Mike Zornek:
And that’s how an iAd supported version of Dex died. No warning, no notice and inevitably no respect to the developers who have centered their app’s revenue model around the iAd platform.
Apple should target their ads better. I would have loved to have seen some ads that were better suited to kids in Dex. It’s a shame they don’t have the inventory to do so. However the manner in which they’ve made this policy change just stinks.
Furthermore there is no documentation of this change. Nothing is on the iAd developer page to alert people that the current fill rate for apps and games targeted at kids is zero.
What determines whether an application is “targeted at young children”? I suppose that with Pokémon it’s fairly clear, but where is the line for apps that are intended for all ages? Do you have to mark it as having objectionable material in order for it to not be a kid’s app? Or does the iAds staff just decide on their own?
Advertising Children iAd iOS
Chris Adamson:
Apple still hasn’t opened up the FaceTime standard. Make no doubt about it, Apple very clearly said they were going to do this. Steve Jobs himself said so at WWDC 2010…
It seems like this is still in Apple’s interest, so my guess is that they just haven’t gotten around to it yet.
BeamItDown Software (via App Rejections):
What sounds like a reasonable demand when packaged by Apple’s extraordinary public relations department is essentially an eviction notice to all ebook sellers on iOS. After over three years of developing products for iOS during which we had over six million downloads of our BeamItDown iFlowReader products, Apple is giving us the boot by making it financially impossible for us to survive. They want all of the eBook business on iOS and since they have the unilateral power to get it, we are out of business and the iFlow Reader is dead.
As described previously, Apple changed the rules so that apps that display content must use in-app purchase and give Apple 30%. And because of the agency model (which Apple encouraged the publishers to adopt) it’s not even possible to raise prices to avoid losing money on each e-book sold. June 30th is fast approaching, so we’ll soon see whether Amazon gets special treatment, they decide to withdraw the Kindle app from iOS, or Apple changes the rules again.
App Store E-books iOS iOS App Sunset
