Why We Finally Decided To Develop for WP and not iPhone

[Bee Mon]

Before I talk about the reason of this thread, let me explain the context of our perspective. I hope you can bear with me for a while. I am part of a small company, consists only of a few people, who's current line of business is mostly in tech training rather than software development. It's not that we are not capable, but the last time we tried, we didn't do well financially and its not because our software was crap. You can see from the following link, we did get a very good review on one of our games for the Palm OS, but the review only came when we made it free. We basically only sold 10 units of the game in the first six months.

Codex (Palm OS) - Download

We finally decided to give it another try at the beginning of this year. We planned initially to port our old Palm games because we know they are good and we also have a number of new game and app ideas that we are very excited about. The only question was which platform? We are very familiar with Windows and Visual Studio and we all love Windows Phone. We also love Palm too in its day but the market couldn't sustain us financially and it is not our best interest to walk again on that same road praying this time will be different. Everyone knows Windows Phone market is still small and it wasn't growing much at the beginning of the year and I'm sure we know why that is so I do not wish to delve into that subject here. As "indie" developers we have no other financial backing except ourselves so its imperative that we choose a market that we think we can survive longer in until we receive some publicity and good reviews from well-known journalists. Once we have some sort of financial stability, we will port our games and apps to Windows Phone.

We collectively decided that the 1st platform for our games and apps would be iOS. Why not Android? Well we like to tell you its because of technical issues and the amount of software hacking and piracy on Android (which is true), but really let us be honest here; we bloody hate Google and its practices. Now please do not question our right to our own opinions in this thread. We are not using this thread to attempt to convert people to WP, if you love Android and Google, we wish you the best on your chosen platform.

However to program for iOS means that we had to use Objective-C, which to us is a horrendous programming language but thank goodness for Xamarin, we can leverage our C# programming skills and continue to use Visual Studio as our development environment. It would also make it easier to port our apps over to WP (or maybe even Android) at a later time. Our plans are finalized and in the past few months we have been saving funds to purchase Macs and iPhone/iPad for development and testing. Then we'll sign up for a Apple Store account and start work.

Everything was moving sweetly according to plans and we were ready to begin this month of September. We plan to go out this weekend to make all the purchases we need so we can start learning / developing beginning of next week. However something happened this morning. We received a tweet through twitter from some developers that we follow. It seems that Apple has updated their app submission or review policy. We only then realized that we actually had never read up on that yet! We were planning to do it once we've signed up to Apple Store and anyway how much different could it be between Apple Store and Windows / Windows Phone Store? Well we read it and we marked two areas that we have issues with.



It may only be us, but the tone is incredibly rude, arrogant and flippant. 'We have a lot of "serious developers" that do not want their "quality Apps" to be surrounded by "amateur hour." While we are sure that we can create a polish product, every programmer was once a newbie, who stumbled, struggled and scratched their head through many months, days and hours to learn how to program, not because they want to earn money, but its the excitement of being able to creating something of their own. Now you're being told if you're not good enough, don't bother. Go away. 'If you run to the press to trash us, it never helps'. If you think we're not right, we don't care. Cry all you like. Complain to the press, see if we care.

"So here's a big F to you Apple. Have a nice day."

So... we have scrapped our original plans. We're coming home to Windows. We're going to port our Codex game only to Windows Phone, and we'll be happy even if we sell only enough units to barely survive (and even maybe, a little tiny maybe in the future to Android later cause now we're not as angry at Google as another corporation). We will publish development journals and open-source all our libraries and tools that we develop for our games and apps to help others do the same because we don't mind our "quality apps" being surrounded by "amateur hour".
Thanks for listening and I hope you can enjoy our games soon.

 

[dKp1977]

Wow, that was a brilliant post! I'll definitely keep an eye on you guys and will purchase every single game you release for WP and/or Windows. Heck, even if I don't like the games, because they're not my genre or whatever. I'll do it to support you and your awesome attitude. I'm serious.

 

[nicfromwales]

Good luck with your project on Windows Phone. Hopefully you'll be successful enough to not need to develop an Android app.

