App stores should do what is good for their shareholders
Apple is trying to move from being the cool kids counter-culture creative types alternative to the PC to being the corporate acceptable alternative to the Blackberry.
A story about karmasutra apps or ifart in the WSJ could cause a CEO to change their mind about allowing users to use their iPhone on the corp network.
And of course the best way of preventing such a story is, as we all know, to make a big splash about banning such an app
The problem is the human element. If you are doing something that can in some way be construed as going against the app store guidelines, eventually you are going to get a reviewer who rejects/takes down your app. Even if other reviewers knew that your app had been around for ever, you are eventually going to run into one who doesn't, or feels it's his/her job to be as strict as possible. There is very little consistency in Apple's process because of this. The company I work for has had apps rejected for things we've done literally about a dozen times before, and we certainly knew were border line but we figured were OK because it had been allowed so many times before. But eventually we run into a reviewer who for whatever reason, rejects something that we've done tons of times before.
Overall I think Apple's process works, but the inconsistency is just ridiculous. Especially when your releases are time critical.
>Apple is trying to move from being the cool kids counter-culture creative types alternative to the PC to being the corporate acceptable alternative to the Blackberry.
A story about karmasutra apps or ifart in the WSJ could cause a CEO to change their mind about allowing users to use their iPhone on the corp network.
Only this has nothing to do with it.
iOS made inroads into the enterprise DESPITE the plethora of fart apps, Kama Sutra apps and such stuff.
Apple could care less about the hypothetical CEO you mention --not that 99.9% of CEOs would care about the presence of Kama Sutra apps in the app store when considering allowing the iPhone or not.
Mostly things like: employes and managers like to use it, it delivers a business advantage, we can deliver apps for our corporation in that platform.
"Apple could care less about the hypothetical CEO you mention"
The old fringe player Apple could - the new $trillion corporate Apple might "think different".
Remember once upon a time Microsoft was a cool fashionable young persons software company fighting against the established corporate monopolies
I'm sure this was just a new employee who was probably still in high-school when the Appstore launched and thinks anything not on the front page of reddit is ancient.
But it does show a certain attitude inside Apple. Iconoclast thinking different and "we can do no wrong" is great when it's Jobs deciding you only need one mouse button - it's different when it becomes an unwillingness to even talk to your customers and users.
>The old fringe player Apple could - the new $trillion corporate Apple might "think different".
I seriously doubt it. Especially since they became the "$trillion corporate Apple" by not caring about those things --so why change a winning strategy?
Apple is trying to move from being the cool kids counter-culture creative types alternative to the PC to being the corporate acceptable alternative to the Blackberry.
A story about karmasutra apps or ifart in the WSJ could cause a CEO to change their mind about allowing users to use their iPhone on the corp network.
And of course the best way of preventing such a story is, as we all know, to make a big splash about banning such an app