.Dust

So it seems that Apple is going to reject all those appli­ca­tions that are built using an appli­ca­tion generator.

I have writ­ten on the sub­ject in the past and I found it a fan­tas­tic idea, and I still think that is the case.

Jason Kin­caid of Techcrunch (via iPhone​Hacks​.com) says that:

Apple doesn’t want peo­ple using native appli­ca­tions for things that a basic web app could accomplish

One sim­ple ques­tion: why?

Is there any­thing seri­ous in such a state­ment, apart from try­ing to con­trol every sin­gle bit that goes through Apple’s AppStore?

I mean, I have spent ages on the launch of the iPhone in Italy and I have seen doze of pre­sen­ta­tions from Apple stat­ing con­cepts like:

• Design your app for the 30 sec­onds usage scenario.
• Be con­sis­tent.
• User if the cen­ter of your design.
• Avoid adding every lit­tle feature.

So, usabil­ity and effec­tive­ness are the cen­ter of the iPhone Appli­ca­tion. I could not agree to this more.

Then you say that you may reject all those appli­ca­tions built with appli­ca­tion gen­er­a­tors because they can be done as a web applications.

In terms of usabil­ity is there any­thing faster than unlock­ing your phone, tap on your pre­ferred appli­ca­tion icon and read the news from your favorite blog? Yes, it’s true that the user may add a link to the home screen hav­ing more or less the same expe­ri­ence but how many cus­tomers out there know how to do it?

It also seems that they may accept these kind appli­ca­tions if they will add more func­tion­al­ity such as”

• In app pur­chase (of what?).
• Instant noti­fi­ca­tions.
• Offline access.
• Land­scape view­ing mode.

I agree that these kind of func­tion­al­i­ties will add value to the appli­ca­tion itself, but if the goal is to reduce the clut­ter in the App­Store this is not going to change anything.

There are already more than 150k appli­ca­tions in the App­Store and yes, it’s a night­mare for both devel­op­ers and end users.

I think that ban­ning these appli­ca­tions is not the right move to remove clut­ter in the AppStore.

I have gone through all of the doc­u­men­ta­tion you should agree with when becom­ing an iPhone devel­oper and I do not see any rea­son why these kind of appli­ca­tions should be rejected. It is not dupli­cated functionality.

They are just sim­ple appli­ca­tions and maybe they should be posi­tioned at a free price point but I do not really under­stand why they may be rejected.

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4. Turn Your Blog And Twit­ter Into An iPhone Application
5. Apple iPhone And The Yet To Be Announced Google Phone