Is Apple's App Store Out of Control?

Has Apple's App Store become too unwieldy?

Critics of the App Store say Apple's App approval process is too loose and that many apps are approved without being certified or tested.

With more than 100,000 apps now available for the iPhone, another 10,000 are submitted each week, according to Phil Schiller, Apple senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, who defended the Apple App approval process in an interview with Business Week.

"We've built a store for the most part that people can trust," Schiller told the magazine. "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."

But as the Washington Posts's TechCrunch.com noted recently, sometimes users don't get what they expect. The "Google Wave" application that was available last week on the App Store was not built, authorized or endorsed by Google, according to the newspaper.

The faux Google Wave app was apparently developed by CLapps, a one-person firm that notes, "I have no connection with Google or Google Wave but just supply a means by which to use it on your iPhone," according to the Post.

Still, Apple's Schiller defends the approval process, noting that 90 percent of app submissions are rejected, often sent back to fix bugs or errors, according to the Business Week article.

Some submitted applications are even intended to steal personal data or help the user break the law, Schiller said in the article.

""Whatever your favorite retailer is, of course they care about the quality of products they offer," according to Schiller. "We review the applications to make sure they work as the customers expect them to work when they download them."

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