Category Archives: Apple Inc

App Store: No appeal for developers?

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My most recent article for The Mac Observer delves into the problems developers have with Apple’s App Store approval process — focusing on a recent series of nonsensical rejections. More recently, I stumbled upon another article on the same topic. It makes an intriguing point: the main problem with the App Store is that Apple treats software as a commodity similar to a song in your music library. It doesn’t work. Read the article if you want to find out why.

I’ve since concluded that there is yet another major problem with the App Store approval process: There is no effective and standardized way to appeal a decision.

When I call almost any company, such as my credit card company, to complain about something — and I am dissatisfied with what the person is telling me — I can ask to “speak to your supervisor.” Usually, this works; they do pass my call up the ladder. The result may not change. But at least I get to speak to someone with more authority to make a change.

I understand that the support people at the bottom rung are encouraged not to “get the supervisor” too easily — lest every minor complaint get bumped up. But at least they are permitted the discretion to decide. For my part, I try not to exercise this option unless I truly believe I have a major grievance.

Based on the developers’ stories I have read, the situation with Apple is quite different. You get the feeling that the ones at the bottom of the ladder (assuming you even get to speak to anyone at all, rather than being forced to work through email) are told by Apple: “Make your decision, based on the guidelines we give you. Then stick to it no matter what. Whatever complaint you may hear, ignore it and repeat that your decision is final. Under no circumstances indicate that there is any possible appeal (other than via the developer resubmitting the app and starting over). And certainly don’t pass off a call to any “higher up.”

If Apple adopted a more reasonable approach to dealing with dissatisfied developers, it might have avoided most, if not all, of the “horror stories” that have been circulating on the Web.

The iPhone is ready to go beyond AT&T

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In the November 23 issue of Newsweek, Daniel Lyons argues that the iPhone is in danger of the same fate the befell the Mac: doomed to a small market share while another player becomes dominant. For the Mac, the other “player” was Microsoft. For the iPhone, the biggest threat is Google’s Android.

The problem, as Lyons sees it, is that Android is an open system that potentially works on any company’s hardware, just as was the case for MS-DOS/Windows. The iPhone, in contrast, is a closed system “keeping the software tightly coupled to the hardware.”

While I too have lamented the iPhone’s closed nature, I have to disagree with Lyons’ overall conclusion. The foundation of the iPhone’s appeal comes from the über-successful iPod. While the iPod might be similarly criticized as “closed,” it is never-the-less the 2000-gorilla of MP3 players. With the iPod touch as its wingman, the iPhone is similarly positioned to be follow in the footsteps of the iPod rather than the Mac.

With one exception.

I totally agree with Lyon’s concern that the iPhone runs only on the AT&T network. In the beginning, back in 2007, this hardly mattered. Starting from an installed base of zero, the iPhone was destined to take off no matter what. Any AT&T customer thinking of getting a smartphone was going to give the iPhone a serious look. For millions of other users, the desire to have an iPhone trumped everything — and they switched to AT&T.

Times have changed. AT&T continues to take hits for its relatively poor 3G network. Its refusal to activate Internet tethering on the iPhone because of its expected network impact is yet another black mark. Meanwhile, as Google’s Android phone improves, it may become less critical to switch to AT&T just so you can get an iPhone.

The result is that the potential pool of iPhone users will inevitably plateau. No other smartphone need worry about bumping into this ceiling.

What’s the solution? It’s an easy one. Apple needs to expand the iPhone’s availability to carriers beyond AT&T. The iPhone already supports a multitude of different carriers around the world. It shouldn’t be that difficult to support more than one carrier in the U.S.. Numerous others have come to the same conclusion (see this article for one example).

The hangup is more legal than technological. Apple and AT&T currently have a licensing agreement that requires that the status quo be maintained. Although both parties remain relatively mum about the details of this arrangement, there are predictions that the contract will expire as soon as next year.

When that happens, I would strongly urge Apple to drop its exclusive licensing with AT&T. No other single move would have as much positive impact on the iPhone’s future market share. By so doing, the iPhone will be well on its way to the same level of dominance now enjoyed by the iPod.

The MDJ vs. MacFixIt

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There exists a rather odd Macintosh-related publication named MDJ.

I say odd because, first of all, unlike almost every other publication on the Web, you cannot actually read the publication from a Web browser. You must subscribe to it (at a fee of $30/month) and then receive the publication via email.

Its name is also a bit odd. The MDJ name originally stood for Macintosh Daily Journal. As I understand it, the publishers were at some point legally barred from using the full name, so they shifted to the abbreviation as its official name.

The publication is also odd because, despite the suggestion that it is a daily publication, its actual publication schedule has been anything but daily. I receive a complimentary subscription to the MDJ. Unless I somehow missed receiving issues, there has only been one issue each for September and October. That’s not even close to weekly.

