methods that ObjC apps do.

It's a power grab pure and simple. Flash is the primary target, Android is secondary, and if as a tertiary effect it reduces the percentage of crap apps, that's a nice bonus.

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ZeroGravitas 5906 days ago
It really doesn't apply to games because often people simply don't bother to port them to the Mac. And a regularly given reason, beyond the obvious market size issue is that Apple simply doesn't support game developers, often to the point of being antagonistic. Déjà vu, all over again?
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towndrunk 5906 days ago
Doesn't support game developers how? The largest category in the App Store is games. Regarding OS X, then I would agree it might have something to do with the size of the market.
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shawndumas 5905 days ago
As you say market size is not a problem here. And I will admit, Jobs would rather piss off a few in exchange for a iPhone directed app.
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shawndumas 5905 days ago
UI components don't but touch makes all the difference in the world. Most flash/java games for mobile are button oriented. I, for one, find ports painful.
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ryoshu 5905 days ago
There are more than a few developers that have been porting ActionScript to multi-touch platforms for a couple years now. As long as the original code was well structured, porting is relatively painless (attaching different event listeners).
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jarek 5906 days ago
Applications in the App Store can be rated "R" or "mature" or something like that as well. At one point there was a nice pocket shitstorm because Apple was requiring anything pulling in content from the internet to carry this rating. Because kids might search for "fuck" in your twitter app.

Also, not to sound like a broken record, but Playboy app is there and doing well.

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