Great news this evening as the FCC has decided to investigate the Apple, AT&T, Google Voice situation.
We at Riverturn are thrilled with this development.
Who knows what this will mean for VoiceCentral or Google Voice on the iPhone in general. And in one sense, who cares? Our only hope is that this will lead to more transparency for the entire App Store development process. If any good at all can come from this, it’s that developers are given a better, more fair process that they have a prayer of following. Not the current blackhole where you literally guess as to the right answer every step of the way. Or worse even, you “pass the test”, get approved, and then are removed 4 months later for a breach of policy that didn’t exist back then and still can’t be explained now.
At the very least, we hope that Apple learns a valuable lesson in communication and perhaps will respect ALL of their developers. Even the little guy.
Boy, oh boy, we should have just built a fart app… *Kidding*
Loved the very first question the FCC posed to Apple on this topic:
1. Why did Apple reject the Google Voice application for iPhone and remove related third-party applications from its App Store? In addition to Google Voice, which related third-party applications were removed or have been rejected? Please provide the specific name of each application and the contact information for the developer.
Dear FCC, we’re Riverturn and we would love to talk to you about it. Here’s our contact info
More information : Here. Here. And here.
Hopefully this will force the truth out of Apple and ATT! I’d really like to hear how they try to explain themselves.
mmmh, apple’s main strength is that there software only has to run on a very limited amount of platforms. this way there almost console like, which makes developing for it easier, consoles also have the tendency to block everything from everyone else…
i mean i can see the point that you want to be able to control whats run on your own devices, cause you have to deliver support for if anything goes wrong…
and more importantly i can see why they want to prevent others from cutting there 30% gain… (no others may install apps, nothing may prevent the income for at&t and thus again apple)
sure this vendorlocking works great, but its also completely destroying any market principles about competition and the stuff…
i think the fcc/judge should rule the phone as a computer platform, and demand for it to be opened up… least to some extent… cause if it just stays with a more transparent approval process, nothing changes… except that you get a message, “this app is rejected cause it could cost us money…” instead of the current crap
btw, i am a computer that knows math…
(silly questions…)
Why not put your app in Cydia?
Hey guys, I really feel for you in this whole situation. I am a developer myself (Not for iphones, but I know what it’s like developing a project through to completion and finally release and seeing it start to do well), and I can imagine how it must feel to have it yanked away like that. I really wish you the best on this.
This situation is like a Kafka novel.