The best iOS podcast in the ‘verse returns tonight to talk all the latest iPhone and iPad news, how-tos, and app and accessory reviews. Come join us!

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It’s time to pick our winners for our color conversion giveaway! Lots of you entered and had tons of awesome ideas on how you’d mix and match colors to personalize your iPhone. Unfortunately, we can only pick four winners, and they are….

• MAGNUS
• Chaosx
• cjy7720
• iTwe4k

Congrats to the forum members above! You’ll have your choice of sending in your iPhone 4 or iPhone 4S for a color conversion through PXLFIX or having us mail you out a DIY color kit to do the conversion yourself.

We’ll be contacting each of the winners soon. If you didn’t win, check out some of the other contests we are currently running below and enter for your chance to win even more prizes.

More giveaways:

• What would you do with $100 dollars? Win some iMore store gear!
• App giveaway: Remarks for iPad
• Weekly photo contest: negative space

A recent survey by a marketing firm called App-Promo shows that 59% of developers don’t manage to make enough money from app sales to break even on costs, and 80% don’t generate enough revenue to support a standalone business. 68% earned $5000 or less from their top app, while 12% earned $50,000 or more.  Those top earners have around $30,000 set aside for a marketing budget.  64.5% of the apps created by those surveyed were paid, while 39.5% relied on advertising and 32.9% were freemium or lite versions of full apps.

The sample size of the group was only 102 developers, plus the marketing firm has a vested interest in scaring devs into pouring money into marketing, but even in that light, the figures still paint an interesting picture. There are a lot of disposable apps out there that I couldn’t imagine any iPhone owner spending good money on. The few companies that can churn out really high-quality apps tend to have sizable budgets and a big, established business in the app world. And when developers do make high quality apps, they’re often faced by an App Store customer base which no longer puts a high value on quality apps.

You can take a deeper dive in App-Promo’s white paper, below,, or check out the short version in the snazzy infographic. Developers, do you have a hard time earning cash in the App Store? How much time and money do you spend on marketing and promotion?

Source: App-Promo, White Paper via TUAW

Squiggles! for iPad is an adorable children’s game that instructs the child user to draw squiggles on pictures so that they can come to life. For example, after drawing squiggles behind a few cars and tapping “GO”, the squiggles will act as springs that push the cars across the screen — with sound effects and all.

Squiggles! includes an intro video of a little monkey and bunny explaining what a squiggle is, how they can be large, small, colorful and be used to make spaghetti, clouds, cotton candy, or anything to make pictures come alive.

There are six different pictures included with Squiggles! In the one shown above, you are supposed to draw cotton candy for the kids. (In the screenshot, the cotton candy has already been drawn in). You can do it very simple with just some little squiggles on the sticks, or you can get more detailed and add even more to the scene. There’s no limit on the creativity. Tapping go on this picture will make the kids float up in the air with their cotton candy.

The Squiggles! includes 4 different drawing mediums and 10 colors. You can also delete all your squiggles at once with just the tap of a button and save your drawings to your Squiggles! gallery. In addition to drawing, Squiggles! also allows user to add cute stickers to their pictures.

The Parental Zone is where you’ll find the Squiggles Gallery, options, and ability to share pictures to Facebook, Twitter, email, or pinter.

As if the really fun pictures that come to life wasn’t enough, Squiggle’s also includes a book featuring Bobu and Miku from the intro video. It’s interactive and incorporates squiggles into the story. You can choose to have the book read to you or to read it yourself. If you choose to have it read to you, you still have to turn the page. This is great for kids who want to interact with the story before turning the page, but I wish there was a way to have the pages automatically turn for the younger kids or to share with Apple TV.

The Good

• Pictures come to life with squiggles
• Six different pictures
• Bold, bright, and colorful
• Parental Zone lets you share pictures with Twitter, Facebook, and more
• Intro video is very cute
• Includes a fun book

The Bad

• “Read to Me” book feature doesn’t have an option for automatically turning pages

The Conclusion

I’m just going to come right and say that Squiggles! shouldn’t be free. I’d easily drop $5 on it for my daughter. It’s very fun and exciting for kids to see their drawing come to life. Combined with the video and book, Squiggles! is a must-have iPad app for children.

