Apple’s iPhone app store approval process is famed for its inconsistencies, but today the developer of a popular iPhone app has had enough.
Appsfire, an app for discovering popular iPhone apps, was approved in its version 1.0 form last August, but after two months its version 2.0 has not been approved, despite repeated calls by the startup to Apple, they claim.
In an excoriating blog post today, founder Ouriel Ohayon effectively accuses Apple of not approving its latest update because Apple wants to keep discoverability to itself:
“Your approval process is full of holes; you have approved Appsfire v1.0 last August and wished you hadn’t because almost no one had any real clue about discoverability issues back then – indeed, we were the very first to address this issue in an app. Now you know what’s at stake, so you’ve locked-down every aspect of the SDK ToS. Which is probably why you wouldn’t write anything to us for 56 days re: Appsfire v2.0, despite our numerous calls, emails, and high level contacts (period during which you had no problem approving similar apps). Was your intent to shut us down by playing the waiting game until the legal team had caught up? The problem remains, in fact we don’t even know what the problem might be since you are not talking to us.”
He says they are pulling out because v1.0 is outdated and not serving its users.
“Anyways, you know full well that an app that does not get updated has a half-life of two days, and that the App Store has too many (fart/cheat/book/udid) apps anyways. Let’s prune the apple tree (couldn’t resist, sorry). Steve, please update your slides. It’s now 225k − 1!”
They’ll now be considering out-of-store alternatives.
What do you think, are they right to pull out? Leave your views in the comments.