On Jan 10, 2011, at 12:55 PM, Lawrence Sica <[email protected]> wrote:
On Jan 10, 2011, at 12:33 PM, Andy Lee wrote:
> <http://www.manton.org/2011/01/app_store_30_cut.html>
>> But here's where everything breaks down: for $3000 I expect someone at Apple to tell me what the $%!# is going on.
>
>
> Maybe I should know, but I'm blanking on this -- who's the VP of Developer Relations at Apple? Is there such a person any more? Google turns up articles from 10 years ago about people vacating that position.
Well his gripes are not 100% correct. Apple has been pushing for submissions since November but they did not give any real notice. I wish they would have just said "NDA" and go from there with dates. That part was kind of annoying.
Early app docs were a little unclear but the latest round of docs, not to mention the forums talk about bundle ids pretty clearly. I wonder when he last checked the documentation.
He also seems to be confusing the ios store with the mac app store. I've dealt with Apple personally and at where I work and it's not a huge void of nothing. Most stuff it's one or two week turn around now. When they rejected the work app they were clear why and we fixed it. No big deal.
Also his breakdown of costs is not even close to accurate. That $590 in paypal fees doesn't cover distribution costs, hosting the app for download, advertising budgets or managing update notifications. I mean really, how much would it costs to get a lock in on millions of eye balls for advertisements, that is guaranteed with these stores.
Apple doesn't have a specific dev relations person but you can easily talk to the internal devs about stuff, I have before it's not hard to track them down.
Manton said it seemed like nobody's in charge, so not knowing one way or the other I wondered who *is* in charge.
I did some more digging: VP of Developer Relations is Ron Okamoto, formerly of Adobe.
I redid the Google search I'd tried before and found:
<http://www.google.com/search?q=Apple+VP+Developer+Relations>
* Feb 21, 2010 ... Apple Computer vice president of developer relations Heidi Roizen.
* Mar 30, 2001 ... Clent Richardson, Apple Computer's VP of developer relations...
* April 30, 2001-Apple today announced that Ron Okamoto has joined Apple as vice president of Developer Relations
I tried to find out whether Ron Okamoto ever left, and found that he had not, because he made an announcement just a few weeks ago:
<http://www.tuaw.com/2010/12/20/apple-shutting-down-mac-os-x-download-site/>
So Okamoto's been in charge for almost ten years. I find it odd that there's so little online about him. Your CNNs and your NYTimeses might not consider him a hot interview, but surely among us developers I'd have thought his name would come up Why aren't the pissed-off developers pissed off at him, rather than a faceless corporation?
The store does need to beef up aspects of their customer service but I think he is more complaining since his app doesn't sell so he is nickel and diming regarding costs.
Could be. If I take him at his word, though, he's gone unreasonably long stretches without an answer, and that is one thing I would hate.
The fact you have some high profile devs going Mac Store only I think is more telling.
Yup, that's significant.
--Andy
_______________________________________________ MacOSX-talk mailing list [email protected] http://www.omnigroup.com/mailman/listinfo/macosx-talk