Free – Download Now

Siri, the iPhone 4S‘ flagship feature has been on the market now for 6 months. On one hand, Siri is absolutely amazing — the first real virtual personal assistant with a personality right out of Pixar. On the other hand, Siri is obviously still in beta and often fails or works just enough to frustrate more than any outright failure. That makes it an odd choice for a flagship feature, but given the lack of a physical redesign and the obvious potential for awesome demos, rightly or wrongly, Siri was what Apple had to work with.

But does it work for us?

Survey says: Siri usage is low

iMore is an iPhone enthusiast site, so our community is predisposed to adopt new features quickly and use them extensively. Yet Siri usage among the iMore nation remains curiously low. As of today, with over 4000 votes cast, nearly 50% of our readers seldom, if ever, use Siri.

That’s… astonishing. Here’s the full break down:

• Almost 5% use Siri often, many times a day.
• Over 15% use Siri frequently, on a daily basis.
• Roughly 23% use Siri infrequently, at least several times a week
• Nearly 50% almost never use Siri, monthly or less.
• Just over 7% might use Siri, but it’s not yet available in their native language.

Taken together, only 20% of our iPhone 4S users are using Siri on anything approaching a regular basis. That leaves 80% using it irregularly at best, and 50% barely using it at all.

This in spite of Apple showcasing Siri during the iPhone 4S introduction, putting it front and center on Apple.com, and making Siri the focus of most of the iPhone 4S advertising. They gave it the iPhone event keynote. They gave it Santa. They gave it Samuel L. Jackson.

And still few of our readers are using it.

That’s not unprecedented, of course. The 2010 iPhone 4 launch saw a lot of attention placed on Apple’s video calling service, FaceTime. But it’s still interesting.

Siri community commentary: six months later

So why are — or mostly aren’t — you using Siri six months after it was introduced? Here’s what you’ve told us:

I prefer dictation to Siri most of the time. Use Siri not quite everyday, but I think several times a week is still pretty often. Now my 5 year old thinks Siri is great, talks to her several times a minute when i let her.

• Cody Hahn

Some of you in the US who think its bad should try Siri in the UK. It's virtually useless. I'd love to ask Siri to locate the nearest pub or something, but we can't even do that. Yes I know it's in BETA, but I really had hopes they'd be releasing updates more frequently when I purchased my 4S to be perfectly honest.

• Chris Flowers

It's always down, or something else is wrong. Or it just hangs when I tell her to call someone. Kind of giving up on it. Needs a few more years of seasoning.

• Dave D

I've stopped differentiating between Siri and voice dictation, as I believe it is largely the same animal. Siri interaction is a bit more problematic, so I often leave Siri alone and then dictate directly within a given app. For appointments and reminders, I ONLY want to use Siri. I almost won't set the calendar/reminder item until Siri is no longer "sorry." So, I use it a good once a day, at least, if you consider the above under the same umbrella.

• West

I use Siri daily.. with 90% success rate. I use it for meetings, reminders, appointments, looking stuff up, texting and calling. So easy to say call Wife at work and it is done.

• Craig

Siri NEVER works for me. I’m always in full signal 3G or Wifi at work and home and it takes her at least 30 – 60 seconds and I get to frustrated and turn it off. I am not a fan.

• Tytanious

I use Siri all the time. Reading, writing texts. Setting up reminders, making and editing notes, getting directions (navacon), toggling Bluetooth, wifi, flashlight etc… I’d be lost if I couldn’t talk to my phone.

• Sherlock

I use Siri for reminders. The few times I’ve tried using it to send a text while driving I’ve gotten so frustrated I could have just as easily been texting. The whole idea is to to not take your mind off the road.

• Alli

I still use Siri and it is very helpful. As I stated in another thread, I use if primarily to text & respond to text messages while driving, set reminders, look up information and to dial contacts for me. I have never asked it frivolous questions and it did not factor in to my reason for buying my iPhone 4S. Could it be better? Heck yeah. Do I depend on it? Absolutely not. I’ve had a smartphone or a PDA phone for so long and I’m so used to doing things manually that I forget about Siri sometimes.

• JustMe’d

I use Siri everyday and every time Siri comes up I can’t help thinking 3 things: 1. Why didn’t we have this 10 years ago? 2. Why isn’t this better? (Can’t launch apps or modify settings) 3. How do people still “type” messages, it feels so archaic to type in 2012. It’s great for reminders and meetings. Sending texts, timers for cooking or whatever it is you are doing. Why type???? I just don’t get it besides being in an environment where you it wouldn’t be appropriate to speak.

