Podcaster and the iPhone, How NOT to deal.

This is NOT another pro/anti Apple post.  That ground has been well trod by the blogosphere. This is about business and settling disputes in mature manner.

To sum up the story, Apple rejected Podcaster as an app because:

“Since Podcaster assists in the distribution of podcasts, it duplicates the functionality of the Podcast section of iTunes.”

You can read more about the story here: iPhone: Big trouble in the App Store

I'm not going to talk about that.  I'm going to talk about what Podcaster's creators have decided to do about it.

The creator of Podcaster, Alexander Sokirynsky has turned to Apple's little-used "Ad Hoc" App Distribution system to make Podcaster available.  "Ad Hoc" is typically used by developers to test versions of their applications before release.  Sokirynsky is asking for a $9.99 donation.

Maybe it's my age or experience, but this seems like a really bad way of dealing with Apple.  

As angry as Sokirynsky must be (understandably) this simply isn't a good way of resolving the conflict.  I've been in these sort of bad situations before and the best technique is to quietly work at getting in contact with Apple and finding a solution.  

Look at it another way, what good can possibly come out of taking this tack with Apple?

1. They are not likely to approve the app now that this has been aired in public.

2. You're limited to 100 copies in a "Ad Hoc" distribution.

3. Your next app isn't going to be greeted with great enthusiasm by Apple.

Pandora was an app that was kicked off iTunes and then returned, with some changes.  So it seems to be possible to deal with Apple on this issue.  Or not. Either way where's the benefit to burning bridges.

I guess I'm getting old.

One cautionary note for all of us.  If you think your app has any possibility of breaking the developer rules, I'd do my darnedest to check with Apple first before building it.

Comments

[Gerald Buckley]

Up to this point I don't think any of us gave a thought to Apple rejecting apps with overlapping functions.

C'mon! podcasting isn't Apple's sweetspot any more than creating music is. But, they have Garageband.app and a few apps made it into the App Store which allow for some pretty kooky mixing.

Either there's more going on behind the scenes we don't know about OR Apple's heavy handedness forced an issue. Distributing via 'ad hoc' is actually quite clever (despite the 100 limit on the publisher).

Either way, Apple HAS let a genie out of the bottle. Now, it's up to them to either change the Ts & Cs of our iPhone Developer Agreements or crack this thing open a little wider and not be so strict as to stifle their developers (of which I'm one).

[bud]

Podcasts are the juice that keeps people opening iTunes on a weekly basis, where they might otherwise not visit iTMS at all. It is the loss leader bringing in foot traffic.

If your subscriptions are loaded from the cloud, you do not see the new content available, paid or unpaid.

I think it extremely naive or perhaps disingenuous that hordes of developers gave no thought whatsoever to an app possibly being rejected for overlapping functions, give what the developer kit and NDA itself allow and disallow.

[bikingbill]

Good points Bud. My main point is that even if the Podcaster folks felt they were in the right, this was NOT the way to deal.