Funny, I thought the justification for the App Store was to keep malicious apps off of AT&T’s network. Funny there is no mention of that by Schiller. You guys all know how this joker was hired, right? Flash back to 1997…

Steve: What’s your name, son?

Phil: Schiller, Ph….

Steve: Perfect, don’t ever disappoint me. OK, I have a resume for John Fluffer, is he in the waiting room?

But seriously. The problem that a growing number of developers have with the App Store is simply philosophical. Nobody has a problem with App Store distribution being an option, and even a preferred option on the iPhone device. The problem comes in when there are is no option for self-distribution. And no, “ad-hoc” distribution is not that option. It is limited to 100 devices and you have to know the UID of those devices when you build your app.

Until Apple lets go and allows developers to ship products without Apple’s approval, it deserves all the grief hurled at it. The funny thing is that just about every developer who is criticizing the arrangement now would probably submit a portion of their products to the App Store if there were a parallel self-distribution route. Apple has done well dealing with what are essentially micropayments and setting up a trusted source. There’s value in that. But it’s suicide to give one company control of your product. It sets a terrible precedent for the software industry to have hardware and OS vendors control the 3rd party market.

@bosco Everything you say on, well, any subject reminds me of a monkey throwing poo, or a four year-old having a tears of entitlement laden temper tantrum of impatience. Please put away your poo.

Any system takes time to hammer out. Sometimes I think the worst thing to happen to us were the overnight fortunes of the dot-com era. I think there was a small window of time there where a certain generation of people just came up with unrealistic expectations for pretty much everything. It isn’t as though an editing process is anything new in any medium. No one is twisting anybody’s arm. If you don’t like it, find ways to work within the system or go to a different platform. Everyone is born with their own creative resources. Use ‘em.

Things that amuse me:

1.  “For The Most Part.”  He used that, twice.  The question becomes, is “For The Most Part” good enough?  And, if it isn’t, would it be better to drop the whole thing?

People trust the App Store.  They trust that Apple will do their best to ferret out Apps which are security risks.  The problem is, when Apple fails, what happens to the people who trusted Apple?  Would it be better for Apple to drop the whole “App Store” and, thus, force people to be concerned about these things?

2.  “There have been apps submitted [...] which are intended to help the user break the law.”  Phil brings up a card game app (I assume it’s some sort of automated card counter).  I’ll bring up another one that brought the same claim from Apple.

There was an iPhone App submitted which allowed the customer to view the progress of their Bit-Torrent queues.  They could add new items, delete items, or just see what the status was.  This was denied by Apple because Bit-Torrent could be used to download copyrighted material, despite the fact that this App was not downloading anything.

(That said, the solution to this is to make it a web app.)

Nice try, Phil.