Why We Finally Decided To Develop for WP and not iPhone

[Bee Mon]

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.

Regardless of the tone, Apple now has the ability to just reject any app they wish even though the app has not broken any other regulation. For example, they could just easily reject Skype on their device by just saying it is not "quality" enough. Like I said, if they admit it was a mistake and change it, we'll reconsider. But personally to us, this is an underhanded method they are employing to control the apps on their platform. Frankly it is up to them if they want to do this, but we view it as an evil practice that we don't want to be part of.

 

[katakulli]

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.

Every developer knows honestly, regardless of some guidlines, if its submitted app is quality or not. You, as a developer, can estimate if an app will get rejected or not. You are sounding like all of your great apps got rejected by apple without a good reason. If you are good, then Apple will know for sure.

My other theory about this thread is "making advertisment about the upcoming WP-app from the brave developer who rejected Apples Appstore"

 

[Bee Mon]

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.

So let's say you are a beginner developer and you started a project but not completed yet. It may take you another 3 months to create a product that is workable but not polished or 6-9 months to create a polished product but you cannot survive for more than 4 months because you're not earning anything within this period. You have confidence that some users may like your product and may still purchase it even though its not polished enough. It's a risk that you have to take but its under your control. Now Apple has taken that away from you. Even if you are going to starve 9 months to create what you think is a good enough product, Apple can still reject it at their whim and basically there's nothing you can do about it.

 

[DennisvdG]

You guys are awesome, can't wait to try out you're games!

 

[Bee Mon]

Every developer knows honestly, regardless of some guidlines, if its submitted app is quality or not. You, as a developer, can estimate if an app will get rejected or not. You are sounding like all of your great apps got rejected by apple without a good reason. If you are good, then Apple will know for sure.

My other theory about this thread is "making advertisment about the upcoming WP-app from the brave developer who rejected Apples Appstore"

What a developer thinks is good enough and what Apple believes is good enough cannot be ascertained if there are no clear guidelines. What if I invited you to party but you must dress accordingly or we will kick you out but we don't provide any details on how we expect you to dress. I will determine it only when you show up at the party. Would you dare come to the party? Would you like to suffer the rejection and humiliation of being kicked out because I don't like the way you dress even though I did not specifically told you how to dress?

 

[Bee Mon]

My other theory about this thread is "making advertisment about the upcoming WP-app from the brave developer who rejected Apples Appstore"

And why would we do that? You know we'll practically earn more by going to the App Store rather than in WP market right?
Maybe you can read the review of the game that we're porting over and tell me why we shouldn't be going to the AppStore instead.
Publicity? Majority of Windows Phone users don't even visit this site or even less will actually read the forums.
If you think there's some of trickery being used here, I don't want to waste time to try to convince you otherwise.
Crappy apps are crappy apps, no matter how you polish it. Nobody will buy or play them
regardless of whatever free publicity you think we're getting. sheesh.

 

[katakulli]

So let's say you are a beginner developer and you started a project but not completed yet. It may take you another 3 months to create a product that is workable but not polished or 6-9 months to create a polished product but you cannot survive for more than 4 months because you're not earning anything within this period. You have confidence that some users may like your product and may still purchase it even though its not polished enough. It's a risk that you have to take but its under your control. Now Apple has taken that away from you. Even if you are going to starve 9 months to create what you think is a good enough product, Apple can still reject it at their whim and basically there's nothing you can do about it.

And so what? Nobody is forcing you to release an unfinished app. You can testdrive all of your apps in many ways, the thing Apple wants from you is not to release (and make garbage) before you think it is unique and does something better than app x. That is the way this should work anyway. The appstore should consist of polished apps only, not of half-baked-apps. Every app developer, who wants to earn money from this, should know the difference between garbage app and not-garbage app. So, given your example with dressing up for a party, nobody would come naked and be upset not being letting in. You are a grown-up and should know how to dress like the average, you dont need exact dress codes. You are a developer and should know that your app is good enough for the appstore, you dont need exact guidlines.

 

[Bee Mon]

And so what? Nobody is forcing you to release an unfinished app. You can testdrive all of your apps in many ways, the thing Apple wants from you is not to release (and make garbage) before you think it is unique and does something better than app x. That is the way this should work anyway. The appstore should consist of polished apps only, not of half-baked-apps. Every app developer, who wants to earn money from this, should know the difference between garbage app and not-garbage app. So, given your example with dressing up for a party, nobody would come naked and be upset not being letting in. You are a grown-up and should know how to dress like the average, you dont need exact dress codes. You are a developer and should know that your app is good enough for the appstore, you dont need exact guidlines.

How do you know you can't come naked to my party? Maybe I'll let you in so we can all laugh at you all night. You know it is totally up to me to decide right? Just like Apple can decide to do whatever they want. At least as a person, you can ask me first "Can I came naked? Can I come dressed averagely as an adult?". You can't ask Apple that so all you can do is depend on the guidelines where there is NONE given. If you cannot see any problem with that, I have no idea what else to say to you. Oh look, seems that people are starting to notice there's something wrong with the new policy changes and here we're beginning to think we're delusional.

 

[Shobin Drogan]

Apple being the regular turds they always are, why am i not surprised.

