App Store - I'm Still Using

There's been a lot of blow-up, again, about the iPhone App Store, now in regards to some podcaster app being rejected for "duplicating functionality in iTunes". Personally, that's a stupid rejection, and it should be corrected. One reason? Just earlier this week (before I heard of this rejected app), I wanted the ability to download a podcast directly on my iPhone. I was about to leave for my morning walk with the dog, and I realized that there was a podcast or two that I had either downloaded in iTunes but weren't sync'd to the phone, or that I just wanted to quickly download to listen to while I walked. I could have plugged the phone back into the computer, but didn't have time to deal with the 'backing up...' step, nor much else. I wanted to start downloading while I finished getting everything together. So - just from myself, I can see the need for this functionality. And "duplicates existing functionality" should not be a valid rejection reason.

But as a purchaser and user, I'm not going to abandon the app store.  The iPhone is just too good, and the software is a big part of that. A big issue, as I see it, is that the iPhone is just so much more powerful than anything else out there. It shares a substantial amount of the core operating system and frameworks with desktop Mac OS X. But that doesn't mean that you could or should be free to write Mac OS X style applications with reckless abandon. Yet people have freaked out about restrictions such as "no background processes" which exist for good reason.

Palm, Symbian, and whatever runs the Blackberry devices have no desktop counterpart. Windows Mobile is a different core operating system, with similar yet different frameworks. But Windows Mobile doesn't seem to exert the same kinds of restrictions that Apple has thus far put on the iPhone. One element that I'm thinking of is that on the iPhone, applications are born to die. The operating system will kill any application that is running rampant with resources and not responding to warnings. Generally, this has worked, even with the issue-laden 2.0.x iPhone OS: applications suddenly die, without much reason, but the OS keeps going. What's special about this? Isn't it unix? Shouldn't it keep going? Well yes, of course; but what you don't have, as an end user, is any kind of Task Manager. "Oh goddammit, Koi Pond is frozen, let me bring up that thing that lets me force-kill it".

Apple's choice is, as far as I can see, that end users should not see anything like that. Whereas I know that Windows Mobile does have a Task Manager.

Apple's design here seems to be enforcing the fact that even though this is based on Mac OS X / Unix, it's still a very different platform. Sure the system can support multitasking, but as a user I'm typically doing only one thing at a time on the touch device. So why allow multi-tasking and put in the drain on system resources, especially when there is no task manager?

I don't see people so incensed at the rules and limits of other mobile platforms... Are they just used to it? Have those platforms been historically so incapable (from a technological perspective) that people just haven't cared? Or have I just never paid attention because they were on platforms I would never have interest in? Because really - until the iPhone, I never expected to see a mobile device I'd want to use. My prior phone (a Samsung something-or-other... generic color flip phone with mobile Java apps) had apps; had an app store (that I avoided like the plague because I didn't know how much it could cost me just to look at the DATA); had me hating all phones and wishing for a mobile phone that did n-o-t-h-i-n-g. The "smart phones"? All enterprisey. The iPhone changed everything.

It changed everything because Apple focused on different things - end user experience, usability, power, and general flexibility. It's a platform that I love. It's a joy to use, especially in comparison with everything that came before. Everything that came before may have been more supposedly "open", more supposedly "developer friendly", but that did not make them any better to use.

Apple needs to improve its process, yes. Apple should lift the cone of silence they still exert over all discussion of the iPhone SDK. And personally, I really think that Apple should provide an alternate avenue for applications to be delivered and installed, perhaps with a "caveat emptor" mode that would protect most casual users, but provide a venue for people to play with ideas and apps that break the iPhone's rules. Personally, I doubt I'd use such apps. I tried jailbreaking my iPhone once. It was fun for a couple of days, but woefully unstable and ultimately not really worth using. Granted, that was in the relatively early days of jailbreaking, it may have improved since then. But I don't really see the point in using it. The App Store is goddamn easy to use; most of the software I've purchased has been good; and it's an unstoppable force. We're only two months in to iPhone 2.x and App Store; we're only a year and two months into having this new mobile platform. And it's been WILDLY successful. And I imagine it's been a bit overwhelming, even for Apple.

They need to improve things, but it will take time. I would rather have Apple be overly restrictive in the beginning and open up more over time than allow "anything goes" and immediately fall into the legacy problems that have plagued Palm, Windows Mobile, and others (including the original Mac). I don't think Apple is trying to be evil. I think that they are being cautious, and they are making some rookie mistakes.