After years of dealing with Apple, I've learned that the only thing that gets their attention is negative press.
It's pretty clear that they're listening.
This is why I find comments disparaging those who complain about the App Store to be remarkably silly and short-sighted. Complaining -- publicly -- is exactly how you get a corporation like Apple to change. Unless you disagree with their aims, why disparage those that voice their negative opinions in an effort to enact change?
I've only been watching the app store from a distance, so maybe I'm missing something from my perspective. But it seems Apple has been getting negative press from the beginning of the app store and made little effort to change, at the expense of both developers and iPhone users (and likely Apple itself). It's good to see them changing now, but I have to wonder what rock they've been under for the last year or more.
Negative tech press and negative popular press are different things. When the tech press disparages you, that will likely have no correlation at all to how either the public or the developers see you. When the popular press say something bad about you, the public's opinion will start to shift, and then the developers will feel justified in changing their minds to a greater extent. To put it another way: the tech press has said bad things about every version of Windows. The popular press only said bad things about Vista.
When the tech press disparages you, that will likely have no correlation at all to how either the public or the developers see you.
I'm not an app developer, but I'd be quite surprised if the tech press Apple has been getting has not discouraged developers or potential developers to some extent.
This is very true. Everyone can remember how a year or two ago Greenpeace started going after Apple and their dirty manufacturing processes. Nearly everyone in the techosphere tried defending Apple, but if you look at the new MacBook Pro website, you'll see their improved environmental credentials featured very very prominently.
"This is why I find comments disparaging those who complain about the App Store to be remarkably silly and short-sighted."
Quite a few of the disparaging comments are made solely to create publicity. The Ninjawords application was censored when it was first published, but that was due to a policy that has already been changed with the introduction of OS 3.0. A while ago a Commodore 64 emulator was rejected, along with a notice that the app would be approved after some minor changes. Of course, this wasn't mentioned when the developers wrote about it in their blog.
I personally have no problem with the negative comments I'm just skeptical and bored seeing it repeated over and over again. Especially with all the broad generalizations like "Apple is the new Microsoft" or other non-sense. Makes me think some of these folks are just trying to cash in on a controversial story.
It's pretty clear that they're listening.
This is why I find comments disparaging those who complain about the App Store to be remarkably silly and short-sighted. Complaining -- publicly -- is exactly how you get a corporation like Apple to change. Unless you disagree with their aims, why disparage those that voice their negative opinions in an effort to enact change?