Apple’s App Store gets a lot of grief for their locked down curation process—seemingly always with a reference to “walled gardens.” There’s a lot of truth in many of those complaints but only if you’re an iPhone developer; users aren’t much affected and are, in fact, somewhat protected by the policies. Case in point: AirPush. AirPush is a mobile ad network that pushes advertisements to the Android notification tray. App developers can include the software in their apps and earn money from the ads. These ads appear at random times and even if the app that is pushing them is not running. Of course, many free apps have advertisements but usually only when the app is running and certainly not in the notification tray. Here’s an AirPush pitch to developers.
This is apt to be popular with some developers and as Quentyn Kennemer points out, perhaps inevitable. Still, there’s been a lot of push (heh) back: Martin Adamek, apparently the first to implement the system in his popular APNdroid app, had his app suspended by Google after users complained it was malware. Adamek apologized to his users, removed AirPush, and said he had learned his lesson.
Joshua Scholl worries that AirPush could destroy the Android Market. He notes that the hugely negative reaction to it has caused AirPush to back off some of their more odious practices. He also notes that this sort of thing doesn’t happen with IOS apps because Apple is concerned with the iPhone’s user experience.
And that’s exactly the point. While developers may have cause to hate Apple’s curation policies, their users have reason to be grateful for them.