The more Apps that Apple rejects, the less confident many talented developers are going to become about whether Apple will even approve the Apps that are currently being developed, and they might stop bothering to make Apps in the first place.
Actually, the problem is both more subtle and more severe than that : it will "merely" kill innovation on the iPhone platform. But it won't prevent hundreds of "me too" applications to hit the AppStore.
If you want to develop an innovative application, you face some specific difficulties :
- you have a timeframe to meet - innovations that arrives too late just make a flop. The approval process can be slow. It's not predictable either. In the meantime, a similar application can hit the Google Android or Windows Mobile market and kill you.
- you have a huge investment. These applications take a long while to finalize. Moreover, you need real serious skills in your team to build them properly. Time x Money = lot of loses in case of rejection by Apple.
- your application is complex and tests are a real necessity. On normal platforms, that would mean alpha tests, then beta tests, then release candidates *before* it reaches the store. Currently the AppStore is extremelly rigid to the point of making this standard way of doing things very impractical. It's an egg and chicken problem: Apple expects applications to be finalized before they can get published on the store, but you can't finalize any complex application until you have let a significant number of testers use it. Likewise, there is a lot of lag when releasing updated versions of an application - this can't be used for things like nightly builds or the like. There is also no support for trial or time limited versions.
