Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, iPod Family, iPhone
iPhone dev program acceptance rate: 16%
As Steve Jobs opened up the keynote on Monday, he threw out a few numbers which, frankly, went by me without really clicking until today. At 10:10, my live blog reads as such:
10:10. 25,000 applied to dev program. 4,000 admitted. 35% of the Fortune 500 has participated in the program. Working with Cisco for secure VPN. Push email, push contacts, push calendar, autodiscovery, global address lookup, remote wipe. iPhone 2.0 software is enterprise support, SDK, and new features
When you're liveblogging, these details tend to fly by -- without enough time to really process what you're typing. So it wasn't until this morning that it really hit me what this meant and it took a post by Rogue Amoeba's Paul Kafasis to make it sink in.
Read more about these numbers and my thoughts after the jump.
25000 applied; 4000 admitted. By any stretch of the calculator, thats only about a 16% acceptance rate. It's one that has left many independent OS X developers behind.
You might argue that the remaining 84% of applicants had access to the SDK and the simulator but that would miss the point. Many iPhone-specific features like core location and onboard sensors cannot be tested in the simulator. They're platform-based only. Without the $99 program, developers cannot deploy to the iPhone itself and test there. So their development possibilities are seriously hampered.
And testing is only part of the problem. AppStore access is contingent on dev program acceptance. Those 99 dollars give you the right to sell your product to millions of iPhone users. With such a low acceptance rate, many companies have been placed at a financial crossroads with respect to the iPhone. Should they continue to develop for a platform where they have no access? Or should they walk away and write it off?
What Paul's company ended up doing is what I know a lot of companies ended up doing. They had their developers apply as individuals as well as a company. Eventually someone got in and they used the individual license to get the corporate effort up and going.
You may argue that my post back in March mischaracterized those mass Apple mailings as rejection letters. But time has now shown that in fact they were.
Paul writes: "Ultimately, the problem here is with communications, or lack thereof, from Apple. When Apple first announced the SDK, thousands of developers rushed to apply for the development program, a flood for which Apple may not have been prepared. However, since then, Apple has bungled the processing these requests. Confusing emails and a lack of useful correspondence have left us waiting to hear the status of our application for a full three months and counting." Rogue Amoeba is a respected long-standing Mac development house with several best-in-class apps on offer.
(Full disclosure: I continue to write for O'Reilly as well as TUAW.)
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
Adam Slagle said 11:40AM on 6-13-2008
I still think it's much ado about nothing: the dev program and the SDK are still in beta. I don't blame Apple for trying to keep the beta program small.
Let's not get all upset until after the rollout.
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Ramesh said 11:48AM on 6-13-2008
I agree... just let this go. Apple is doing the right thing by starting small and making sure the program is a success. I'm pretty sure they will allow, and will welcome all developers very soon.
Bender Bending Rodriguez said 12:30PM on 6-13-2008
It's only small when you consider the number of applicants, which is 10% of the number of free SDK doewnloads, which may include each of the 6 different versions that were released prior to the keynote (though it may be the number of accounts that have DLed it at least once).
Either way, 4000 in just over 90 days since the SDK keynote and the WWDC keynote is over 43 applicants approved per day. Or one about every 7 minutes for an 8 hour work day.
I don't know about you but I don't want them to open up the flood gates when my bandwidth speed, capacity, and CPU performance is still very limited compared to my home computer.
len said 12:03PM on 6-13-2008
" ... I'm pretty sure they will allow, and will welcome all developers very soon ... "
How can they welcome ALL developers? Do you really want to go to the App Store and sort through 200 To-Do Apps? Obviously, they cannot let everybody in.
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Christiaan said 1:49PM on 6-13-2008
That doesn't make any sense at all. There's no way Apple is restricting access to developers based on what software they might develop and whether others might develop it too.
JD said 2:26PM on 6-13-2008
Yes, I do want 200 To-Do apps. I'm an adult, I know how to sort through junk. I want an open platform, that anyone can develop for. I look to Apple to provide a simple, elegant operating system and hardware; I don't want Apple as my nanny, or to build a walled garden to keep away all the imperfect developers out there. I exist quite happily on the Mac, where anyone can develop, and I don't want my mobile computing experience to be severely constricted by Apple. This is a huge undertaking by them, to vet every app and developer, and a huge hassle to both sides to reject 84% of applicants, all for a service I don't want. If you really want someone to vet all your apps for you, I'm sure you can find a third party -- like Download.com -- and only buy stuff they give >3 stars to. Don't force the rest of us into your walled garden.
len said 2:38PM on 6-13-2008
JD:
Ya, that makes a lot of sense. Lets let every half-baked lame app written by someone who's been coding for 2 weeks put their crap on iTunes. Brilliant!
Thats what I'm hoping for. Tons of junk apps that I can spend time trying out and deleting. All so you can feel that they have an open program. No thanks.
JD said 4:06PM on 6-13-2008
Who says you have to try them all out? Are you OCD? iTunes music has tons of crap music -- do you have to try all those out? Do you want Apple to vet every song, so you only have a subset of Apple-approved tunes?
