Let’s give each of you 250 apps to review a day every day and let’s see how consistent you are in your decisions. Let’s see if you don’t make some mistakes.

While there’s a perfect utopia for which we all hope, it will never be achieved. Humans are involved and there will always be mistakes.

You sorely underestimate the monumentalness of the task. And no, throwing a hundred more contractors at the problem doesn’t fix it. It’s a huge undertaking and there’s simply no way to avoid occassional problems. If you say differently, you’re far too full of yourself.

Improvements can and should come. But the assertation that “if Apple were just as smart as me all this would be fixed” is just ignorant.

You misunderstand the nature of the obligation, my friend. To expand Tom’s comment a little:

If Apple wishes to maximise its potential revenue by encouraging a diverse and talented pool of developers, while maintaining the incredible level of control it has over app development via the single store model, it has an obligation to get the process of app publishing right. Without a fair, transparent, and rational set of rules for what will and will not be accepted, it will ultimately drive away talented developers to the detriment of its business.”

If it wishes to make the single App Store model work over time, it must accept that it has obligations towards the developer community. Without that, it’s *not* looking after the interests of its shareholders.

Apple is in an interesting position right now. It has a massive amount of mindshare, but it doesn’t have either massive installed base or market share of new sales. Unless it plays its hand carefully, it could find itself in the same position as it did with the original Mac. Back then, lots of developers flooded to the plaform, wrote brilliant apps which taught them all about how to write for GUIs, and then drifted off to Windows once its market share and installed base grew.

They are adjusting the algorithm with each f%$kup.

Am I the only one who notices they dont repeat a mistake, but they do find a better way of making one.
Sigh.
I love my fruit.

“So long as Apple sets itself up as the sole path from developers to users, they have an obligation to get it right.”

Actually, no. Apple has an obligation to its shareholders and *that’s it*. And of course they aren’t being *evil*; that implies a lot more intent than rejection a few apps. As for recourse, reading those blog posts showed the recourse: *resubmit your app after 3.0 when parental controls are in.*

While I’d sure wish Apple would be fanatically consistent with their approvals, I can’t believe anyone who is developing for the iPhone *now* is unaware of this; if it bugs people so much, don’t develop for the platform.

I also believe that with tens of thousands of apps and their updates, mistakes get made and apps get in or out that shouldn’t be. The whole thing does strike me as a tempest in a teapot.

My personal take is that the whole approval process is done by people who are simply following a script, and who aren’t always on top of things, and who have so many approvals to do, they often will not even think about the rejections they are making. Sad, and hopefully things will approve, but I really wish it would be more like developing Mac apps (beyond checking for things like cell network abuse, etc.) where the approval comes from the users, not one faceless entity, that sometimes is censor, and somethings does things that make little sense, putting months (at least) of work on hold, sometimes indefinitely.

Apple is the MASTER at manipulating the press, so reject a few hot button apps to generate headlines, pique outrage and interest.

All of a sudden, your entire user base of iPhone/iPod touch platform users suddenly WANTS and NEEDS your OS upgrade. MOST, iPod touch users, will PAY $10 each for the privilege.

BRILLIANT!

Also, out of 35,000+ apps, there are bound to be a few screwy rejections.