apple started with a conservative policy -- if an app might be bad to let in, reject it. also a cheap policy: don't hire extra people who might not be needed.
this "conservative" policy let in over 95% of submissions with no trouble. and they had enough manpower to do that in a time frame that is reasonable in the business world (the stories about it taking months are not typical, most apps were approved in under 2 weeks). seeing that situation, how could Apple, or anyone, possibly consider that a failure? that's a very good first iteration. meanwhile, no major disasters happened.
apple is now adjusting their policy for the better. they are reforming it. and they now have the knowledge to do that without anything bad happening.
this is all as it should be. zero cause for complaint from anyone. job well done.
if Apple tried to start with the reformed version, that would not have magically made everything perfect. they would have made just as many initial mistakes implementing any other policy. the difference simply would have been the mistakes did more damage b/c the app approval policy was less cautious in edge cases.
yet people spew a bunch of hate in response to recent reforms!
> As much as I love Apple I have a hard time praising them for doing something they should have done from the start.
reforms should be praised and encouraged!