Joe Hewitt hits out as Facebook 3.0 iPhone app remains in submissions queue.
Another voice has joined the chorus of criticism over Apple's iPhone app approvals policy: Facebook's Joe Hewitt.
He's taken to his personal blog to vent his frustration at the submissions process, sparked by the fact that version 3.0 of Facebook's iPhone app – which he worked on – hasn't yet been approved.
“I have only one major complaint with the App Store, and I can state it quite simply: the review process needs to be eliminated completely,” he writes,
“Does that sound scary to you, imagining a world in which any developer can just publish an app to your little touch screen computer without Apple's saintly reviewers scrubbing it of all evil first? Well, it shouldn't, because there is this thing called the World Wide Web which already works that way, and it has served millions and millions of people quite well for a long time now.”
Pretty strong words, although Hewitt makes it clear that he's not speaking on Facebook's behalf, and stresses that he remains committed to iPhone development. However, he suggests that developers are best placed to identify bugs in their apps, rather than Apple's testers.
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“The real things they are looking for are not bugs, but violations of the terms of service,” he continues. “This is all about lawyers, not quality, and it shows that the model of Apple's justice system is guilty until proven innocent. They don't trust us, and I resent that, because the vast majority of us are trustworthy.”
