A couple of days ago, I clicked on a blog post in my news aggregator from Marco Arment, lead developer of Tumblr and creator of Instapaper:

Trust, hostility, and the human side of Apple

The post was interesting to me because hopefully one day I hope to create an app for the App Store. However, one part really kind of irritated me:

The last session of WWDC ‘09 yesterday was about publishing on the App Store. The content of sessions is under NDA, so I can’t tell you what it was about. So I’ll tell you what wasn’t in it: the audience Q&A session that succeeded nearly every other WWDC session and usually provided invaluable access to Apple employees and useful additional knowledge to attendees. The session itself blew through its lightweight examples quickly, ending 45 minutes early. The majority of the audience was clearly there for the Q&A. As people lined up at the microphones around the room, the presenter abruptly showed a simple slide with only “WWDC” in plain lettering, thanked us for coming, and bolted off the stage. The Apple engineers, usually staying around the stage for one-on-one questions, were gone. The lights came up instantly, and it was the only session that didn’t end in music. The audience was stunned. It was a giant middle finger to iPhone developers. And that’s the closing impression that Apple gave us for WWDC. Clearly, they had absolutely no interest in fielding even a single question from the topic that we have the most questions about. This went far beyond reluctant tolerance. It’s hard to interpret it as anything else except blatant hostility. We could probably have a more open discussion with Kim Jong-il about North Korea’s nuclear policy.

First off, does he even realize that they probably weren't hostile and giving a "giant middle finger", but they were probably just ready to go home? In the first sentence he said it was the last session of WWDC. It was 2:45p on a Friday. I certainly didn't stick around for the last session block. In fact if I am not mistaken, none of the people in my company did. Maybe Apple scheduled it for the last session on Friday on purpose, but there were plenty of other opportunities earlier in the week to gripe.

I went to a session a day earlier called [REDACTED]. While I can't say for NDA reasons what was said in the session, I do know there was ample opportunity to gripe about the App Store process in that session's Q&A.

Besides, why does he have a need to gripe in such a public forum? For applause? For solidarity? Apple knows for crissakes. There are enough examples of people griping about it on the Internet. He himself said in the post that individual Apple employees knew of developer's frustration. One of the things I like about Apple is that some of the best new features have most likely come directly from gripes. GPS, MMS, Cut/Copy/Paste, and Tethering were all driven by customer demand (complaint). Apple isn't blind and deaf like Microsoft has a tendency to be.

WWDC is a developer's conference. The sessions are lead by developers, project managers and evangelists. What exactly could any of them have done to make these "hostile" session goers feel assuaged? You know all they would say is the typical Q&A response. "Thank you for the feedback, blah, blah, blah..." They do it in the Q&A at almost every session, usually multiple times.

One last minor quibble I have is the session he talked about wasn't the only session at WWDC this year that didn't have a Q&A. I went to a Cocoa Touch session and it didn't have Q&A there. Was Apple giving the "middle finger" in that session as well? I don't think so.

I for one am glad that Apple is trying to be more selective on who gets in the App Store. Yes, the rules are rather nebulous, unfair, and there have been some outliers when it comes to apps that have been denied... But frankly I don't want crap on my phone. And I don't think Apple really wants crappy or hacky software polluting the App Store, making people's iPhones unstable, and using up their own bandwidth. I am glad they are doing at least some due diligence. Imagine what kind of crap these reviewers are actually stopping from being published.

Don't get me wrong, besides that one section, the blogger's post was really interesting.

Furthermore, I also reserve the right to gripe on this blog about the App Store if I do ever have an app to publish, but I am not going out of my way to be "hostile" at a developer conference when I know it is a common complaint.