Thursday
02Oct2008
FNDA is now "Former" NDA
Thursday, October 2, 2008 at 03:57AM
Feels great to have a second thing to thank Apple for in the same week. Yesterday, Apple lifted the Non-Disclosure Agreement on publicly-available iPhone software.
Pre-release Mac OS X Development has always been under NDA, but once an OS was on sale, we were free to talk about it. I can't blog about Snow Leopard, but I can post all the Leopard code I want. Until yesterday, that wasn't the case with the iPhone.
If you want an example of how important this is, I haven't been to my Mac since the announcement and I already learned something I didn't know via Twitter. I can't wait to learn a lot more.
I'm now convinced that the remaining big problem - the lack of pre-approval for apps - will be resolved in time. I came up with another way to make progress on this issue:
Pre-approval only matters when you're going to invest significant resources in creating an application. If your app is going to take you a week to make, you won't lose much if it's rejected. If you're going to spend months or hire people to build an iPhone app, you stand to lose a lot if you can't sell it.
What if Apple provided four "App Store Approval Incidents" with each ADC Premier account, and ADC Select members could buy one for, say, $350? As I see it, the costs of either represent little more than a trivial due-diligence fee on the investment you are about to make in iPhone development.
Anyway, thanks to Apple for the moves on the NDA. I'm looking to the future of iPhone development with immeasurably more optimism now.
Pre-release Mac OS X Development has always been under NDA, but once an OS was on sale, we were free to talk about it. I can't blog about Snow Leopard, but I can post all the Leopard code I want. Until yesterday, that wasn't the case with the iPhone.
If you want an example of how important this is, I haven't been to my Mac since the announcement and I already learned something I didn't know via Twitter. I can't wait to learn a lot more.
I'm now convinced that the remaining big problem - the lack of pre-approval for apps - will be resolved in time. I came up with another way to make progress on this issue:
Pre-approval only matters when you're going to invest significant resources in creating an application. If your app is going to take you a week to make, you won't lose much if it's rejected. If you're going to spend months or hire people to build an iPhone app, you stand to lose a lot if you can't sell it.
What if Apple provided four "App Store Approval Incidents" with each ADC Premier account, and ADC Select members could buy one for, say, $350? As I see it, the costs of either represent little more than a trivial due-diligence fee on the investment you are about to make in iPhone development.
Anyway, thanks to Apple for the moves on the NDA. I'm looking to the future of iPhone development with immeasurably more optimism now.
Reader Comments (2)
Interesting idea with "approval incidents", and let me be the first to give you credit for a productive suggestion rather than just a rant, but you may be compromising too early. Incidents could provide a sane way for developers to make decisions about their investment, or it could just reinforce that Apple can approve or reject any idea. I'd worry that rejections would actually go up if we acknowledge that Apple has this power.
I agree that incidents should be a part of the solution, but I think the place to start is clearer guidelines, otherwise we still have the randomness of the current approval process.
Your suggestion and the general optimism from everyone right now makes me think you are on the right track, though. The developer community could draft a series of potential solutions that we sign off on and propose directly to Apple in a high-profile way.
Approval incidents or perhaps a more general "iPhone app consultation" incident are a very interesting idea. I think that Manton is right though in that clear guidelines are the first step. Without this I'd be concerned that the review process is still arbitrary and pre-approval would no doubt come with a "we reserve the right to change our minds" gotcha.