iPhone & the App Store

Update: As usual, Paul Graham said it better than I did.

So I thought of a pretty cool iPhone application last night. It doesn’t exist yet. It would be pretty easy to build, it would scratch an itch I have, and it would likely be useful to other people. Enough that they might pay a few bucks for it.

Here’s the bad news though: I’m extremely unsure whether Apple would ever approve an app like this. And consequently, I’m not willing to risk the hours it would take to write the app only to have it rejected on submission.

I know it’s easier to talk about an idea than to do it. And maybe I wouldn’t really have the follow-through to finish this project. But as it stands now, Apple’s totalitarian App Store policies discouraged me from even launching XCode to play around. Who knows how many other people there are out there like me. For the sake of the iPhone platform, this has to change.