Thought Palace» Blog Archive » Apple Never Promised Us It Wouldn’t Be Evil

SIDEBAR

»
S
I
D
E
B
A
R
«

§ Categories

Computers (96)
Fiction (24)
Games (21)
Humor (26)
Ideas (32)
Languages (15)
Me (44)
Music (12)
Peer-to-Peer (2)
Social Software (29)
Uncategorized (4)
Web (23)

§ Me, Elsewhere

On February 6, 2012

snej listened to Pleasures of the Flesh by Pain Teens Born in Blood @ 2012-02-07 03:05 (and 39 more …)
snej listened to Dissolution 1 by Earth Sunn Amps and Smashed Guitars Live @ 2012-02-07 02:54
snej listened to Pale on Pale by Chelsea Wolfe Apokalypsis @ 2012-02-07 02:47
snej listened to Lacrimosa by Ufomammut Snailking @ 2012-02-07 02:40
snej listened to How to Get Bigger by Made Out of Babies The Ruiner @ 2012-02-07 02:34
snej listened to Scapegoat by Kylesa Static Tensions @ 2012-02-07 02:27
snej listened to Settle Here by Harkonen Shake Harder Boy @ 2012-02-07 02:22
snej listened to Fermion by graviton Massless @ 2012-02-07 02:19
snej listened to Dissolution 1 by Earth Sunn Amps and Smashed Guitars Live @ 2012-02-07 01:51
snej listened to Room of Vertigo by Dysrhythmia Psychic Maps @ 2012-02-07 01:42
snej listened to Red by King Crimson The Concise King Crimson @ 2012-02-07 01:34
snej listened to Bow by Julie Christmas @ 2012-02-07 01:28
snej listened to Dead Between the Walls by Pelican City of Echoes @ 2012-02-07 01:23
snej listened to The Revenge of Cruiser Gurner by DUSTdevils Struggling Electric + Chemical @ 2012-02-07 01:19
snej listened to LAKE ODESSA by Cole Pierce @ 2012-02-07 01:05
snej listened to LAKE ODESSA by Cole Pierce @ 2012-02-07 00:51
snej listened to Resolution by Mahavishnu Orchestra Birds Of Fire @ 2012-02-06 22:49
snej listened to Sanctuary by Mahavishnu Orchestra Birds Of Fire @ 2012-02-06 22:44
snej listened to One Word by Mahavishnu Orchestra Birds Of Fire @ 2012-02-06 22:34
snej listened to Hope by Mahavishnu Orchestra Birds Of Fire @ 2012-02-06 22:32
snej listened to Thousand Island Park by Mahavishnu Orchestra Birds Of Fire @ 2012-02-06 22:28
snej listened to Celestial Terrestrial Commuters by Mahavishnu Orchestra Birds Of Fire @ 2012-02-06 22:25
snej listened to Miles Beyond by Mahavishnu Orchestra Birds Of Fire @ 2012-02-06 22:21
snej listened to Birds Of Fire by Mahavishnu Orchestra Birds Of Fire @ 2012-02-06 22:15
snej listened to Out... by Made Out of Babies Trophy @ 2012-02-06 20:29
snej listened to Wounded Rhino by Made Out of Babies Trophy @ 2012-02-06 20:25
snej listened to Pirate by Made Out of Babies Trophy @ 2012-02-06 20:21
snej listened to Swarm by Made Out of Babies Trophy @ 2012-02-06 20:18
snej listened to Lullaby No. 2 by Made Out of Babies Trophy @ 2012-02-06 20:17
snej listened to Sugar by Made Out of Babies Trophy @ 2012-02-06 20:13
snej listened to Gut Shoveler by Made Out of Babies Trophy @ 2012-02-06 20:09
snej listened to Lullaby No. 1 by Made Out of Babies Trophy @ 2012-02-06 20:07
snej listened to Ire Fire by Made Out of Babies Trophy @ 2012-02-06 20:04
snej listened to Ire Fire by Made Out of Babies Trophy @ 2012-02-06 20:04
snej listened to El Morgan by Made Out of Babies Trophy @ 2012-02-06 19:58
snej listened to Loosey Goosey by Made Out of Babies Trophy @ 2012-02-06 19:55
snej listened to Herculoid by Made Out of Babies Trophy @ 2012-02-06 19:51
snej listened to Part III by Sol Rezza The existence of the light @ 2012-02-06 19:42
snej listened to Part II by Sol Rezza The existence of the light @ 2012-02-06 19:38
snej listened to Part I by Sol Rezza The existence of the light @ 2012-02-06 19:34