• jb 1007

Deciphering the disuse and discontent

For a few readers Siri has become important or even quasi indispensable. (Some of our editors have even joked Siri has made them so lazy that, if it’s unavailable, they’ll wait rather than actually type out a text message…) However, for many more readers, Siri simply wasn’t part of their iPhone usage pattern. Based on the feedback we’ve gotten, it seems the disuse or discontent with Siri can be broken down into a few categories.

1. Some people just forget Siri is there. Siri is something new and new things don’t always enter into, or find a place in, established workflows.
2. Siri not working — either because it doesn’t understand certain accents, because the required network connection fails, or because it simply takes too long to respond — causes enough frustration that some users simply abandon it and don’t go back. How many people would use Google if searches routinely took 30 seconds or more to return?
3. The inconsistent implementation — ability to read texts but not emails, ability to launch some apps for specific functions but not simply launch an app, etc. — creates an unpredictable or incomplete enough usability model that many simply exclude it entirely.
4. The lack of timely and consistent updates from Apple — only one new language in 6 months and no new features or integration — creates a wait and see attitude that, so far, is still waiting but not seeing.
5. The amount and type of Siri advertising creates expectations that the actual service (point #2) and support to date (point #4) don’t live up to, leading to dissatisfaction.

There’s also another alternative — Siri is a new kind of interface meant for a new kind of user. iPhone sales numbers indicate it’s the first smartphone to capture a predominantly mainstream audience. That audience isn’t familiar with how smartphones historically worked, and something like Siri might ultimately prove more accessibly and less intimidating than a traditional app-launcher style interface. All of the factors listed above absolutely hurt Siri’s chances of achieving that right now, but Siri could still achieve that in a future where it’s both more reliable and more functional.

If that’s the case, our iPhone enthusiast audience may never be the target for Siri, but the mainstream audience that is its target isn’t using it, or isn’t enjoying the use of Siri just yet.

Siri next steps

So six months later and Siri usage among iMore readers is low. What can be done to change that? The opposite of what we conjecture is causing it.

1. There’s not much more Apple can do to boost Siri awareness, given that it’s already the centerpiece of their iPhone 4S advertising, and making Siri popup like Microsoft Assistant would cause most of us to throw our phones at a wall. They can’t just make people more aware of Siri, they have to make Siri more usable.
2. Improve Siri’s ability to understand accents in the U.K. Since Siri claims to support U.K. English, supporting U.K. English is something important to do. No doubt the beta period, where Siri is fed more and more voice data, will help with that. Network connection issues are tougher. There’s absolutely no excuse for Siri’s servers on Apple’s data centers to go down or even be slow to respond. Apple is rich enough to support the best technology and ensure among the best up times and availability in the business. Carrier connection problems. especially notorious in the U.S., are beyond Apple’s ability to address unless/until they can put some base level of Siri functionality locally, on-device, as a fallback.
3. Adding more well-rounded features may be non-trivial but is necessary to create consistency in the Siri experience. If text entry or basic navigation was different, or non-existent, from app to app, it would make the iPhone unusable (see early versions of Android). Siri working differently, or not working at all, with some core apps makes it likewise difficult to count on. Adding the basics like Settings toggles, app launching, email reading, etc. would increase consistency and also solve general iOS pain points. (“Siri, turn Bluetooth off!” alone would likely bolster usage considerably.)
4. Roll out incremental updates. The power of online services is that they can be updated on the server-side, which means they’re less disruptive and can be more frequent than larger software patches. Updates create confidence. Japanese was a great addition in iOS 5.1, but it was the only addition in 6 months and that’s a long time.
5. Obviously Apple isn’t going to stop advertising Siri unless and until they have something just as compelling to replace it with, and they’re not going to make it tell Zooey Deschenel it can’t connect to the network when she wants to get her dance on. That’s the cost of marketing based on a beta feature that sets expectations the product can’t meet. Apple doesn’t often do it, but they’ve done it in this case and they’re stuck with it now.

Conclusion

Six months later and a lot of you simply aren’t using Siri. If you’re one of them, let us know what Apple could do to get you on board. If you are using Siri, why do you think so many others aren’t? The first developer betas for iOS 6 may be just around the corner, and the next generation iPhone 5,1 may just be on track for a fall release. What does Apple have to do to turn the corner on Siri and make it as mainstream and popular a feature as the iPhone itself?

