Apple relaxes dev tool restrictions, publishes submission guidelines
One of the longest running and, frankly, most salient criticisms of the App Store is the app approval process. Limitations on the tools developers can use have also drawn fire. With today’s new rules and guidelines, hopefully most or all of these issues will fade to black.
Apple has issued the Statement on App Store Review Guidelines, which should go a long way toward ameliorating the ambiguities of app submission and developer tool issues folks have with iOS.
The App Store has revolutionized the way mobile applications are developed and distributed. With over 250,000 apps and 6.5 billion downloads, the App Store has become the world’s largest mobile application platform and App Store developers have earned over one billion dollars from the sales of their apps.
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.
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.
The App Store is perhaps the most important milestone in the history of mobile software. Working together with our developers, we will continue to surprise and delight our users with innovative mobile apps.
That pretty much nails the banner issues most developers have with creating and publishing iOS apps. Vis-a-vis app submission and approval, the devil’s in the details and, of course, actual implementation and practice, yet this has to be seen as a major step forward.
Thereupon, I rather hope that the relaxation of the rules governing developer tools isn’t a step toward permitting Flash on the iPhone, iPod touch and iPad. That is, Flash is pretty much the only thing that crashes the various browsers I use on my Macs and is an issue that’s blessedly absent from my iPad and iPod touch…
What’s your take?
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