Further, the MDJ’s Web site may leave you wondering whether they still publish at all. For example, this page states: “Offices were closed for much of the second half of October, 2005. Issue production is scheduled to accelerate in November 2005.” That’s nice to know—except that it is now November 2007! Who is in charge of keeping their Web site current?

All of that said, the MDJ is a worthy publication, at least when it manages to publish. It offers a wealth of technical information about the Mac that is rarely duplicated elsewhere. I still look forward to each issue.

But the MDJ, largely through the voice of its publisher Matt Deatherage, can also be quite vicious. When Matt disagrees with something or somebody, he too often expresses his disagreement by resorting to a level of insult that would make Rush Limbaugh blush.

When I read the MDJ, I attempt to sift the valuable information from the vitriolic rhetoric with which it is intermingled. And I move on. But I could not do so today.

There is an article in the current MDJ regarding MacFixIt, a Web site devoted to providing troubleshooting information about Apple products. The article is so unjustifiably vicious, that I could not let it pass without comment. Actually, at least as of today, the article has not yet been published in an MDJ issue. Instead, the article was extracted from a forthcoming MDJ and posted online, available to anyone for free. The MDJ took this unusual step because of what it claims is “the public importance” of the article and “the requests we’d probably get to send it to other people.” I don’t know how many requests they would have gotten, but a search of Google this morning came up with very few links to this article, suggesting that it may not be as important or in demand as they may have thought.

I also found it odd that, out of all the useful and truly important information that the MDJ publishes, the only article in many many months that the MDJ has deemed important enough to make available for free is one that attacks another Web site. I have to wonder whether their motivations here are truly to provide a public service (I leave it to you to decide).

Before I continue, I need to interject a disclaimer. I am the founder of MacFixIt. Thus, you might suspect that I am biased in my reactions to the MDJ article. I am sure I am. There is no denying this. But that doesn’t mean I am wrong. I would also add that I sold the Web site in 2000 and have had nothing to do with the main content of the site ever since. I do write an occasional column or tutorial (which always includes my byline), but I have no hand in any other part of the site—including the content that the MDJ is criticizing. So I am not feeling personally attacked here.

This at last brings us to the specifics of the article. The MDJ is upset with MacFixIt’s recommendations regarding how best to install Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) as well as related advice regarding possibly incompatible software (such as DiskWarrior). The article contends that MacFixIt is overly alarmist in its concerns and thus makes unwarranted recommendations (such as to avoid the standard Upgrade method for installing Leopard).

Truth be told, if I had to take sides, my position would be closer to the MDJ’s view than to MacFixIt’s view. But there remains room for differences of opinion here. Certainly there is reason for caution in how you upgrade to Leopard. Even Apple points out, in a support article, that a not uncommon situation could result in a persistent blue screen at startup after upgrading to Leopard. Doing an “Archive and Install” rather than a standard Upgrade would likely avoid this. Other sites have expressed similar cautions (here is one example). It’s not just MacFixIt.

In any case, you should be able to disagree on such matters without resorting to name calling, as the MDJ does when it calls MacFixIt “stupid” and “despicable.” The very title of the article is: “The despicable MacFixIt.”

But I don’t want to debate here who is ultimately right or wrong on this installation question (or the related DiskWarrior issue). Nor do I want to linger on the matter of name calling. What I found most scurrilous about the MDJ article is its assertion that MacFixIt is engaged in deliberate deception, offering alarmist information that the site knows to be false or misleading, all in an attempt to increase its revenues. This claim is completely false.

What is true is that MacFixIt’s view of the world can become a bit distorted by all the email it receives. Especially when a new OS version is released, the site is inundated with emails about installations that failed for one reason or another. Such problems can even plague veteran Mac users and experts, as noted in a column by Bob LeVitus. The causes here may often turn out to be something other than the Installer itself. Still, at some point, it is hard for the MacFixIt staff not to take a skeptical view of the installation process. If bypassing the standard Upgrade in favor of alternative methods appears to bypass many of the reported problems, it is understandable that they would recommend these alternatives.

It’s not unlike a policeman who, after years on the beat and seeing one crime after another, becomes increasingly cynical and begins to view almost everything as potentially dangerous. He may wind up recommending safety precautions that others deem unnecessary. But he is not doing so in an attempt to deceive.

This, I am certain, is the worst-case scenario rationale for MacFixIt’s position. They may sometimes be overly alarmist. And they may make mistakes. But they are most often correct and continue to provide a valuable service to the Mac community. In any case, their advice is always honest and genuine. The MDJ should be ashamed of itself for suggesting otherwise. If anyone is despicable in all of this, it is not MacFixIt.

iPhone ringtones: To pay or not to pay

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I have sat by quiet as long as I can. Admittedly, that often isn’t very long. In this case, I have sat by while absorbing all the arguments in all of the recent columns on the subject of Apple’s new ringtone policy for its iPhone. And I have tried to digest it all and decide my personal viewpoint. I am done. My viewpoint is that the policy stinks and has no rational justification.

