Email to Phil Schiller, Senior Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing Apple
Monday, July 20, 2009 at 6:43PM | Glyn Evans Back on the 29th June and following huge interest in my post on "Broken iPhone photo apps", I emailed Phil Schiller to ask him what Apple were planning to do to address this issue of broken apps, and below is an extract from that email.
"There are a number of photo apps that I, and I am sure many thousands of other iPhone owners have purchased from the AppStore that are not compatible with the new OS. Whilst I understand and accept it is the responsibility of the app developer to update their apps to work with 3.0, it has come to my attention that Apple are blocking a number of developers updates. If true and Apple are blocking established apps from working with OS 3.0, then I would like to know what Apple plan to do to the many thousands of app owners whose apps no longer work?"
The very next day I got a reply, albeit a very short saying "I appreciate the direct email" and that "We are investigating this issue."
Since then all has been quiet, but based on updated notes I have seen on some photo app listings on the AppStore, for example Camera Zoom; where the developer has recently added "Version 1.1 is submitted to Apple, and is awaiting approval. This is a major update that fixes issues which many users are reporting, including image quality and compatibility with OS 3.0.", things may be getting closer to a resolve.
Today I have again emailed Phil Schiller to try and get further information and clarification on the situation, and will post an update as soon as I know something, so until then, lets all keep our fingers crossed that Apple are finally seeing sense.
Reader Comments (3)
Hi, I am an iPhone developer, and having developed quite a few apps, some quite popular photography ones, some of which have been "blocked". I figured I would shed some light on the situation.
Developing on the iPhone is not like developing on a computer, you are not just allowed to do whatever you want. This is very upsetting, and can really hider the functionality of an application which you may wish to create.
As developers are just as avid of users and "normal" people are, we do like to find ways around things to make our pocket-sized dreams happen. Many developers have dug deep into the iPhone SDK, finding how to "hack" their code into working. For example, the screen that pops up when you take a picture through a 3rd party app is given to us developers as a black box. Apple does not encourage developers to try to piece together the mechanics of the black box, and do not give very many hints how to do so. Therefore, when Apple decides to change the functionality of their black box code, they do not think twice (hello 3.0).
Many developers do end up forcing their code into Apple's black boxed stuff, and manage to get something working. However, when Apple changes their black box, all hell can break loose, and Apple holds no responsibility to make sure that the "hacked" code works. Back to the camera pop up screen example, if an app forces new UI into that screen, and then the black boxed code changes, most likely the UI additions will not work.
Now, Apple application reviewers are not supposed to allow this stuff to get by in the first place. However, the reviewers are people too, and every now and then, something slides. However, what are the chances that when you submit an update another reviewer will let it slide? As a developer, you should not count on getting lucky, and you should definitely not count on getting lucky twice.
I will use my Polarize application as an example. Apple feels that it is a legally dangerous application, but one reviewer dropped the ball and let it into the app store. In other words, they are no longer supporting it with updates. However, they did decide to leave it on the app store. Is this fair? Well, yes and no, you can decide. In my eyes, I see it as fair, because they could have easily taken it off when it was discovered. I would prefer to have my update-less app out there rather than no app at all.
Just the situation through the eyes of one guy though :)
Do you know if MoloPix is one of the blocked apps? I love that app and very sad that it is still not working. Starting to get pissed at the developers but maybe it is Apple?
Yes, I'm afraid MoloPix is one of the blocked apps (I'm one of the developers). As with most of the developers Glyn is talking about, we submitted a 3.0 compatible version back before 3.0 was release. It took a very long time in submission (well over a month) but was finally rejected.
We have submitted another version that is slightly crippled compared to the previous version, but it keeps within Apple guidelines and therefore they shouldn't have any reason to continue rejecting the app. Fingers crossed that it is approved soon. In the meantime we removed MoloPix from the app store so as not to confuse and upset new users.
While I pretty much completely agree with Christopher's comment, I would say that it wasn't just a couple of applications that happened to slide past a review, Apple seemed to be absolutely fine with certain 'hacks' but not with others. They seem to have changed their mind on what is now an acceptable hack and what is not.