苹果对App Store作出调整

Apple announced on Thursday that it’s making big changes to the way that it approves apps. On account of apps, it'll allow people to download. As many call it, a surprise move. But Maggie Lake is going to explain to us how this actually happened. Was there a lot of pressure, wasn’t there, on Apple?

Huge amount of pressure. You are right, Max. Everyone, you know, Apple is so concerned about security and having control over its products and developers have long been complaining that they’ve been hamstrung by that. Well, today Apple coming out and giving a little on that: loosening it, saying that they're going to allow the developers to use other software tools and basically one of the big ones we are talking about is the Adobe Flash system. And what this means is developers can make an application and it can run on various platforms, both the iPhone and Android. A lot of them have been pushing for that to happen. It is a big change. And it means a lot. It is one of the hottest, as you mentioned, hottest trendy topics in the social media networks. Some interesting comments coming through. Most people are incredibly enthusiastic about this. This is what they've been waiting for. Although we do have one twit saying that Apple blinked in the game of chicken. It loses the game of chicken. And another one, this is really interesting saying: "Jobs once called Flash, the No. 1 reason devices crash! What changed?” Well, we’ll tell you what changed - Android. Of course Apple is still, you know, the big gorilla when it comes to the apps stores. It got over 200,000 apps in growing by the moment. But Android has really been catching up. They have about a half. But right now they are about 17% of the smart phone market. I mean this is of course Google's Android operating system which runs on various different kinds of phones. One book by that Gartner says it’s got about 17 percent. But by one estimate of IDC, they could have as much as 25 percent of the smart phone business by, in a few years. So they're growing fast. And a lot... Apple feared developers were going to start to defect and moved away from Apple if they kept these stringent rules in place. So they agreed to loosen up a little bit. So certainly Apple giving but clearly they are not willing to see their superiority and give up this confederative fight very easily, Max.

Yes, suddenly big debate, isn’t it, Maggie? Just one dream for customers really. When they go to the iTunes website, are they gonna see a wider range of apps now available? How many changes are going on there?

Yeah, I think they, I think this means that they will and they might see a little bit of diversity in what's coming forward. But another interesting change, there are some that they might not see there with good reason. One of the other changes Apple came out with today is being a lot more transparent about why they reject and accept apps. So far it’s been a real mystery. You submit it, you sit there and wait and it's silence. You don’t know what is going on. Today they came out with a set of guidelines. They say they're gonna be really clear about it. And very uncharacteristically blunt about some of the rules. Listen to one of the things they said: "We have over 250,000 apps in our app store. We don’t need any more fart apps." Being very straight-forward about that. They say they've got to be different, they’ve got to be unique. They are talking about not crossing a line and they’ll decide what and when that is. They also say, adding: "If you run to the press and trash us, it never helps in getting your app approved. So a little bit of tongue-in-cheek, and a little bit of humor injected into this as they try to open up to be a little bit more transparent. Try to whack back at that criticism that their secrets were even so serious I think.

Those apps I thought were the ones made money, Maggie?

Ha ha ha, it's true. And you listen, I just bought some apps this weekend. And I couldn’t believe. Some of them are fantastic and some of them, I was thinking, people really buy this? And you are right, they buy them by the loads. But obviously they maxed out on some of those categories.

Ok, Maggie. Thank you very much indeed.