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Schiller: No apologies for App Store approval process

Apple top-level exec Phil Schiller defends the company's role as application gatekeeper for the App Store, telling BusinessWeek that it ensures a good experience for customers.

Jim Dalrymple Special to CNET News
Jim Dalrymple has followed Apple and the Mac industry for the last 15 years, first as part of MacCentral and then in various positions at Macworld. Jim also writes about the professional audio market, examining the best ways to record music using a Macintosh. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. He currently runs The Loop.
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Jim Dalrymple
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Apple's App Store has been a runaway success, but it's also been mired in controversy due to the application approval process. The company, however, isn't making apologies for its stringent gatekeeping and insists it's acting in the best interest of its customers.

Apple

"We've built a store for the most part that people can trust," Phil Schiller, Apple senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, told BusinessWeek in an interview posted Monday. "You and your family and friends can download applications from the store, and for the most part they do what you'd expect, and they get onto your phone, and you get billed appropriately, and it all just works."

Schiller offered BusinessWeek a breakdown of app rejections. Of the applications sent back to developers, about 90 percent are due to technical issues and simply need code tweaks to make the apps work properly.

About 10 percent are rejected because they try to steal personal data or try to help someone break the law or because they contain content that Apple considers inappropriate, BusinessWeek reported.

About 1 percent are turned away for reasons that fall into gray areas, Schiller told BusinessWeek.

One of Apple's latest run-ins with a developer was over the use of Apple product images in Rogue Amoeba's audio-streaming app called Airfoil Speakers Touch. After three-and-a-half months of back and forth over an update for the already-live app, Apple is apparently going to let the company resubmit the app update with the product images intact as originally submitted. However, the ordeal has apparently soured Rogue Amoeba on future development for the App Store.

"At this time, we have no plans to return to the platform," Rogue Amoeba CEO Paul Kafasis told CNET on Monday. "Apple has corrected one small problem with their review process. But the platform as a whole still has many issues that need to be addressed before we consider it a viable place for our business to commit resources."

The App Store currently has more than 100,000 third-party applications available for download. Apple has reported more than 2 billion downloads since the online store opened in July 2008.