Nate Weiner

There are two articles on major publications covering Apple's release of new guidelines this morning that quote me/Read It Later (one on the BBC and one on AP).

As both articles mention Read It Later's recent rejection and my response to it, it does imply that I have a negative view towards the app store.  (No fault to the writers of these articles, they only have so much space).

I wanted to make it clear that despite Read It Later and the App Review Team's up and down past, I still hold both them and the iOS platform in the highest regard.

There is simply no other platform I enjoy developing on more than iOS.  Hands down, not even a close second.  I owe the app store the very fact that Read It Later supports my livelihood.  I'm not sure of any other distribution channel that makes it so easy for me to push a product out to a worldwide audience.

It seems that I'm not the only one that feels this way as there are over 250,000 applications in the App Store today.  And despite a few hiccups here and there, if you consider how large a number that is to process, the review team have done a damn fine job.

The release of these guidelines, and all of the other improvements the app store have brought to developers this year shows that Apple is absolutely doing the best they can to listen to us and help us succeed.

The only continual qualm I have is simply the difficulty in reaching anyone at app review.  The guidelines mention that it's possible to appeal to an app review board but make no mention of how to do that.  I've also found a lot of emails to appreview@apple.com tend to go answered or seem canned in response.  I realize the problem has got to be simply handling the sheer volume of emails and I'm confident they are working on a way to help improve developer communication.  Today was a big step in that direction.