People like to pontificate their views on Apple’s success.  Some attribute it to incredible user experience, others to a controlled ecosystem (iPhone/Pod+iTunes).  Many give a lot of credit to the way in which Apple embraced the developer community.  All seem to agree that Steve’s vision was key.  It seems to me that on that latter point of embracing the developer, Apple is beginning to deviate from its foundational principles. 

Many of my hacker friends believe (and with substantial evidence) that developers have a tremendous influence on what technologies get adapted.  Just look at recent exits by Heroku and SpringSource.  For a long time, Apple’s marketing was based on the slogan “There’s an app for that”.  Yet the quiet story has been that developing apps for Apple has been getting more and more difficult (interesting that the slogan also disappeared from ads a while ago). 

Recently, Apple published a set of App Store Review guidelines and it is remarkable how much more restrictive they are than Android’s.  Here are some of my favorites (and my take below):

• If your App looks like it was cobbled together in a few days, or you're trying to get your first practice App into the store to impress your friends, please brace yourself for rejection. We have lots of serious developers who don't want their quality Apps to be surrounded by amateur hour.
•  Let the customer decide.  Many successes in the start-up community started as an imperfect app
• We will reject Apps for any content or behavior that we believe is over the line. What line, you ask? Well, as a Supreme Court Justice once said, "I'll know it when I see it". And we think that you will also know it when you cross it.
• Self-explanatory
• If your app is rejected, we have a Review Board that you can appeal to. If you run to the press and trash us, it never helps
• Vendetta?
• Apps that duplicate apps already in the App Store may be rejected, particularly if there are many of them, such as fart, burp, flashlight, and Kama Sutra apps.

And then there’s a whole section on monetization.  Here are my favorite ones.

•  Apps that unlock or enable additional features or functionality with mechanisms other than the App Store will be rejected
• Apps utilizing a system other than the In App Purchase API (IAP) to purchase content, functionality, or services in an app will be rejected
• What does that mean?  Well, besides the obvious it also means that many companies will find it difficult to monetize recurring revenue services through Apple.

There are also additional requirements (not explicitly included in the guide) circulating through the community and they are also quite concerning:

• Don’t use Apple gestures (like pinch to zoom in)
• No external links – including knowledge bases, company website, support links or anything else (this rule is new and has living contradictions in the app store).
• No duplication of core device functionality like browser, podcast app etc - this rule also has living contradictions in the app store.

So what’s the point?  The point is that companies find it easier to monetize apps on Andro – and money matters.  A lot.
What else? The point is that hackers have been the drivers of cool in the connected world.  Cool is kewl.  Cool sells. 
Apple became Apple because Apple became cool.  So please stay cool. 

As Mia Wallace once said... Don't be a square!

Disclaimer:  This is my (Victor Belfor’s) personal opinion.  The complete guide itself was not received from Apple and can be found here http://stadium.weblogsinc.com/engadget/files/app-store-guidelines.pdf

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Wharton Business School has a program called Leadership Ventures which consist of a series of challenges such as trekking in Antarctica, high altitude multisport in Atacama Desert in Chile, mountaineering on Mount Cotopaxi in Ecuador and tall ship sailing in the South Pacific..  The vision of the program is to develop leaders who excel in stressful and ambiguous environments.  The program is designed to put students under a lot of pressure in highly challenging situations where much depends on teamwork and leadership.  One of its implicit goals is to enable students to experience failure.

Preston B. Cline, senior associate director of Wharton’s Leadership Ventures, explains: “Cutting-age companies which have adopted a team-based approach have proved to be the most successful and are believed to be the paradigms of the future. The business community is proving to be very dynamic and our graduates are required to be team oriented, quickly adaptive to changes in the business climate, and highly resilient when plans go awry. One of the unique things about some of the Wharton students is that they have faced a lot of academic success and so are, therefore, less equipped at recovering from failure. So to counteract those life experiences, opportunities for failure are built into the programs.”

Active combat is one of the most stressful and hostile environments imaginable and much research has been done in academia (including the Wharton school) on applicability of military leadership and decision making methods in the civilian / business world.  Ten years ago, Wharton Leadership Ventures added a trek hosted by OCS (Officer Candidate School) at the Marine Corps HQ base Quantico.  Enlisted men and women go through their training either at Camp Pendleton in Southern California or at Parris Island in South Carolina.  All officer recruits go through their training through OCS at Quantico.

Every year about 300 Wharton Students enter a lottery and about a 100 of them get a chance to spend 24 hours at Quantico and for many of them this one day may be one of the most trying days they have faced.

They get to experience hands-on leadership and decision-making marine style.  Some of the key concepts include Marine Corps Leadership Traits,  70% decision making (if you have 70% of the information, have done 70% of the analysis, and feel 70% confident, then move. A less than ideal action, swiftly executed, stands a chance of success.  If you have less information, your chance of success is too low, if you have more – you may have waited too long), and action-based decision making (Act-Learn-Adjust.  Action gives you more information.  Nothing is learned from inaction.)

A big part of the impact of the program is the element of surprise and that you can’t prepare for it, so we have been asked not to give too many details.  I will oblige, but I will say that this was a very intense, difficult and in some ways eye-opening experience.  If you enjoy stretching and testing yourself, going outside of your comfort zone and exposing yourself to new things, and if you ever get an opportunity – you should take it.  Chances are you’ll like the experience as much as I did.