Daring Fireball: A Moment of Clarity Regarding the Raison d’Etre for the App Store

But more than anything I worry that this exemplifies where Apple has lost its way with the App Store. What exactly is the point of running a strict approval process for apps if not, first and foremost, to ensure that they’re good apps? An iPad email app that doesn’t support split-screen multitasking for five years is, by definition, not a good app.

Listen, I’m not going to suggest Apple should have blocked Gmail from the App Store if they didn’t implement split screen. I do think this is a great example of why the “Apple demands great user experiences” argument from last month about the details of Hey’s onboarding didn’t really land with me. Yeah, Hey didn’t implement IAP the way Apple wanted, but Google hasn’t supported a core iPad feature that’s been around for 5 years (YouTube’s lack of PiP says hello too).