Apple Introduces App Store Resource Center for iPhone Developers
In an e-mail sent today to registered iPhone developers, Apple announced the introduction of the App Store Resource Center (iPhone developer membership required), a new site within the iPhone Dev Center dedicated …
Context & Ripple Effects
The App Store has been pulling in developers since its launch year drew a wave of them in mid-2008, but the review process has stayed a black box — Apple's rejection of the Google Voice app just triggered an FCC inquiry announced on September 18, 2009, and individual rejections like Flickup's keyword-based refusal have kept friction stories circulating.
Against that backdrop, the App Store Resource Center announced September 19, 2009 reads less like a convenience and more like governance: Apple consolidating submission rules and guidance into one gated site inside the iPhone Dev Center, aimed squarely at the developers who have been navigating approvals by trial and error.
First-order effects
- Registered iPhone developers get a single documented source for App Store submission requirements and approval criteria, replacing scattered e-mail and forum lore as the reference point before they code or submit.
Second-order effects
- With the FCC probing the Google Voice rejection, published guidelines give Apple a defensible answer when regulators ask why apps are refused — and give developers grounds to argue their own cases against arbitrary-seeming rejections.
Third-order effects
- If platform owners respond to scrutiny by formalizing their rules in public-facing documentation, app-store curation shifts from ad-hoc reviewer judgment toward codified policy that regulators and competitors can hold Apple accountable against.
The trend: As mobile app stores become de facto gatekeepers under regulatory watch, their operators are converting informal approval folklore into official developer documentation.