Apple to developers – piss off and don’t bother us

Poor Apple, it’s just not getting any breaks lately with the fallout around them pulling, or denying, Google Voice related apps for the iPhone. Today’s installment shows us pretty well word for word just what Apple thinks of developers who have hooked their train up to the App Store.

One of the developers, Riverturn, behind the VoiceCentral app today posted a transcript of the conversation that they had with Richard, an Apple rep. Well polite society might call what transpired between Richard and Riverturn as being a conversation but the reality is the developer was basically told to piss off – at least that is my interpretation. How else can you take the following

Me [Riverturn]: “So what has changed that it is now against policy? It has been in the store for the last 4 months with no problem. There wasn’t a problem for the 1.5 months prior to that when you were ‘reviewing’ it. And this didn’t come up with any of the updates we submitted after it was already in the store.”

Richard: “I can’t say – only that yours is not complying with our policy.”

Me [Riverturn]: “Can you tell me what portions of the app were duplicate features?”

Richard: “I can’t go into granular detail.”

Me [Riverturn]: “Is there something we can change or alter in order to regain compliance and get back in the Store?”

Richard: “I can’t say.”

Me [Riverturn]: “Well if we can’t figure out the issue then how will we know whether to resubmit the app. And how will we know whether to invest in any other development efforts? Future apps could be impacted.”

Richard: “I can’t help you with that”

Throughout the whole <cough> conversation </cough> the Riverturn developer maintain a cool that is nothing short of impressive – I would have gotten a lot more cranky if that had been me. However as you can see the end result of the exchange left Riverturn exactly in the same place as when it started – screwed

Me [Riverturn]: “Surely someone there at Apple asked you to make this phone call. Can I speak with that person about this?”

Richard: “I am the only one you can speak with on this subject.”

Me [Riverturn]: “There has to be someone there I can actually have a back and forth with so that we can make some strategic decisions on whether this partnership makes any sense.”

Richard: “You can only talk to me”

Me [Riverturn]: “Nothing personal since I know you have just been tasked to make this call but we aren’t really talking here. There’s no back and forth and you aren’t allowed to answer any questions. Can I implore you to ask your managers if there is anyone who would be willing to speak with me and have a real conversation? I don’t care if it needs to be off the record or we need to sign another top-secret NDA but we really have nothing to go on at this point. We will need to make business decisions on whether it makes any sense to continue developing.”

Richard: “I will relay that to my managers.”

Ya. Okay. Sure. Like that will make one bit of difference. Sorry Apple but you treat the very people who are making your product as popular as it is and you deserve all the crap being piled on you and more. It’s too bad that everyone is getting such a woodie over the iPhone, because I’ll bet that if developers started pulling all of their apps and refused to having anything to do with the App Store until things change Apple would have to take notice.

Problem is that given the obvious arrogance of Apple at this point in time I’m not sure if even that would work.

image courtesy of Hair in My Soup