 

[anon5999636]

How do you know you can't come naked to my party? Maybe I'll let you in so we can all laugh at you all night. You know it is totally up to me to decide right? Just like Apple can decide to do whatever they want. At least as a person, you can ask me first "Can I came naked? Can I come dressed averagely as an adult?". You can't ask Apple that so all you can do is depend on the guidelines where there is NONE given. If you cannot see any problem with that, I have no idea what else to say to you. Oh look, seems that people are starting to notice there's something wrong with the new policy changes and here we're beginning to think we're delusional.

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Glad to see Apple do such a thing. They only do it because they have a store valued and can (to some extent) to choose who they want to be part of the store. I also see as arrogance, but they have the right to do that and we do not accept. BUT they make a little mistake and also risk losing many devs like you.

 

[Bee Mon]

I want to make it clear I do agree that garbage apps should removed from app stores but be specifically clear about it. I'm sure Apple can describe what they considered as garbage app if they wanted to. Like I have posted previously here, if they delete apps that have consistently bad reviews and complaints, I fully accept that. Either have clear definition on what you will accept or reject or let the users themselves decide. This policy change is totally draconian in nature. I would seriously worry for anyone of you that would enter into a lease, sale or deal with agreements like this. You'll be on the losing end.

 

[Bee Mon]

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

We'll always design our games with multiplayer in mind because we like to play them as well. If it's not in the initial version, we'll add that in as an update later.

 

[ShinraCorp]

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.

As a developer myself (newbie level but still counts) I can say you made the right decision not to program for Android. Why? Well consider this... you'll be spending more time debugging your Android app then actually developing. All because of fragmentation.

To anyone who don't know what that means it's simple. Fragmentation (no not disk defragmentation) is when they're many pieces you try to fit together but in an extremely difficult way. The pieces here are android phones, they're huge varieties (1 GB, 2 GB, 512 MB, 4",5",6",7", Dual-Core, Quad-Core, Android 4.3, 3.2 , etc...) They're TOO MANY variables to consider when programming for android. Of course you could always program for one type of phone only (say Samsung Galaxy SX series) but then that leaves the rest out which isn't fun.

Windows Phone you only have to worry about if it'll work on a Dual Core, 512 MB device or not. Thank God Microsoft listen to developers when they made the Universal App settings in Visual Studio...

 

[Bee Mon]

As a developer myself (newbie level but still counts) I can say you made the right decision not to program for Android. Why? Well consider this... you'll be spending more time debugging your Android app then actually developing. All because of fragmentation.

To anyone who don't know what that means it's simple. Fragmentation (no not disk defragmentation) is when they're many pieces you try to fit together but in an extremely difficult way. The pieces here are android phones, they're huge varieties (1 GB, 2 GB, 512 MB, 4",5",6",7", Dual-Core, Quad-Core, Android 4.3, 3.2 , etc...) They're TOO MANY variables to consider when programming for android. Of course you could always program for one type of phone only (say Samsung Galaxy SX series) but then that leaves the rest out which isn't fun.

Windows Phone you only have to worry about if it'll work on a Dual Core, 512 MB device or not. Thank God Microsoft listen to developers when they made the Universal App settings in Visual Studio...

We actually had such a discussion about Android and we decided that if we're going that path, we will develop to the highest denominator first and then scale down to lower-end devices, if we can't get it working at a certain level, we'll just cut it off at that point. However on Windows Phone, funnily its actually the opposite around, we find it more advantages to develop to the lowest denominator first and then scale up to higher-end devices.

 

[jjmurphy]

Hey Bee Mon, don't feel the need to defend yourself. You're honestly getting trolled by a user or two here. Just get your apps out and make them the best you can.

 

[DennisvdG]

This^

 

[Rodrigo Pereira Teixeira]

I am quite aware that it takes "a" (lol) hard work to develop apps and I have indeed put in "many" hard works coding (not apps, mainly network engineering).

Really? Mess around with the guy because his english is not that good?

Gosh.

 

[Ashish Gupta888]

I am quite aware that it takes "a" (lol) hard work to develop apps and I have indeed put in "many" hard works coding (not apps, mainly network engineering).

Regardless. Choosing the platform which has a pathetic 2.5% market share (and declining) whose most popular phone is the dirt-cheap 520 is not a good idea for any developer, especially those that are starting out. Even more foolish if you have a good product and all you need is to port it... you do have a quality app, you do have the skills needed to develop and maintain it. And now, due to some childish tantrum at Apple's terms (which are unlikely to affect you even), you choose WP. And why not Android? Because you 'hate' (it is your opinion and I respect your right to it, however you must also respect my right to call your opinion stupid and shortsighted.

Another Troller Spotted :-D
Let developer decide what he needs to do and he knows what suits him the best out of those ecosystem.
P.S:
Setting up some routers and switches is easy but not developing an app, buddy. #no pun Intended

 

[theefman]

Nice story. Let us know when you go bankrupt. Childish decisions influenced by personal opinions do not make for good business. If you ever find yourself using the words 'love' or 'hate' in a business context, please quit as you are a fool and will never be successful.

I suppose google's reasons for not supporting WP and going out of their way to block Microsoft's youtube app are based on logic and sound reasoning, right? And actually developing for a plaform you care about could mean extra TLC being taken with the app, unlike apps like instatram and netflix who seem to have forgotten they have an app on WP.....

OP, nice move. Good luck and hope you have lots of success.

 

[berty6294]

Good for you Bee Mon! I'll be looking for you guys! As scary of a choice that is (if I were you I would not have done it your way) I definitely applaud you for doing what you feel is morally right