 

[N_LaRUE]

Thanks for explaining your reasons. The way they worded it is very poor. I could be wrong but I think they're trying to keep garbage out of the app store and gain some control of it.

Saying that, I think if they're not careful they could stop games like Flappy Bird and Swing Copter from ever being submitted to their apps store. Let's face it, neither of these two games are what most would consider 'quality' but are two of the biggest games going.

Oh well, Apple wants to be superior as usual, let's hope this makes other developers follow you but of course they have to read this first.

Good luck with your apps/games.

 

[Bee Mon]

Wow, that was a brilliant post! I'll definitely keep an eye on you guys and will purchase every single game you release for WP and/or Windows. Heck, even if I don't like the games, because they're not my genre or whatever. I'll do it to support you and your awesome attitude. I'm serious.

No, please that is not our intention. Don't buy our stuff if you don't like it. We'll not be happy if people do that. It's better for people to tell us what they don't like so we can improve and make better games and apps. That is more important to us!

 

[dKp1977]

No, please that is not our intention. Don't buy our stuff if you don't like it. We'll not be happy if people do that. It's better for people to tell us what they don't like so we can improve and make better games and apps. That is more important to us!

Oh, I'll definitely give feedback. I always do that. If it's a certain genre I don't like, there's nothing a dev could change about it though. But at the current stage of WP's store and especially its apps and games variety I believe it's crucial and important to show support for those who focus on delivering quality content.

 

[Ashish Gupta888]

Welcome to WP. I hope MS won't bug you with those **** rules and let you do your business with the most personalized OS
Sent from my Lumia 525 using Tapatalk

 

[Bee Mon]

Welcome to WP. I hope MS won't bug you with those **** rules and let you do your business with the most personalized OS�� Sent from my Lumia 525 using Tapatalk

Thanks, I'm always been around here as a WP user!
Well Microsoft did get rid of Don Mattrick already, you know the one that told people "if you don't like DRM on XB1, go buy an xb360".
Well lets hope for more Phil Spencers and less Don Mattricks.

 

[katakulli]

And where exactly is the problem? The attidude? Srsly?

I wish MS could do the exact SAME thing as Apple is doing to prevent Fake-Apps and other trash you can find in the WP (+W8) Store. It is really ridiculous to experience that it feels like more than half of the apps in the WP Store (over 300.000 they say) are bad-coded, fake, trash, buggy, copied or one-page apps. I am sick of seeing a flashlight/rss-reader/fart app over and over again with a different name, but exact same function. I am sick of using 5 different apps from the same developer who could have just merge these into 1 app. Where is the unique app policy? Why is MS allowing such apps to exist anyway? 300.000 sound good to the ears and i suppose MS thinks the same way, too.

Quality over Quantity, right? Then you have to be strict (as Apple) to keep the quality level of the appstore.
Sorry, but i see nothing wrong with Apples app rejection policy and overall guidelines. I just wish MS could do the same.

Good luck for your app.

 

[Rakesh Rocky2]

Hey if you could develop a time killer game so that we could play with another KNOWN friend using Windows phone it would be great

 

[saltellezjr]

I enjoyed reading your rant. I don't care what you're selling I'm buying one. And (the screenshot) those terms seriously feel as if they were written by college sophomores (during finals week, and the party started downstairs, like, almost an hour ago).
PS
you sir, get a sticker (they're all the rage these days lol).

 

[saltellezjr]

And where exactly is the problem? The attidude? Srsly?

I wish MS could do the exact SAME thing as Apple is doing to prevent Fake-Apps and other trash you can find in the WP (+W8) Store. It is really ridiculous to experience that it feels like more than half of the apps in the WP Store (over 300.000 they say) are bad-coded, fake, trash, buggy, copied or one-page apps. I am sick of seeing a flashlight/rss-reader/fart app over and over again with a different name, but exact same function. I am sick of using 5 different apps from the same developer who could have just merge these into 1 app. Where is the unique app policy? Why is MS allowing such apps to exist anyway? 300.000 sound good to the ears and i suppose MS thinks the same way, too.

