Apple, you have hurt me deeply, but you still don't want to say it, apple, I said

Apple, you have hurt me deeply, but you still don't want to say it, apple, I said

Editor's note: This article is from Medium. The Chinese version is compiled by Tiandi Zhuhai sub-rudder. As an application developer, the author is deeply hurt by Apple's application review mechanism. The original Article received 523 recommendations in just a few days at the press time of this article. It can be seen that this article shouted out the voice of the user. In China, this article has also published toutiao DoNews and tiger sniffing. It can be seen that China attaches great importance to this issue. We will enjoy it together ..

It is time for us to stand up and criticize Apple's App Store review process.

Apple claims that their application review process is to "ensure that they are reliable and run on schedule, without containing aggressive content. "In reality, this process is slow and authoritarian. Under normal circumstances, it is unlikely that the review process will not take you 7 days, many or even a few weeks. It takes longer to communicate with developers on the relevant audit rules. This result reveals to some extent that the rules set by Apple have the problems of Mo Ling and too broad. Some seemingly reasonable applications may eventually fail to pass the review. This inefficient and low-quality application review mechanism is hurting users and developers.

Two damages caused by inefficient review speed

Too slow review will in turn damage application reliability.
In the real world, it is impossible for developers to thoroughly test all the boundaries that may cause the collapse of our applications. Fortunately, once an application is put on the market, we can get feedback from end users. However, after the problem is solved based on user feedback, the solution version needs to sleep for at least one week in the queue waiting for review. The end user of the application spent a few weeks fighting against the problematic old version of the application. It was not easy for developers to solve the problem, the new version was detained by Apple for reliability check. Although Apple provides a patch review process specifically for new modifications, it also brings more disappointment to their users, because even if only one new function is added, the review time is usually more than one day.

Some may argue that if developers know that it takes so long to release their changes, they will be more careful about these changes. This may be true to some extent, but you must know that there is no software without any bugs in the world. You should be aware that the more you think about a change, the more likely it is to cause another problem.

The slow review process slows down the pace of innovation.
The mainstream websites we see today basically release some small updates every day or two, which is a reflection of efficiency and quick adjustment. On the other hand, Apple dragged all the companies and developers who developed software on its platform into the publishing style that was still in the 1990s S, this makes the fast iteration that is prevalent today impossible. If all websites are like Apple, only 1/7 or 1/14 are normal.
If the speed of iteration, is your favorite website likely to grow to the present?

Special audit rules make the situation worse and worse

Apple claims itself as a judge of taste and speech.
Think about it. If you want to buy a car, but the other party tells you that this car is not allowed to drive to a strip club, or you want to buy a TV now, however, this TV cannot play the Fox News Channel. So now you realize that we are fully following the rules imposed on you by a company with a market share of 40? I thought that when I took a fancy to its outstanding camera function and accidentally chose Apple's mobile phone platform, it means that you will be totally banned from the opinions imposed on you by the other party. We all have our parents, and our elders and girls all have the right to vote with their feet, however, Apple has used the "Application to reject portraits with public figures or excessively exposed skin" clause above all of the rights mentioned above, it is also called to protect users. In addition, Apple also has some other similar provisions, such as applications that do not have recruitment topics, information that is legal, images of firearms, or search engines, don't adopt Drones application (Editor's note: Apple's rejection of drone Drones application is no longer overnight thing, interested in everyone can look at this article: http://www.csdn.net/article/2013-01-05
/2813441-apple-censors-drone-strike ). Steve Jobs once argued that he was offering us real freedom, away from pornography. Apple claims:

"If you want to judge a religion, write a book. If you want to write a book or a song, or create a medical application. It can be complicated, but we decided not to allow some types of content to appear in the Apple store ...... We will reject any applications that contain out-of-bounds content or actions. "

But you need to know that an application is a very powerful form of communication between contemporary humans. as developers of these applications, we should have enough freedom to express our views.

Apple's review rules place apple on its own.
The best example here is the restriction on the internal purchase function of the application. If I want to think about Apple, I am overwhelmed by money, and the appearance of this function is not allowed because the internal purchase function cannot allocate 30% of its profits, as a result, users cannot purchase books on the Kindle application or videos on the Youtube application, and cannot purchase cartoons on the cartoon application, although these functions are completely correct on Android. In the early days of the Apple App Store, the reason why Apple refused to include an app was that those apps had a competitive relationship with Apple's built-in apps. Apple's attitude is actually well known. For example, it refers to the high-sounding "Apple sends money to developers" to take a part in the applications sold by developers. in fact, it should be "developers earn income through their own labor, and Apple cut it apart".

Apple's audit rules are too subjective and the execution is not strong.
Since the first version of a software, many problems are inevitable. Therefore, we need to solve the problems and release them quickly and iteratively. However, the reviewer may reject your application because he cannot understand it with his professional vision, or suddenly notifies you that you need to add some additional statements, or, because you have not followed Apple's TouchID API call method, you have to click it. These rules are so vague: apps in the store must be bug-free, without hidden functions, and must have lasting value-this general talk is equivalent to covering everything, let alone how Apple determines. Apple's appeal process is also slow and uncertain, so developers can only wait and pray. As you can see, the Apple Store is still filled with a large number of apps with bugs and security. If Apple does require bug-free auditing, isn't it your own mouth? Where is your review standard? Apple answered such an empty answer in their review terms. "When you touch it, you will know where our standards are."

