Adam Engst, writing for TidBITS:
The common thread that ties these disparate apps together is that all are trying to take advantage of iOS 8’s new Extensibility features. Those include custom keyboards, Notification Center widgets, custom Share actions and extensions, photo and video editing extensions, and document provider extensions — iMore has a comprehensive explanation of Extensibility.
The problem is that Apple has not published clear guidelines about what is acceptable. None of these rejections are, as far as I can tell, related to security concerns. Each Extensibility feature is provided by a specific API, so at least in theory, providing a capability that is supported by the API should not pose a threat to user data, and in fact, developer reports about Apple’s rejections have never mentioned security issues.
Instead, Apple is in essence telling developers, “Bring me a rock.” When the developer returns with an app that seems to meet the published guidelines and Apple rejects it, the company is saying, “No, not that rock. Bring me a different rock.” Repeat the game until the developer gives up in frustration.
Clearly, there is a lot of App Store frustration in the iOS developer community. There’s the lack of any consistent form of curation that makes search much less effective. There’s the “Bring me a rock” problem Adam describes above. There’s the problem of Freemium content pushing innovation to the bottom of the App Store listings.
Freemium content brings in plenty of revenue, but that model works equally well on Android. The high revenue apps are not discriminators. Innovation is what adds luster to the Apple brand. Innovation will sell iPads and iPhone 6’s. We need more Monument Valleys. More apps that push the boundaries, that show off the shiny new parts of the iOS SDK. And when those new apps ship, Apple should grease the skids to get those apps approved.
There’s also the fact that the App Store lives within three different organizations at Apple: The SDK in one branch, the App Store review process in another, and the App Store marketing arm in still another. Is there any wonder there are communication problems? Seems to me it would be in Apple’s best interests to put together some sort of App Store summit, bringing key App Store team members together with App Store activists and developer representatives. There are a lot of issues to discuss.
There was an amazing amount of excitement at this year’s WWDC (that seems so long ago now?). Certainly the most excitement since the initial iPhone SDK release. Everyone was thinking “openness, extensible platform, new languages, rainbows, etc”.
The kludgey, obtuse keyboard implementation in iOS and the mindless clamping down on extensions means that they’ve marched the developer community back to June 1st.
what apple devs thought the apple ecosystem was going “open”? the extensions are real. the new language is real. no rainbows were announced.
the policies on widgets arent mindless. theyre designed to keep them simple.
“More apps that push the boundaries”
^ This is the problem. You can dream it, spend weeks-months perfecting it, and find out Apple won’t allow it in the store.
They don’t foster innovation w/ the scattered rules. It concerns me when we have a need to address but we’re concerned Apple will deny us.
The day developers outright shift to another platform is the day Apple will change their ways. Until then: we’re under their thumb.