I Don’t Typically Do This

Nicolas Seriot has a proof-of-concept Twitter client out. It won’t beat Tweetie in form or function but it does have some interesting functionality in the way of rule-based scoring of tweets as a way of filtering tweets that aren’t very interesting.

While I don’t see it prudent to make TwitHunter a full-featured client, I would like to see a way of introducing a middle layer between my twitter feeds and my client of choice where TwitHunter’s functionality would be implemented.

A GitHub repository for TwitHunter is also available.

carpeaqua:

nikf:

I’m lost for words at which is worse: the exceedingly poor taste of this application, or the fact that someone at Apple even thought it appropriate and approved it.

Here is the thing about Baby Shaker: I don’t care that the developer made it or submitted it to the AppStore. It’s for folks that have a dark sense of humor, and who am I to judge what you buy?

I wouldn’t even mind that Apple accepted it if it weren’t for how many good, legitimate applications have had rejections or refusals for a variety of different reasons.

If anything Baby Shaker sheds a light on what utter shit the AppStore acceptance and testing process truly is. It is a process that does not scale whatsoever given the popularity of development for the iPhone. The fact that it takes over a week for an new application, or a maintenance release to get to customer’s hands is completely unacceptable. If they cannot offer a 24 hour turnaround time after 8 months and 1 billion downloads, something has to change.

Loren Brichter released Tweetie-mac on Monday morning. Someone found an important issue that needed resolution in it. By Monday afternoon, everyone had the 1.0.1 in their hands. If this was on AppStore, I’d still be waiting for that fix because Apple has this giant body of water between us and our users.

The bigger question I have about the whole thing is: Was this app approved on it’s first pass or was it resubmitted until it was approved? I don’t know if we’ll ever know the answer and I don’t even want to think about which of the two is scarier.

Link

maniacalrage:

This kind of thing continually reinforces something I’ve thought about a lot since the App store was released, which sounds horrible to say but it might be true: Apple is creating an ecosystem of the kind of customers I don’t want. With the ridiculous approval process leaving bugfixes to take over a week to show up, with prices being driven down to nothing by farting apps… it just feels hostile to me. While I have plenty of great customers who have been raving about the app, all it takes is one little issue and it all comes crashing down.

I’m far more likely to get 15 one-star reviews when something goes wrong than I am to get 15 five-star reviews when everything goes right. Perhaps it’s just frustration speaking here, but when Apple ties my hands behind my back and lets users punch me publicly in the face without allowing me to at least respond back, it’s hard to get excited about building an app.

The App Store makes the barrier to entry for awful iPhone apps ridiculously low and the barrier to entry for good iPhone apps impossibly high.