The reason why Apple was able to exist and develop, because its founder has grown up in a world where "developers anywhere can write applications for users anywhere, developers and users do not need a matchmaker to build a bridge. Do you still remember how Apple turned itself into a free voice in the famous Apple commercial advertisement in 1984. But now we can see that Apple is on the opposite side of freedom and on the side of the controller, vigorously implement centralization to limit how users can use their devices under its rules. Anyone who has ever participated in the programming marathon should have encountered this situation. After the maraton ends, your application can be provided to users for download and use on the Android platform on the same day, sorry, you only need to wait for the last week on Apple's iOS platform. If you want to play a programming marathon, do not consider playing it on the Apple platform. Therefore, behind Apple's smooth animation and shiny light and thin appearance, I can see that we are on a dark road.

Angry

Recently, the media has consumed a lot of ink for some other controls and anti-controls, such as Amazon. the battle for Hachette, the battle for TimeWarner vs CBS, Verizon. net neutrality, Google vs. Yelp. Now it may be time to pay some pen and ink on the Apple App Store, and this door is also a door that you can only get out of the door (Editor's note: what the author wants to express is: once you become an Apple user, there are too many rules and regulations imposing on you, so that you will have a high degree of dependence on the platform. When we rely too much on one thing, it is often difficult for us to escape from it .), The only reason developers close the door to convenience is because of their authority and complacency, which is worse than rejecting applications because of the benefits.

Many of us are worried that the criticism of Apple will attract retaliation from the other party. It is incredible that Apple once wrote such a threat: "If your application is rejected, you can submit a complaint to our review board. Frankly speaking, it's useless for you to go to the media and attack us. "If Apple imposes penalties on developers for their public comments, who can we appeal? Some others are captured by the appearance of apple, so that they can turn a blind eye to Apple's unreasonable offense.

Improvement Suggestions

Is it really that difficult for Apple to use its huge resources to automate review or hire more people to speed up the review process? (You can see that Google has achieved close real-time application review speed, and this world has not come to an end)

The better way is to relax the application content review restrictions. Why don't users decide whether the application is disgusting? Is this application useful? Is there too many bugs in this application? Instead of asking apple to be our nanny. Another point is that Apple puts its own applications on the white list in a conspicuous position so that users can find them as quickly as possible. Applications written by our developers must be searched by users or connected to them.

We will further improve TestFlight so that you can release the test application more conveniently without affecting the normal review process, in this way, the user does not need to wait for a long review process to get the test application for experience. Similar practices have been provided to the user without any doubt in the early days of Android.

In addition, I cannot provide other more specific solutions. However, the problem is in front of us. We look forward to Apple and everyone working together to solve the problem. Sometimes I even want all mainstream application developers to join up and dismount the applications on the Apple Store for one day to put pressure on apple, tell apple that the slow review process can not be ignored. If I wrote this article when I was in the company, it would be like I wrote a letter of resignation to the company, but now I have left the company, so my comments should not bring any harm to the previous companies. As a developer of an Apple application, I think it is very necessary for me to talk about the harm that Apple's review system has brought to all our developers, so this article was born.

Postscript

After I pushed this article to Twitter, I soon received a lot of feedback that seemed to be worth discussing. Here I will list some and reply one by one.

1. "The Apple Store is still very useful. You can see that the rest of the store is full of crash and malicious software."
-Apple's review process is certainly not useless in protecting users and developers, but at least based on my years of application development and use experience, the idea that android is flooded with a large number of applications that are prone to crash and malicious behavior is exaggerated.
-It is difficult to provide trusted research to prove which platform has more stable applications.
-The current slow review process is far more than what is needed to keep the store clean and charming. In contrast, Android and other platform measures, such as introducing audit automation and providing white lists to outstanding developers are good improvement measures.
-You Apple can't make threatening comments to developers because developers criticize you publicly.

Freedom sometimes brings more chaos than control, but don't forget that control is only a process, and our ultimate goal is to move towards freedom.

2. "The user wants to choose Apple products, and no one forces them with a gun ."
If users know that apps in the Apple Store won't even joke about political figures, how many people are willing to buy the iPhone according to the free thinking of the United States? How many people do you think they will still choose to buy the iPhone after they know that it is similar to other smart phones?

When you select the iPhone, you will not realize how much trouble it will bring to developers when you choose to use the app on the Apple store, in fact, this will eventually impact the quality of the applications used by users.

3. "It sounds like you don't actually know what it is"
It is better than words. This article is the result of my thinking in the process of developing many popular applications over the years. You can also ask developers from other large companies, let's see if they share the same view. If you have any questions, you can go to my Twitter to view the many comments. Of course, if you like, you can also comment on them.

After the release of this article, I received an article posted by a web friend, "Apple's threat comments to developers who have publicly criticized it" (Editor's note: I plan to provide the Chinese version of this article, so you can look forward to it on this Site or your public account). This article earned the highest "Heartbreaking" rating on Hacker News, "I am a 17-year-old apple app developer. Apple's App store has a low level of transparency, making it easy to hide.

Just like a dark black hole, after I threw my application changes to the black hole, it was often as if I had no echo or no control. Apple decides when I get the reward and when my application will be rooted overnight. As a developer, I have no idea about this ."

4. "You should have sneaked into Apple's App Store. Without it, can your app cover so many people? "
We can't cover all the ugliness of the Apple store because of its outstanding performance in one aspect? Besides, do you not compare Android stores and more users on the Internet? In this case, there are not so many rules and regulations on your apple. Why don't you say that?

In the end, it may be worth thinking carefully about what is reasonable and necessary.

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