End of the Graveyard

2010-12-04 15:46:08 -08:00

The iPhone Application Graveyard is now closed.

I’ve been meaning to do this for months; I’m just now getting around to doing it.

I have a few reasons:

The Graveyard has served its purpose.

The iPhone App Store today is more open and more free than it originally was. The rules are now available to App Store developers, and several apps that Apple previously either rejected or “pocket rejected”, most prominently Google Voice, are now available in the Store.

I don’t know how much of this is attributable to the Graveyard and how much is just Apple having figured these things out, but to whatever extent the Graveyard is responsible, it has done all it can.

The Graveyard can do no more.

Apple’s made very clear that they intend to “curate” the App Store. It will never be a completely free, do-as-thou-wilt market like the Mac market still is, and I have no hope that Apple will ever make the iPhone App Store optional like the Mac App Store will be.

I see no way that the App Stores can ever be more free without losing that curation factor. And it is a factor—I can’t ignore that Apple checking every application probably, hopefully filters out some effluent from the influent stream.

I don’t update it.

I’ve got a dozen different things to do that are more important than updating the Graveyard.

I want to work at Apple.

Cold, hard reality is that I want to work for Apple, and they will not hire a person that has a page on their website decrying their policies. (Don’t get me wrong: I wouldn’t expect them to.) This isn’t the only reason why I’m killing the Graveyard—everything I wrote above is true—but it is one of them.

So, this position is now open.

If you want to keep the Graveyard alive, you can do that by taking it over.

The Graveyard is implemented as a couple of plain-text hand-edited databases and a Python script that converts them to the web page (as a static HTML file) and Atom feed (as a static XML file). This is how the Graveyard stayed up in the face of being Fireballed, Macworlded, etc.

You can keep it that way, or you might turn it into a wiki. I leave the choice to you.

If you want to take over the Graveyard, email me. I’m sure you know my email address by now. I’ll send whoever I think can best run it a zip archive of the data files and Python script.

You may also be interested in the Application Submission Feedback site. I don’t know who runs it, but it’s a great guide to what you can’t do in the App Store.

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