Georgia contributed portions of this article

Image credit: iDoodle by Jason Harrison

The popular music streaming service Spotify has updated their app with proper iPad support. Now you can enjoying millions of songs and discover and share music on your iPad’s larger screen. The iPad version isn’t simply a big version it’s iPhone counterpart either — it’s optimized to take advantage of the larger screen and looks amazing.

A Spotify premium subscription is needed to use the service on the iPhone or iPad, but you can try it out for free for 48 hours — and can be extended to 30 days. The free trial didn’t work for me the first time I logged in, but once I logged out and back in, it worked like charm.

On the What’s New tab, you’ll see a bunch of album artwork along the top that can be scrolled though. These are new songs and can be played instantly. As you scroll through the page, you’ll discover trending playlists and top tracks among friends, new releases, and trending playlists and top tracks near you.

Tapping any of the music or playlists will slide out a panel on the right that lets you find out more about it and stream it if you wish.

If you’re listening to music, you’ll see the “now playing” toolbar at the bottom of every screen. You can also blow this up to full screen so that you can view the album artwork nice and big and in all its glory.

From the Playlists tab, you can access playlists that you have set up on iTunes and playlists you’ve created with Spotify. Selecting a playlist will also slide out the window on the right and display a collage of artwork of songs that appear in the playlist as well as a lists of the songs in the playlist.

The People tab is where you go to see what your friends are listening to. If you connect Spotify with Facebook, all your Facebook friends who use Spotify will automatically show up in your list. Tapping on a friend will again slide out the column on the right and display your friend’s top tracks, top artists, and published playlists.

In Settings, you can enable offline mode, switch to a private session (which expires after 6 hours of inactivity), choose whether you want to show what you listen on Facebook, and more.

The Good

• Clean, pretty, and easy to use UI
• Multiple panels are very well implemented
• Lots of album artwork
• Universal for iPhone and iPad

The Bad

• Must have a premium subscription to use Spotify mobile. No free radio available.

The Conclusion

Spotify did a fantastic job with this app. There is a sense of uniformity when using it and the multi-panel design is very implemented. My only issue is that if you don’t have a premium subscription, the app is completely useless. Spotify really should include free radio in their mobile apps.

Free – Download Now

Scott Forstall, Apple’s high-profile Senior Vice President of iOS software, has sold off $38.7 million-worth of previously-restricted Apple stock according to recent security filings. Forstall had sold off about $33 million-worth of stock in March when the restriction first lifted, and the final sale here here leaves him with 5% of the 120,000 shares he was first given in 2008. Forstall still has another 100,000 restricted stock units that will be ready to sell in 2014 and another 150,000, half of which will vest in 2013 and the other in 2016.

While it may seem odd at first glance that Forstall would sell of so much stock now, with so much more of that juicy restricted stock lying ahead, it’s easy to see him enjoying this lot of cash now and still sticking with Apple for the long haul.

Just like the first wave of stock sell-offs, it wouldn’t be surprising to see other Apple execs cashing in sometime soon as well. Millard Drexler, who serves on Apple’s board of directors, sold off a bunch of stock too for a total of $23.7 million.

Scott Forstall came to Apple from NeXT, which also brought Steve Jobs back to the company (along with almost all the new generation of Apple executives). Because of both the growing importance of iOS to Apple, and Forstall’s political acumen, he has been rumored to be in line to be Apple’s CEO once Tim Cook is done. Whether or not that ends up being the case, there’s no doubt that Forstall’s profile within Apple has risen as stratospherically as the iPhone and iPad themselves.

So with over $70 million in newly redeemed cash on hand, that just leaves one question — what will he spend it on? Monster yacht? Jumbo jet? One of each hypercar on the Top Gear top lap list? A Cobra Commander style underwater headquarters? What would you spend it on?

Source: SEC via Fortune

If you’ve been around the iPhone scene for a while, you’ve no doubt already heard the story of how George “Geohot” Hotz unlocked the original iPhone for the first time, back in the summer of 2007. If not, The New Yorker, in a far broader profile, tells it again:

In the summer of 2007, Apple released the iPhone, in an exclusive partnership with A.T. & T. George Hotz, a seventeen-year-old from Glen Rock, New Jersey, was a T-Mobile subscriber. He wanted an iPhone, but he also wanted to make calls using his existing network, so he decided to hack the phone.