Before I offer the justification for my conclusion, let’s backtrack a bit. Let’s start by reviewing exactly what Apple’s policy is: If you want to add a ringtone to your iPhone, you must first purchase the song from the iTune’s Store for 99 cents. You must then pay an additional 99 cents to convert the song to a ringtone. Further, at the moment, only a small subset of the songs available from iTunes qualify for conversion to a ringtone. Incredibly, most songs you own or can purchase cannot yet be turned into ringtones even if you are willing to pay!

As ridiculous as I believe this policy is, I don’t want to sound too critical of Apple here. I believe they don’t much like the policy either. Rather, the policy is being imposed on them by the recording industry (RIAA). As pointed out by David Pogue (among others), it is actually a better policy than you are likely to find elsewhere. Sprint, for example, charges $2.50 to rent a ringtone for 3 months! You have to keep paying to keep using it. With Apple, you get the entire song plus the ringtone for $1.98, and you get to keep it forever.

Still, there is something fundamentally ludicrous about having to pay as much (or more) for a 30 second snippet of a song than you would have to pay for the entire song. The only thing more ludicrous is that enough people are willing to tolerate this, that the recording industry has turned ringtones into a multi-billion dollar profit-making machine.

The crux of the matter, for those who want to be ethical and not break the law, is whether the recording industry has any legal right to enforce such a policy. Is it in fact illegal to create your own custom ringtones for free, in violation of Apple’s policy (something which can be easily done with software such as iToner and MakeiPhoneRingtone)?

The answer to this question is sufficiently unclear that pundits (and lawyers quoted in columns written by these pundits) have come down on both sides of this fence. Some (such as Endgadget and Daring Fireball ) clearly believe that the policy has no legal foundation and you should feel free to create your own ringtones. Others (such as the MDJ) argue that there is a legal defense for the RIAA’s position, although it hangs by the thread of the nitpicking and cherry-picking parsing of legal language on which the RIAA thrives. The MDJ correctly notes that Fair Use (which is one basis for allowing repurposing of copyrighted materials by individuals) is not actually a law, but a doctrine open to various interpretations. The MDJ further points out that a ringtone is a “separate delivery of a recorded song” and as such is subject to a separate fee from the user. The MDJ doesn’t like this any more than anyone else (outside of the RIAA of course), concluding, “Yes, this sucks, but it’s the law.”

After considering all of this, I simply don’t buy the RIAA position, literally or figuratively.

Even if I accept all of the arguments presented in the MDJ article, it still doesn’t explain why I should not be able to take a song I already legally own (from a CD purchase) and use iTunes to turn it into a ringtone for 99 cents. Nor does it explain why I can’t just purchase a ringtone version of a song for 99 cents, without having to also buy the entire song. Why should I have to make a double or even triple purchase of the same song just to get a ringtone? There may be technological and practical reasons that make this difficult for Apple to implement, but not legal restrictions.

Finally, I don’t even accept the core of the pro-RIAA-viewpoint argument. And neither does Apple or the RIAA itself. That’s right. Apple and the RIAA already allow the equivalent of ringtone creation for free.

How so? For starters, they do it in the entire iLife suite of software. To see what I mean, open iMovie and insert a song from your iTunes Library to serve as a background for a 30 second movie you are creating. Bingo! You have just used a 30 second snippet of a song from iTunes for a different purpose than simply listening to the song. You can even create a DVD from your movie and play the DVD at the same time that someone else is listening to the same song directly from iTunes. How is that any different from what is done with ringtones? It isn’t. Yet Apple allows this, apparently without objection from the RIAA.

Heck, if you use iWeb, you can create a Web page containing iTunes music that could potentially be listened to by thousands of people a day, all at no charge. But a ringtone for your own personal listening benefit? Nope, that you have to pay extra for.

It’s also okay to copy an entire iTunes Library from a computer to an Apple TV, thereby allowing the user to play the music on both machines at the same time—with no charge for doing this. Yet, you cannot copy a single 30 second excerpt from one song to your iPhone without having to pay for the privilege. Absurd.

There is only one explanation to account for all of this absurdity. The ringtone business began when phone companies could easily restrict what could transfer to your phone. They, and the recording industry, made a ton of money taking advantage of this. Technology has now evolved; the transfer limitation no longer exists. But the greedy folks behind ringtones have not changed. They continue to cling to a model that no longer works and no longer makes any sense—legally, ethically or any other way except in terms of their profit. Happily, at least for the moment, you don’t have to play along.