If you want to work with someone, don't attack or try to take over
part of what they think of as theirs. This is a lesson many learn at
school.
If you want to have and keep a partner, you make sure that you have
their agreement before moving into their area, and anyone signing the
SDK and submitting an app to the store is looking for a working
relationship with Apple.
The iPhone is the key product for Apple's future. It is the first
really successful new computing platform since the Internet. For many,
mobile computers like the iPhone will replace PCs.
If someone is given the fart app and embarrassed by it, how does
that make them feel about the iPhone?
If they are embarrassed in a professional gathering, the
consequences will be even worse. At the very least it will lead to even
stronger corporate monitoring of the App Store and what is allowed. At
the worst it will lead to sexual harassment lawsuits, with the iPhone
as a highly publicised part of the evidence. IT departments, many of
which don't want to support the iPhone, will then use "problem apps"
like this as a further reason for delay.
Netshare from Null River, the tethering app, looks to have been
rejected because of the limitations of AT&T's 3G network. The
combination of large iPhone sales, an immature network (even in major
urban areas), and well publicised connection problems has doomed
tethering for the short term. Walt Mossberg of the Wall Street
Journal recently said that in the Washington, DC, metro area,
AT&T promised to have some 800 towers ready at launch;
it delivered 80.
Although it makes business sense for Apple and AT&T to support
tethering when more bandwidth is available, clearly selling more
iPhones and customer plans makes more business sense now.
Apple wants iTunes to be the distribution system for apps, podcasts,
music, and video sales. Clearly Apple has few issues with internet
music radio as Pandora, Last.fm, Virgin Radio, etc. all have apps in
the store, but as these are run by businessmen, they may well have
checked with Apple before writing the apps.
Podcaster provides an alternative download mechanism to iTunes for
podcasts. If Apple lets Podcaster on the App Store, then companies with
deep pockets and interests in music and video distribution will submit
apps that access their stores. When Apple rejects them, a lawsuit will
quickly follow, and allowing Podcaster risks weakening Apple's defense.
Even if Apple successfully defends the rejection, the court may impose
restrictions on what Apple can reject. Far better (and cheaper) for
Apple to reject Podcaster.
At the end, let's remember this is business. Apple decided not to
promote Podcaster through the App Store because it already offered a
way of downloading podcasts. The author decided he had more to gain
from the publicity surrounding the rejection than by reworking
Podcaster. He then used iPhone certificates designed for beta testing
to distribute hundreds of copies of Podcaster while asking for $9.99
per copy.
Apple issuing a set of rules for developers could only help those
developers unwilling to apply the unwritten law. That is, help until a
developer either decides the rules are unreasonable or that the
rejection was not covered by the rules.
America is a litigious society. Nearly every quarter Apple has to
defend an increasing number of lawsuits despite others being settled.
This is a consequence of lawyers going where the money is - and Apple
has over $20 billion in cash and short term investments.
A published set of rules would give lawyers another way of trying to
get their hooks into that cash mountain. If they succeed, Apple could
look at reducing the 70% developers receive from the App Store to cover
settlement costs.
For Apple, the App Store is only a means to the end of selling more
iPhones. Like the iTunes music business, it may grow to be usefully
profitable.
However, what drives Apple now are the profits from hardware.