Every hack poses the same basic challenge: how to make something function in a way for which it wasn't designed. In one respect, hacking is an act of hypnosis. As Hotz describes it, the secret is to figure out how to speak to the device, then persuade it to obey your wishes. After weeks of research with other hackers online, Hotz realized that, if he could make a chip inside the phone think it had been erased, it was "like talking to a baby, and it's really easy to persuade a baby."

He used a Phillips-head eyeglass screwdriver to undo the two screws in the back of the phone. Then he slid a guitar pick around the tiny groove, and twisted free the shell with a snap. Eventually, he found his target: a square sliver of black plastic called a baseband processor, the chip that limited the carriers with which it could work. To get the baseband to listen to him, he had to override the commands it was getting from another part of the phone. He soldered a wire to the chip, held some voltage on it, and scrambled its code. The iPhone was now at his command. On his PC, he wrote a program that enabled the iPhone to work on any wireless carrier.

The next morning, Hotz stood in his parents' kitchen and hit "Record" on a video camera set up to face him. He had unruly curls and wispy chin stubble, and spoke with a Jersey accent. "Hi, everyone, I'm geohot," he said, referring to his online handle, then whisked an iPhone from his pocket. "This is the world's first unlocked iPhone."

Hotz went on to sell that first unlocked iPhone to the CEO of Certicell for a 2007 Nissan 350Z and 3 new iPhones, and the rest, as they say, is history.

From later iOS Jailbreaks to cracking the PS3, from the Sony lawsuit to the Anonymous attacks, from working at Google and Facebook to going back to talk with Sony, The New York roughs out an interesting, entertaining sketch of one of the most famous characters in the iPhone community.

Give it a read, and then give us your take.

Source: The New Yorker

comScore released their first quarter 2012 U.S. mobile market share numbers recently, and though Apple has had a solid climb to 14% market share, LG was still ahead with 19.3% while Samsung claimed 26%. The gap in smartphone platform market share with Android is widening, as Google’s mobile OS snagged 51%, and iOS sat at 30.7%. Outside of the U.S., IDC’s latest research shows that Apple was in second place behind Samsung among smartphone vendors worldwide. comScore went on to examine mobile phone usage; 74.3% of mobile owners sent text messages between January and March, half of them downloaded apps, 49.3% used the browser, 36.1% used a social network or read a blog, 32.6% played games, and 25.3% listened to music. It boggles me that playing music (even on dumbphones) isn’t more popular. I just don’t get why you would bother managing an entirely separate device when one will do just as well.

Despite still being in third place, Apple is enjoying the most growth out of all of the mobile manufacturers in the U.S. having seen a 1.6 point change in growth since December’s report. Even though Android is likely to maintain its lead in operating system share, I really doubt any single Android manufacturer will come close to beating out iPhone any time soon. Research like this also serves as a reminder that dumb phones are still a big part of the overall mobile market, and that Apple would do well to offer something entry level that consumers could get on a prepaid basis. That direction would really make the most out of any Walmart presence Apple establishes.

Source: comScore

Apple updated their OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion developer preview 8 distribution yesterday and with it came a new feature for Notification center — do not disturb. It looks like a great feature and something that would be very much welcome not only in OS X, but in iOS 6 as well. 9to5Mac‘s Mark Gurman describes it thusly:

The feature is a toggle accessible at the top of Notification Center that allows users to block incoming alerts and banners. The feature is very important for those who look to focus entirely on the content they are currently working on and do not want to be bothered by new emails, iMessages, calendar alerts, or other types of alerts.

I’d love this for shooting app and accessory videos alone, as nothing ruins a good shot like a spam email or silly tweet showing up right in the middle of a hero shot. For general use, the ability to kill notifications when going into important meetings, when you really need a good night’s sleep, or even if you just want to game or watch video without interuption would be fantastic.

Of course, the real solution would be to have location and time based profiles, where “home” could be set up differently from “work”, for example, or “day” could have different settings than “night”. Third party apps like Tweetbot have allowed time-based notification suppression on their own for a while, but globally that’s something only the platform owner, Apple, can address.

Source: 9to5Mac

For today only, the iMore Store has the OtterBox Reflex Series Case for iPad 2 on sale for only $38.95! That’s a spectacular 44% off! Get them before they’re gone!

Looking for an iPad 2 case that offers the perfect balance of protection and contemporary styling? The OtterBox Reflex Series Case offers front and back device coverage in a sleek package, preventing scratches and keeping your new iPad 2 clean and safe from drops.

