Apple Force-Choke Relaxed: Here Comes the Third Party!

9 Sep 2010

Today, Apple announced two things. Both of which are important developments for the Apple Dev community. The first and possibly least prominent part of their announcement today is this:

"In addition, for the first time we are publishing the App Store Review Guidelines to help developers understand how we review submitted apps. We hope it will make us more transparent and help our developers create even more successful apps for the App Store."

This is great for developers. Before, Apple's App review process was, shall we say, behind closed doors. People would submit apps, not hear about them for weeks at a time, and then finally get a note back from Apple saying their app had been rejected for some stupid little thing that the developer didn't know was being checked for. Now however, Apple is actually publishing their guidelines for their app review process. Hopefully this will help the developer community get less rejections from the store and have their apps availible on the App Store quicker.

The other development today is that Apple has made changes to the famous "Section 3.3.1" of their iOS developer agreement. They state:

"We are continually trying to make the App Store even better. We have listened to our developers and taken much of their feedback to heart. Based on their input, today we are making some important changes to our iOS Developer Program license in sections 3.3.1, 3.3.2 and 3.3.9 to relax some restrictions we put in place earlier this year.

In particular, we are relaxing all restrictions on the development tools used to create iOS apps, as long as the resulting apps do not download any code. This should give developers the flexibility they want, while preserving the security we need."

This is huge. This ends the long fought battle between Adobe and Apple over the Flash iPhone packager. Now, anyone who wants to can use Flash CS5 Professional to develop iPhone apps to sell to the public. In all, amazing!

But this makes me wonder. Why did apple all of the sudden decide that it was okay for other people beside XCode developers to publish for the app store? Is it Android taking over it's market because it has Flash Player? Possibly. I believe that this is Apple's way of rebounding against android and an attempt to block android from taking over more of its market. Also, could this be a sign of things to come for iOS? Flash Player, maybe? It's too early to tell.

I want to hear your opinion! Leave a comment letting me and everyone else know what you think about this development in the Apple world.

All for Now!

Posted by Arthur Lockman

Arthur Lockman is a .NET Core and web developer based in Massachusetts. He's also an amateur photographer specializing in Walt Disney World and small events photography.

Apple Force-Choke Relaxed: Here Comes the Third Party!

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