Indie developers have often been at the whim of Apple, throughout its history. But prior to the iPhone, Apple was small, as was the developer 'community' (a more apt moniker then, than now). Apple did control the platform, but not the sales channel. A few evangelists and engineers were enough to sustain a dialog with the developer community. And indie software then consisted of mostly unique applications, often brilliant and unique to the platform, and it was important for the platform to have those apps.

With the introduction of the iPhone, this all changed. It was (is) a gold rush. The number of developers grew from a few thousand to a few hundred thousand. At first, the Mac developers profited from the uptick in Mac popularity, and some could place iOS apps early in the iOS App Store, leveraging their familiarity with OS X and Objective C. But the sheer number of new developers meant that the dialog almost completely broke down.

The App Store is a walled garden, but not only in the usual sense. It's also a wall between Apple and the developers, and the image of a horde of zombie like bazaar salesmen trying to scale it is quite apt to describe the situation. Developers are no longer rewarded for making the best or most beatiful apps. Be fast, be loud, be a winner. A little slip, and you're back to the bottom of the pile, or with a bit of bad luck, out of the game.

Apple is in a position of power, and they seemingly no longer have to care about some small indie dev's app, it's now no more than a drop in the bucket of the App Store ecosystem. So they don't expend any more effort on developer relations than absolutely necessary to keep the bucket overflowing. It make business sense. At least in the short term.

Apple is now in a working mode like any other corp which has become too large for its own good. The shareholders are mostly in it for the money, so they have no qualms about milking the company for short term gains. There is no longer a man at the helm of the company who had a vision and was willing to fight for it, and wasn't just looking to make a quick buck. Tim Cook is doing the best job he can, no doubt, but he is in a completely different position than Steve Jobs was. The tyranny of money is arguably worse than the tyranny of Steve Jobs could ever have been. Not that his presence would fix most problems, but he was seemingly the only one capable of bypassing Apple's corporate machinery to make things happen.

So it's not surprising that developers are frustrated. The decline in software quality is undeniable. The App Store process is a running joke. The App Store UI is absolutely horrible. It simply doesn't scale to the hundreds of thousands of apps it now contains. And for the less scrupulous, it is still too easy to game, more to the harm of other developers, than their own gain, too.

Those in prominent positions in the App Store will do their best to stay in Apple's graces while it lasts, and this is Apple's current version of the Reality Distortion Field. The developers don't fear the company itself, but are continually on such thin ice that they fear putting their foot down too forcefully.

[Good god, what a rant. Despite all the frustration, I seem to be caught in the RDF as well.]