Apple is playing the role of bearer of bad news today by sending rejection letters to numerous people who applied for the iPhone Developer Program. The Standard Program costs developers $99 and would give them the opportunity to have the applications they developed with the help of the SDK, to be published. On the Apple Developer site they did state that the program would only be available to a limited number of developers and those only in the United States, but no one was expecting so many people, both individuals and corporations, to be rejected.
The letters went out today and they read something like this:
Dear Registered iPhone Developer,
Thank you for expressing interest in the iPhone Developer Program. We have received your enrollment request. As this time, the iPhone Developer Program is available to a limited number of developers and we plan to expand during the beta period. We will contact you again regarding your enrollment status at the appropriate time.
Thank you for applying.
Best regards,
iPhone Developer Program
TUAW reports that the number of people being rejected is in the thousands. It’s hard to believe that Apple is willing to turn down people willing to pay them $99 (or $299 for the Enterprise Program) to be a part of the program. Some people felt as though Apple was only denying individuals until a handful of people who registered as a company or corporation received the same rejection letter. At this point the questions running through the minds of those that have been rejected are simply why? A more detailed explanation would have been nice. More importantly, they’re also wondering if there’s a chance that they’ll ever be approved in the future. Why work on developing an application when you don’t know if there’s ever a chance that it will get published?
As you can imagine, people are not happy, especially not knowing if they’ll ever have a chance. One person on Twitter (Daniel Jalkut) summed everything up perfectly by saying “In other news, it looks like the Jailbreak Developer Program still has open slots, and people are getting approved as I type.”
I think this is fine for nwo given its a beta.
Quality should be the big factor here. Other smartphones have lots of software but horrible quality and infrastructure. The trend is apple are oprning up but not compromising quality.
I rejected also. That sucks!
i don’t understand, the people who specialize in jailbreaking, can’t they develop whatever the hell they want after getting the sdk, that is without apple’s approval. Or am I missing somethinG?
Sure, they can develop whatever they want without Apple’s approval. The problem then is getting their applications published in which case they need to be accepted into the iPhone Developer Program.