If RIM gave them no indication of why their keys and access have been revoked, that'd be understandably weird.
However, RIM previously took them out of App World because of privacy and battery life concerns. These are two of the most basic concerns of mobile app users.
If that's why they were permanently yanked from App World this time, RIM is acting in everyone's interest.
Regardless of how viral your company and it's products have become lately, your users should come first.
1) Kik claims to have already submitted a new version of the app that addressed these concerns.
2) The app was already approved and into the store. How is his responsible behavior?
3) How does further disabling Kik’s ability to distribute new versions of the app (by revoking signing keys) help?
4) How does crippling the UX (by disabling push) of the existing install base help anyone? That isn’t, as you say, putting users first! (And I don’t buy that this would improve batter life — this is the whole idea of push, it’s better than long or frequent polling!)
I’d bet this is almost entirely because they see Kik as a competitor to BBM (which it is).
Edited in reply: Removing from the app store is one thing (done ~2 weeks ago). Breaking existing installs for no real good reason is pretty indefensible, IMO.
2) Maybe it was flagged after it was originally approved.
3) I agree. I'm not sure how submitting a BB app works - I assumed the key was at app-level, not company-level, but I've never submitted a BB app before.
4) This is probably related to the battery life issue.
Don't get me wrong - If they kicked it out for being "too similar to BBM", that's a dick move. But if Kik didn't patch their app to sufficiently fix the battery and privacy issues, it makes sense that RIM wouldn't want to officially distribute it.
With your dev license, you get access to RIM's signing service. You can distribute code any way you like, but you have to run it through the signing servers before it will run on a device. To shut you down, they just disable your account. Code that is already signed will run forever.
That's not actually true. You can sign an app without going through RIM; they provide code that does it. (Unlike iPhone, you can just download an app from anywhere on the Internet and install it, as long as somebody has signed it with any key at all.) However, you can't use their push servers without a RIM-signed app, which has apparently been revoked in this case.
Comments
If RIM gave them no indication of why their keys and access have been revoked, that'd be understandably weird.
However, RIM previously took them out of App World because of privacy and battery life concerns. These are two of the most basic concerns of mobile app users.
If that's why they were permanently yanked from App World this time, RIM is acting in everyone's interest.
Regardless of how viral your company and it's products have become lately, your users should come first.
Disagree.
1) Kik claims to have already submitted a new version of the app that addressed these concerns.
2) The app was already approved and into the store. How is his responsible behavior?
3) How does further disabling Kik’s ability to distribute new versions of the app (by revoking signing keys) help?
4) How does crippling the UX (by disabling push) of the existing install base help anyone? That isn’t, as you say, putting users first! (And I don’t buy that this would improve batter life — this is the whole idea of push, it’s better than long or frequent polling!)
I’d bet this is almost entirely because they see Kik as a competitor to BBM (which it is).
Edited in reply: Removing from the app store is one thing (done ~2 weeks ago). Breaking existing installs for no real good reason is pretty indefensible, IMO.
1) Kik claimed. RIM may not have agreed.
2) Maybe it was flagged after it was originally approved.
3) I agree. I'm not sure how submitting a BB app works - I assumed the key was at app-level, not company-level, but I've never submitted a BB app before.
4) This is probably related to the battery life issue.
Don't get me wrong - If they kicked it out for being "too similar to BBM", that's a dick move. But if Kik didn't patch their app to sufficiently fix the battery and privacy issues, it makes sense that RIM wouldn't want to officially distribute it.
I'm not sure how submitting a BB app works
With your dev license, you get access to RIM's signing service. You can distribute code any way you like, but you have to run it through the signing servers before it will run on a device. To shut you down, they just disable your account. Code that is already signed will run forever.
That's not actually true. You can sign an app without going through RIM; they provide code that does it. (Unlike iPhone, you can just download an app from anywhere on the Internet and install it, as long as somebody has signed it with any key at all.) However, you can't use their push servers without a RIM-signed app, which has apparently been revoked in this case.
Right, I forgot, there is a subset of the API that can be used by unsigned code but it's extremely limited.. just UI stuff I think.
> 1) Kik claimed. RIM may not have agreed.
On the other hand, Apple generally doesn't like other people to play fast and loose with their own user's data, yet no peep so far from them?