Thousands of people saw Apple's bad move when this story made its way across the web. Apple doesn't think twice when it's someone small who can't make a fuss.
It's the same kind of deal we saw with the Google Checkout story a couple months ago. Honest people get caught up in overzealous protection methods and companies just take it as a loss.
Search for "iPhone app rejected" and you will see this isn't an isolated incident. A lot of the rejected apps probably broke the rules, but plenty have not, and Apple doesn't seem to care unless they have a big soapbox to shout from.
Textbook "evil", no. But, it wouldn't be hard to stop these things. Apple takes a calculated approach because they know the few wrongfully rejected apps won't cost them as much money as implementing a beefier review process across their whole app store. When this policy gets bad press by influential bloggers, like with this app, they can spend a minimal amount of resources to reevaluate the app. It's cold and calculated.
By "easy to stop" you mean "costs so much money (i.e. human effort) as to be even more costly than bad PR", in other words "takes TONS of effort to stop".
I have no idea where you are pulling these quotes from. I said none of those things.
I said said they could stop it if they wanted to. It might cost a little extra, but it also wouldn't completely screw over a bunch of small developers. Developers who already paid money to Apple and further invested their time and money into making an application.
Based of how prevalent iPhone app rejections are, you would think the least Apple could do would be to release a comprehensive list of things they do not like.
Would it really cost 'TONS' of effort just to create a set of guidelines and stick to them?
> Textbook "evil", no. But, it wouldn't be hard to stop these things. Apple takes a calculated approach because they know the few wrongfully rejected apps won't cost them as much money as implementing a beefier review process
in other words, you advocate spending more money on reviews. how much? an amount that costs more than the bad PR. you say this explicitly.
how much is "more than the bad PR"? quite a lot. you and i both agree the PR is a big deal.
It's the same kind of deal we saw with the Google Checkout story a couple months ago. Honest people get caught up in overzealous protection methods and companies just take it as a loss.
Search for "iPhone app rejected" and you will see this isn't an isolated incident. A lot of the rejected apps probably broke the rules, but plenty have not, and Apple doesn't seem to care unless they have a big soapbox to shout from.
Textbook "evil", no. But, it wouldn't be hard to stop these things. Apple takes a calculated approach because they know the few wrongfully rejected apps won't cost them as much money as implementing a beefier review process across their whole app store. When this policy gets bad press by influential bloggers, like with this app, they can spend a minimal amount of resources to reevaluate the app. It's cold and calculated.