Quality over Quantity, right? Then you have to be strict (as Apple) to keep the quality level of the appstore.
Sorry, but i see nothing wrong with Apples app rejection policy and overall guidelines. I just wish MS could do the same.

Good luck for your app.

Srsly

 

[Bee Mon]

I enjoyed reading your rant. I don't care what you're selling I'm buying one. And (the screenshot) those terms seriously feel as if they were written by college sophomores (during finals week, and the party started downstairs, like, almost an hour ago).
PS
you sir, get a sticker (they're all the rage these days lol).

Well some beginner developers I follow on Twitter are now basically stuck. Their projects are halfway done and they don't know if they should continue because what is the point if after all their hard work they put in, the quality is not deemed good enough and they get rejected. All the time and money they spend is wasted. If Apple admit that it was a mistake and reverses their policy, I may reconsider but still we'll concentrate on WP first.

 

[AG VK]

Well some beginner developers I follow on Twitter are now basically stuck. Their projects are halfway done and they don't know if they should continue because what is the point if after all their hard work they put in, the quality is not deemed good enough and they get rejected. All the time and money they spend is wasted. If Apple admit that it was a mistake and reverses their policy, I may reconsider but still we'll concentrate on WP first.

I think you're reading too much into this. I think it just means that if you have an 'app' that doesn't really do anything, like a 'hello world' sort of first-app (and note that they call this out specifically "practice apps to impress your friends" should not be up on the app store and I agree with them. Furthermore, learning to develop apps and publishing apps are two entirely separate things - I do not need to push an app live to learn how to create apps and this applies for all 3 platforms. They also provide ways to push local xaps or apks or whatever to your developer phone to test.

So I can learn to develop and push an app to the store only when it's necessary and the app is ready to be actually used.

 

[Karthik Naik]

Before I talk about the reason of this thread, let me explain the context of our perspective. I hope you can bear with me for a while. I am part of a small company, consists only of a few people, who's current line of business is mostly in tech training rather than software development. It's not that we are not capable, but the last time we tried, we didn't do well financially and its not because our software was crap. You can see from the following link, we did get a very good review on one of our games for the Palm OS, but the review only came when we made it free. We basically only sold 10 units of the game in the first six months.

Codex (Palm OS) - Download

We finally decided to give it another try at the beginning of this year. We planned initially to port our old Palm games because we know they are good and we also have a number of new game and app ideas that we are very excited about. The only question was which platform? We are very familiar with Windows and Visual Studio and we all love Windows Phone. We also love Palm too in its day but the market couldn't sustain us financially and it is not our best interest to walk again on that same road praying this time will be different. Everyone knows Windows Phone market is still small and it wasn't growing much at the beginning of the year and I'm sure we know why that is so I do not wish to delve into that subject here. As "indie" developers we have no other financial backing except ourselves so its imperative that we choose a market that we think we can survive longer in until we receive some publicity and good reviews from well-known journalists. Once we have some sort of financial stability, we will port our games and apps to Windows Phone.

We collectively decided that the 1st platform for our games and apps would be iOS. Why not Android? Well we like to tell you its because of technical issues and the amount of software hacking and piracy on Android (which is true), but really let us be honest here; we bloody hate Google and its practices. Now please do not question our right to our own opinions in this thread. We are not using this thread to attempt to convert people to WP, if you love Android and Google, we wish you the best on your chosen platform.

However to program for iOS means that we had to use Objective-C, which to us is a horrendous programming language but thank goodness for Xamarin, we can leverage our C# programming skills and continue to use Visual Studio as our development environment. It would also make it easier to port our apps over to WP (or maybe even Android) at a later time. Our plans are finalized and in the past few months we have been saving funds to purchase Macs and iPhone/iPad for development and testing. Then we'll sign up for a Apple Store account and start work.

Everything was moving sweetly according to plans and we were ready to begin this month of September. We plan to go out this weekend to make all the purchases we need so we can start learning / developing beginning of next week. However something happened this morning. We received a tweet through twitter from some developers that we follow. It seems that Apple has updated their app submission or review policy. We only then realized that we actually had never read up on that yet! We were planning to do it once we've signed up to Apple Store and anyway how much different could it be between Apple Store and Windows / Windows Phone Store? Well we read it and we marked two areas that we have issues with.