On February 5, 2012

On February 4, 2012

snej listened to Tombant by Biosphere @ 2012-02-05 07:11 (and 18 more …)
snej listened to Inverse by Biosphere @ 2012-02-05 07:06
snej listened to Inverse by Biosphere @ 2012-02-05 07:05
snej listened to Disparu by Biosphere @ 2012-02-05 07:03
snej listened to Circulaire by Biosphere @ 2012-02-05 06:57
snej listened to Deviation by Biosphere @ 2012-02-05 06:46
snej listened to Vibratoire by Biosphere @ 2012-02-05 06:43
snej listened to Rotation by Biosphere @ 2012-02-05 06:31
snej listened to Translation by Biosphere @ 2012-02-05 06:09
snej listened to Part IV by Sol Rezza The existence of the light @ 2012-02-05 05:53
snej listened to Part III by Sol Rezza The existence of the light @ 2012-02-05 05:45
snej listened to Solex Feels Lucky by Solex Solex vs. The Hitmeister @ 2012-02-05 05:38
snej listened to One Louder Solex by Solex Solex vs. The Hitmeister @ 2012-02-05 05:34
snej listened to Part IV by Sol Rezza The existence of the light @ 2012-02-05 05:29
snej listened to Part III by Sol Rezza The existence of the light @ 2012-02-05 05:21
snej listened to Part II by Sol Rezza The existence of the light @ 2012-02-05 05:17
snej listened to Part I by Sol Rezza The existence of the light @ 2012-02-05 05:13
snej listened to La existencia de la luz - The existence of the light. by Sol Rezza @ 2012-02-05 05:05
snej listened to La existencia de la luz - The existence of the light. by Sol Rezza @ 2012-02-05 05:02

On February 3, 2012

On February 2, 2012

On February 1, 2012

snej listened to Inescapable by Cranes Wings Of Joy @ 2012-02-02 06:47 (and 16 more …)
snej listened to Pleasures of the Flesh by Pain Teens Born in Blood @ 2012-02-02 06:39
snej listened to Zelzah by Medicine Sounds of Medicine @ 2012-02-02 06:32
snej listened to Cooker by Made Out of Babies The Ruiner @ 2012-02-02 06:19
snej listened to Charlotte by Kittie Brackish @ 2012-02-02 06:16
snej listened to Cover the Windows and the Walls by Grouper Cover the Windows and the Walls @ 2012-02-02 05:31
snej listened to Poison Tree by Grouper Inca Ore / Grouper @ 2012-02-02 05:28
snej listened to demona (dead moon cover) by Grouper @ 2012-02-02 05:24
snej listened to Theta by Talvihorros Descent Into Delta @ 2012-02-02 02:05
snej listened to Theta by Talvihorros Descent Into Delta @ 2012-02-02 01:55
snej listened to Alpha by Talvihorros Descent Into Delta @ 2012-02-02 01:45
snej listened to Beta by Talvihorros Descent Into Delta @ 2012-02-02 01:37
snej listened to Gamma by Talvihorros Descent Into Delta @ 2012-02-02 01:34
snej listened to Thee Cult of Henry Flynt by Pyramids/Horseback @ 2012-02-02 01:26
snej listened to Phaedra's Love by Pyramids/Horseback @ 2012-02-02 01:19
snej listened to I Love You by Jason Urick @ 2012-02-02 01:09
snej listened to The World Looks Red by DJ sneJ @ 2012-02-01 23:21

On January 31, 2012

On January 30, 2012

snej listened to Orbit by mon0 @ 2012-01-31 02:12 (and 7 more …)
snej listened to Distant reality by mon0 @ 2012-01-31 01:38
snej listened to SUMMERSHINE SMILEY by Astrobrite Whitenoisesuperstar @ 2012-01-30 22:51
snej listened to GODDESS by Astrobrite Whitenoisesuperstar @ 2012-01-30 22:45
snej listened to AMOROTIC ZOOM by Astrobrite Whitenoisesuperstar @ 2012-01-30 22:40
snej listened to Vanillablue by Astrobrite Whitenoisesuperstar @ 2012-01-30 19:51
snej listened to Cherryflavorburst by Astrobrite Whitenoisesuperstar @ 2012-01-30 18:29
snej listened to Whitenoisesuperstar by Astrobrite Whitenoisesuperstar @ 2012-01-30 18:23

On January 29, 2012

snej listened to Fireye Goodbye by Astrobrite Whitenoisesuperstar @ 2012-01-30 04:18 (and 15 more …)
snej listened to VALENTINA GALAXINA by Astrobrite Whitenoisesuperstar @ 2012-01-30 04:16
snej listened to SUMMERSHINE SMILEY by Astrobrite Whitenoisesuperstar @ 2012-01-30 04:10
snej listened to GODDESS by Astrobrite Whitenoisesuperstar @ 2012-01-30 04:05
snej listened to GODDESS by Astrobrite Whitenoisesuperstar @ 2012-01-30 04:04
snej listened to AMOROTIC ZOOM by Astrobrite Whitenoisesuperstar @ 2012-01-30 03:59
snej listened to Dragonfly Pinkyfuzz by Astrobrite Whitenoisesuperstar @ 2012-01-30 03:55
snej listened to Vanillablue by Astrobrite Whitenoisesuperstar @ 2012-01-30 03:49
snej listened to Cherryflavorburst by Astrobrite Whitenoisesuperstar @ 2012-01-30 03:44
snej listened to Whitenoisesuperstar by Astrobrite Whitenoisesuperstar @ 2012-01-30 03:38
snej listened to Flim by Aphex Twin Come to Daddy EP @ 2012-01-30 01:29
snej listened to delta blues by Antique Shade @ 2012-01-30 00:39
snej listened to cooper union by Antique Shade @ 2012-01-30 00:36
snej listened to return of the fly by Antique Shade @ 2012-01-30 00:33
snej listened to Mothman To Mothman by Antique Shade @ 2012-01-30 00:31
snej listened to moody by Antique Shade @ 2012-01-30 00:26

