Textwell ios osx software#
Textwell ios osx trial#

I say all this not to excuse Apple, but to explain - not to claim the system is perfect, but that improving it will take some serious thinking and, likely, a lot of trial and error. Yet escalation doesn't scale, and appeal, by definition, can only happen after the fact. There's also an argument to be made that these sorts of things should be settled faster - and settled internally - before any developer is ever contacted. ('Apple sued by contact-stealing app, developer claims no rules broken!'). Likewise, if the letter of the law allowed for a widget type but its experience or content was antithetical to Apple's platform, it could result in other complications. Maybe he would have lobbied for a change, and maybe we'd have gotten it eventually, but we wouldn't have had a PCalc widget as quickly as we did. Yet if there had been an explicit 'no calculator widgets' at the start, James Thomson would never have made one. There's an argument to be made that if Apple was far more explicit about its policies up front, this wouldn't happen. They were able to get a lot of things in there in part because those use-cases were unforeseen. Incredibly resource-constrained and severely limited for privacy and security reasons, developers were still able to get entire calculators in there, as well as games, keyboards, app launchers, and more. Examples there include checking current stock prices or weather conditions, or performing quicks task like marking a checklist item item as done. In the programming guide (opens in new tab), Apple describes widgets as way to 'give users quick access to information that's important right now'. Examples included posting updates on package deliveries, or getting the latest surf reports or breaking news stories. On the developer portal (opens in new tab), Apple describes Today view widgets as a way to 'provide quick updates or enable brief tasks'. It's a human-driven system, which means there will be inconsistencies over time - but also improvements. There are different people from different orgs that have different perspectives and opinions. I'm using terms like 'marketing' and 'services' instead of 'Apple' here because referring to Apple as a singular entity makes it easy to forget the company is not a hive mind. A smaller amount still result in the executive review board changing how the marketing and services teams believe the technology should be used. Some don't, however, and face post-approval rejection - in whole or in part. Most of those apps fit with how the marketing and services team believe the technologies should be used, and stay approved.After launch, apps that were approved (and even featured), but used iOS's new technologies in 'unforeseen' ways, can eventually get looked at again within Apple.

Textwell ios osx software#

Apple's software team races to get iOS shipped, the marketing team to get apps approved, and the services team to get approved apps featured for launch day.Developers race to include them in their apps and get them submitted to the App Store prior to launch day.New technologies get introduced at WWDC.When PCalc's Notification Center widget first faced rejection, I wrote about how the App Store works - specifically when it comes to the introduction of something as new and important as Extensibility. Unsurprisingly, it's why we're seeing something akin to the kind of growing pains first witnessed during the App Store's debut. Extensibility, which includes Today view widgets, has been one of the biggest additions to iOS since the launch of the App Store.