If you want, I can set up a web-page for you: "len's subset". I'll put a list of apps that Apple or Macworld recommends. You can just load those apps onto your iPhone, and never have to worry about the rest, and then I'll be free to load whatever apps I want. Why are some people so convinced that, to save themselves from having to deal with potentially weak apps, the rest of us should be prevented from using or developing whatever apps we want?
Thom Brooks said 10:34PM on 6-13-2008
To reply to the comparison made by JD (#8):
Comparing crappy music and crappy apps? There's a world of difference. Bad music just hurts your ears; a bad app could lag your phone, run down the battery, prevent you from making (emergency) calls, etc. If enough badly written apps get out in the wild (especially free ones), people will get the wrong impression of the iPhone.
Worse, they might not just hurt the way your phone works, they could have a negative impact on the carrier's data or voice network if they're making too many requests - what if MyAwesomeApp becomes the next super-popular Twittr client, everyone gets and installs it, and it downloads a big chunk of data at exactly the same time every day?
If Apple is going to be responsible for vetting every single app that makes it into the store (huge amount of work) then they're not going to bite off more (applications) than they can chew (audit the code of.)
I don't know HOW Apple picked who they did, and it's a bummer if a deserving and qualified coder didn't get in (yet) but like people said - it's a beta; hopefully things will sort themselves out shortly and Apple will find the resources to open more slots for people to develop and offer their apps for sale.
kevin said 12:05PM on 6-13-2008
Before the WWDC08 Keynote, I had just assumed that most people got fully accepted into the developer program. I caught that bit about 4000 accepted during the live blogging and realized I was quite lucky as an individual to get in. Even though I have my certificate I have yet to sign a single app and download to my phone, mainly due to lack of time to devote to pet programming projects.
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DaveyJJ said 8:10PM on 6-13-2008
I'll take it, thanks! I have two of the three games I designed for my company Cocoa Touch Games fully ready to go and no certificate yet. I'd love to be able to try them out on my actual hardware and not rely solely on the simulator to test. And I would like Apple to give me my certification before the App Store opens so I can be there at launch. I have my $99 all ready, Steve, call me!
Zeromaru said 12:06PM on 6-13-2008
I'm actually quite surprised that they don't allow any third-party distribution of apps. A way for developers to post their app on a website and allow users to download and install it themselves. Though I guess Installer.app will remain strong due to this.
Though not like it affects me much. Though the iPhone does indeed come out up north July 11th, not living in Toronto or Vancouver means more like December for us. Though I'll coincidentally be in Toronto on the 11th, it's my first time in the city so finding a Rogers dealer may be easier said than done.
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Bob S. said 12:08PM on 6-13-2008
Considering the junkware that came from the "official devteams" and other coders who were mostly legends in their own minds, and the likelihood that there's going to be plenty of *useable* software from the real developers who were accepted into the program, I have a hard time caring that most of the iPhone hack community didn't make the cut.
And your Rogue Amoeba anecdote undercuts your point, such as it is; clearly while 25,000 applications were received, many of them were redundant.
Incidentally, Kafasis' retelling of his developer getting into the program doesn't match yours; you say it was an organized effort by the company to have its coders apply individually, while Kafasis just says it was one developer who gave it a shot independently. I'm going to assume he's accurate and you aren't. (Supporting that decision, he also notes correctly that Apple's March email wasn't a rejection letter, which gives him more credibility than, well, you.)
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Bob S. said 12:09PM on 6-13-2008
Geez. Maybe you should give your certificate to someone who'll use it. It's kind of crass to apply, get in, and blow it off.
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Bob S. said 12:11PM on 6-13-2008
Whoops. This was directed at Kevin above. And I did use the Reply link on his post; TUAW's back end decided to post it separately for some reason.
kevin said 12:22PM on 6-13-2008
Sorry, I paid for my certificate and plan on using it. Unfortunately my workload did not allow me much free time until recently, otherwise I'd have an app or two ready for the opening of the store on July 11th.
Personally I think it's a great idea that they have a barrier to entry because the app store wont end up full of me-too programs or barely functional software people put out to make a quick buck and disappear.
Bob S. said 12:48PM on 6-13-2008
Fair enough -- given the apparently high number of wannabes complaining they didn't get in, forgive me for assuming you were one of them. Good luck with your project.
Christiaan said 1:58PM on 6-13-2008
So let me get this right. You're having a go at Kevin for getting in (and not writing an app) and then you're saying you assumed he didn't get in?
Bob S. said 2:11PM on 6-13-2008
Christiaan, why are you in this otherwise concluded conversation?
IMHO said 12:10PM on 6-13-2008
It's still too early to get bent out of shape. On roll out, Apple must have a sufficiently large number of applications to quell critics and reduce the incentive to jailbreak, but the applications also must be limited enough and of high enough quality to prevent everyone from being overwhelmed (yes, there can be too many applications to choose from). So it makes sense that they're being very choosy. At the same time, I'm really suprised Erica got one of the dear john letters given what she's already brought to the table (unless she's been blacklisted for being part of the jailbreak community, which would be unfortunate, but not suprising).
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