View attachment 79502

It may only be us, but the tone is incredibly rude, arrogant and flippant. 'We have a lot of "serious developers" that do not want their "quality Apps" to be surrounded by "amateur hour." While we are sure that we can create a polish product, every programmer was once a newbie, who stumbled, struggled and scratched their head through many months, days and hours to learn how to program, not because they want to earn money, but its the excitement of being able to creating something of their own. Now you're being told if you're not good enough, don't bother. Go away. 'If you run to the press to trash us, it never helps'. If you think we're not right, we don't care. Cry all you like. Complain to the press, see if we care.

"So here's a big F to you Apple. Have a nice day."

So... we have scrapped our original plans. We're coming home to Windows. We're going to port our Codex game only to Windows Phone, and we'll be happy even if we sell only enough units to barely survive (and even maybe, a little tiny maybe in the future to Android later cause now we're not as angry at Google as another corporation). We will publish development journals and open-source all our libraries and tools that we develop for our games and apps to help others do the same because we don't mind our "quality apps" being surrounded by "amateur hour".
Thanks for listening and I hope you can enjoy our games soon.

you sirs are the type of devs who should get the best!! i couldnt agree more with you!!
Wish you success!!

 

[AG VK]

I think OP has completely misunderstood Apple's policies.

 

[Pete]

I think OP has completely misunderstood Apple's policies.

I think it's the tone and language used in the clauses that as affected Bee's decision here more than the actual content. In using those words, they're promoting an "us and them" mentality that sides with the cool cats of Apple and established developers.

While I entirely support the use of plain English, this kind of language is for me unacceptable in this kind of agreement document. If I was faced with this, I'd be disinclined to agree to the terms as well.

 

[Bee Mon]

And where exactly is the problem? The attidude? Srsly?

I wish MS could do the exact SAME thing as Apple is doing to prevent Fake-Apps and other trash you can find in the WP (+W8) Store. It is really ridiculous to experience that it feels like more than half of the apps in the WP Store (over 300.000 they say) are bad-coded, fake, trash, buggy, copied or one-page apps. I am sick of seeing a flashlight/rss-reader/fart app over and over again with a different name, but exact same function. I am sick of using 5 different apps from the same developer who could have just merge these into 1 app. Where is the unique app policy? Why is MS allowing such apps to exist anyway? 300.000 sound good to the ears and i suppose MS thinks the same way, too.

Quality over Quantity, right? Then you have to be strict (as Apple) to keep the quality level of the appstore.
Sorry, but i see nothing wrong with Apples app rejection policy and overall guidelines. I just wish MS could do the same.

Good luck for your app.

If MS did the same, they may as well close the entire Windows Phone Store. The issue here is Apple is deliberately creating a vague blanket where they can simply reject any app they want by proclaiming its just not good enough for our store. There's no exact meter being used here. They have no guidelines whatsoever on what is considered acceptable or not acceptable in terms of "quality". Now if on the other hand, if they allow apps to be on the store but remove them based on bad reviews and complaints, I can accept that.

 

[Bee Mon]

I think OP has completely misunderstood Apple's policies.

No we did not. We are well verse with contracts and agreements.
The policy is deliberately vague to give Apple the veto power to reject any app based on "quality".
There's no exact guideline showing exactly what Apple considers a quality or non-quality product,
it is totally up to their discretion. So if they don't want your app on their store, they can just say its not good enough
for their store. That's it. Bye-bye.

 

[Bee Mon]

So you're dilettantes then? Alrighty. I assumed success in app dev was actually important but if it's just a sideshow...

We're migrating resources from our training to development, which means that we'll be earning less in the following months.If the software side becomes fruitful enough for us to be financially stable, we'll switch over completely. If not, we may consider taking on double the load; that means doing both training during working hours and software development during off hours. A commitment like that is hardly a "sideshow".