THREATENED: Flash of Genius (for “inappropriate” platform information)
This one brings up two major long-term issues (read to the end). Flash of Genius is an educational app. It came 10th in its category in the recent Google Android Developer Challenge, so the developers thought to use that in their marketing materials. Apple wasn’t happy:
During our review of your application, we found that your application contains inappropriate or irrelevant platform information in the Application Description and/or Release Notes sections.
Providing future platform compatibility plans or other general platform references are not relevant in the context of the iPhone App Store. While your application has not been rejected, it would be appropriate to remove “Finalist in Google’s Android Developer’s Challenge!” from the Application Description.
Please log into iTunes Connect to make appropriate changes to the Application Description now to avoid an interruption in the availability of Flash of Genius: SAT Vocab 2.2 on the iPhone App Store.
“avoid an interruption in the availability”
What?
What does that mean?
Is this the new “REJECTED”?
I have a horrible feeling about this. If Apple claims from now on that “we never rejected X, we merely told them that “it would be a good idea to re-submit”", they can get away with a lot more. This shifts the grey-area between fair and unfair, to encompass more of whatever Apple doesn’t like.
I suspect that this is legal wrangling after all the trouble Apple got into with the FCC over rejecting Google’s VoIP app. I hope this is a one-off incident, but we’ll keep an eye on it…
Marketing
What are developers supposed to do?
Apple used to allow “special” and/or “paying” developers to customize their iTunes pages (rumours I heard at the time suggested that it was a paid service, although perhaps indirectly). But that’s long disappeared, and now we have even less control over what marketing is possible via the app store.
Ultimately, the single greatest value in the App Store is that it provides a marketing / discovery platform. That’s rapidly followed by the ability to extort cash from consumers – but with Apple’s 30% charge, there are much much cheaper ways to get money, as used by millions of websites every day.
Developers may rant; developers may resent Apple. But money is a higher issue.
Is Apple now shooting itself in the foot? Is this one of the cracks that Google, RIM, and Nokia will sneak through?