This case has a touch screen shield that doubles as a viewing/typing stand, access to all buttons and controls (including camera lens), plus the simple design makes docking your iPad 2 easy and fast.

The unique audio pathway redirects sound toward you for excellent listening pleasure.

Features:

• Reflex Zones in corners
• Slick exterior
• Easy snap-off access for docking
• Snap-on touch screen shield doubles as a viewing/typing stand
• Unique audio routers direct sound towards you
• Single layer dual density material
• Polycarbonate molded with TPE rubber

Get the OtterBox Reflex Series Case for iPad 2 now!

Disney is testing iPads and looks set to use them for its next generation FastPass park system. The current FastPass system allows park guests to receive their passes and avoid lines for popular attractions. The new system is being tested now with selected guests being asked to pre-book attractions in the near future.

Workers going around earlier were using iPads for RFID testing. Coordinator has an iPad training CMs with RFID at Mansion.

After guest scans card, the Cast Member uses a waterproof iPad to see the information from the card (including FP time & other Q&A).

They then select next guest on the iPad if it lights up green or direct them to one of four kiosks if it lights up blue.

Seeing a Haunted Mansion cast member with an iPad is a bit… strange.

The information comes from an unofficial Disney twitter account that claims to to know the various Disney projects going on at the theme parks. It should come as no real surprise that Disney is looking to Apple and the iPad for its new systems. The two companies have always had a close relationship, Steve Jobs served on Disney’s board and Disney’s Bob Iger is currently a member of Apple’s board too.

Source: @DisneyProjects via 9to5 Mac

Apple is currently rejecting apps that use the Dropbox SDK to provide integration with the popular cloud storage solution. The reason for the rejections is apparently that, under a specific but not inevitable set of circumstances, someone using an app with Dropbox integration could end up on Dropbox’s web site and find a way to pay Dropbox for additional storage. That would violate Apple’s prohibition against using external websites to circumvent Apple’s 30% cut of subscriptions. Dropbox attempted to patch the problem by removing links that would make getting to the full version of the website and finding and buying additional storage possible, but the rejections seem to have continued. Dropbox is now working to try and find a more satisfactory solution and says they’ll have more information on that next week.

On the surface, Dropbox broke a rule, caused a problem for developers using their SDK, and is now correcting the mistake. It doesn’t appear to have been an intentional or obvious violation, but it was eventually discovered and now Dropbox and their developers have to deal with it.

It’s that latter part that highlights some of the continued frustration with Apple’s App Store policies, frustrations that persist some 5 years after the introduction of the App Store. The review and rejection process is still, as often as not, impenetrable and capricious. Plenty of apps with Dropbox integration are already on the App Store, presumably using the same SDK as the apps rejected today. That they weren’t rejected as well doesn’t excuse Dropbox or the apps that were rejected today, but it shows that what one (or many) reviewers let in, another (or many others) may reject.

One of the rejections listed account creation for both Dropbox and Google. (You can pay Google for Google Apps or Google Drive, among other things.) It makes you wonder what would happen if an app linked to store.apple.com…

That’s part of what causes frustration with Apple’s system. Another part is things like the recent scam app plague. Apps that should have been obvious candidates for immediate rejection to any reviewer who laid eyes on them, were let onto the store to violate intellectual property rights and cheat users out of money.

One absolutely doesn’t excuse the other, but people have innate senses of fairness, and for rules to be respected they need to be perceived as being far. (As the old saying goes, people don’t mind paying taxes only because it’s generally believe everyone pays taxes.)

We want and need real humans reviewing App Store apps, but developers need to believe those reviewers are being fair, and applying broadly consistent standards with generally predictable results.

To their credit, Apple is continually improving the App Store review process. Because the process is human, they recognize they can’t always predict all of the edge cases, all of the time. They’ve made changes over the years, sometimes major ones like un-banning the use of cross-compilers, sometimes small ones like un-banning satirical political cartoons.

So far, however, they haven’t changed the policy that affects Dropbox — the requirement that Apple get 30% of all subscriptions, and that apps can’t link to external websites where the same subscriptions can be purchased without Apple getting that cut.

Again, Dropbox knew about it, accidentally broke it, and is now working to fix it. In the meantime, Apple will catch some criticism, both for the policy, and for the way the App Store handles policies. And given the power Apple wields, that kind of ongoing discussion isn’t a bad thing.

Source: Dropbox via @sethclifford