Apple SHOULD stop reviewing iPhone apps
I usually agree with Marco, but he’s all wrong when it comes to iPhone’s app review process. As Marco’s regular readers know, the process for iPhone application submission and review is buggy, slow, and unpredictable. Rejections seem to come regularly and for ambiguous or capricious reasons. But Marco thinks it should continue. He worries that Apple needs to keep up this disaster of a process to avoid bad press and possible liability.
As Marco points out, the iPhone is at the top of its market. It’s not a platform, it’s the platform. And Apple is in the enviable position of controlling it. It should relinquish some of that control.
By reviewing applications, Apple tacitly endorses them. This is bad for Apple, in that any failures in the process are (properly) attributable to Apple. It’s bad for developers, because any application Apple doesn’t like can be summarily rejected. And it’s awful for the public because the review process delays new applications, updates, and bug fixes. It’s as if Microsoft were to implement a review process for all P.C. software. By opening up the platform, Apple could solve all of these problems. Marco offers part of a solution:
One possible solution is to maintain app review only for inclusion in the App Store and start permitting apps to be sold and distributed independently without requiring customers’ phones to be jailbroken. But this has a lot of technical and practical hurdles before it could be a high-quality experience, and I’m not confident that it would relieve Apple of the implied liability for the effects of bad apps.
I can’t speak to the technical side—though I can’t imagine the practical and technical hurdles would be so difficult for Apple to handle—particularly because the current submission/review system is not a “high-quality experience.” And I can’t imagine what liability Apple would have for any bad apps, so long as it’s clear that Apple hasn’t checked the apps in anyway. Currently the apps (and their content) have Apple’s stamp of approval. If something slips through, Apple is in trouble. By opening the gates, Apple can absolve itself of its responsibility as gatekeeper.
Best of all, Apple can keep the app store and can get its slice of the pie of everything purchased through the app store. It can improve the review process and only sell the best products. If Apple is willing to stand behind the developers it helps promote, the developers can ask higher prices for their apps, and consumers can buy them, confident that they are getting a quality application. Everybody wins.
I doubt Apple will relinquish any control over the iPhone as a platform. I doubt Apple willingly relinquishes control of anything.