On January 28, 2012

snej listened to Cole Pierce Mix - LAKE ODESSA by Headphone Commute @ 2012-01-29 04:56 (and 8 more …)
snej listened to Melanine by Tycho Dive @ 2012-01-29 03:06
snej listened to Ascension by Tycho Dive @ 2012-01-29 03:05
snej listened to Ascension by Tycho Dive @ 2012-01-29 03:02
snej listened to Coastal Brake by Tycho Dive @ 2012-01-29 02:56
snej listened to Dive by Tycho Dive @ 2012-01-29 02:48
snej listened to Daydream by Tycho Dive @ 2012-01-29 02:43
snej listened to Hours by Tycho Dive @ 2012-01-29 02:37
snej listened to A Walk by Tycho Dive @ 2012-01-29 02:32

§ Meta

Apple Never Promised Us It Wouldn’t Be Evil

May 22nd, 2009 by jens

Comments Feed

Here is the latest absurdity to come out of Apple’s deeply, endemically fucked-up App Store approval process: Jamie Montgomerie’s Eucalyptus app, an e-book reader that can download public-domain books from Project Gutenberg—about the most innocuous thing you could imagine, right?—gets rejected not once but three times for containing “obscene, pornographic, offensive or defamatory content”.

Leaving aside the issue of whether Apple has any business deciding what constitutes obscenity (a task that’s driven grown Supreme Court justices to drink)—
And leaving aside also the fact that Apple’s censors have three times now been too dim to comprehend that the application does not contain any books, obscene or otherwise, but downloads them from the Internet much like Safari—
No, the really outrageous issue is that the supposed obscenity here consists of a text-only English translation of the Kama Sutra. Apple specifically called out some pages of steamy advice for “when a man wishes to enlarge his lingam“. (No, really.) [1]

Now, Richard Burton had to get his 1883 translation of this ancient text printed privately when no publishers would accept it, but that was in the Victorian era. The current authoritative translation is nowadays published by that infamous smut peddler, Oxford University Press. Much harder-core fare like Ulysses and Lady Chatterley’s Lover—books which go so far as to use recognizable English names of the naughty bits—were judged after some controversy to be free of obscenity in the 1930s. By 1970 the obscenity statutes had been lifted from nearly all printed material, and nowadays anything goes—take a look at some of the e-books available for sale on the iTunes store.

Montgomerie has now, humiliatingly, been driven to self-censorship: his latest message to Apple states “I have now submitted a new version that specifically blocks access to the Kama Sutra book you identified. Is this what you mean?”

[Update, May 24: Mongomerie reports that on the 23rd he “received a phone call from an Apple representative. He was very complimentary about Eucalyptus.” The whole matter was, of course, resolved, and Eucalyptus is now available for purchase. A happy ending, certainly, and congratulations on the release! ...But I don’t believe it invalidates my argument below. After all, this isn’t the first time an outrageous rejection has been reversed after mass humiliation of Apple. It’s the overall default policies and behaviors, and their chilling effects, that I’m complaining about, and there’s still no sign of those changing.]

The “E” word.

I don’t think anyone but a card-carrying member of the Christian Coalition or Taliban would disagree that this was a stupid decision on Apple’s part. (And it was a considered decision, not a ‘glitch in the approval process’, given that Apple repeated it twice.)

I feel the need to step up to a stronger word. How does evil sound?

Hear me out. I’m not talking “evil” as in killing babies or nuclear blackmail, rather in the sense it’s meant in Google’s corny motto “Don’t Be Evil”, or alluded to in the older proverb “With great power comes great responsibility”. But yes, I do mean “evil” as malign, the opposite of good, etc. etc.

Last year Apple put itself into an ethically very delicate situation with the App Store, by creating a market in which it has the sole power to make 3rd party software available (or to take it away). As has been amply discussed before, iPhone developers have no choice (if they want to be iPhone developers) but to put tremendous effort into developing the product, only finding out at the very end whether or not Apple will let it be sold.[2]

There are definitely some good reasons for such a model, primarily that it helps keep the platform secure from malware, and that by preventing piracy it allows developers to collect a lot more revenues per user, allowing them to set prices far lower than those in other software markets.

But in return Apple had the obligation to be very, very careful to be ethical, upright and transparent in its dealings with developers and the public, to minimize the dangers (of censorship, of conflicts of interest, of stifling innovation) inherent in its position.

And being Apple, it completely and utterly fucked it up. Because it’s in Apple’s genetic code to be about as transparent as a lead brick. This has always annoyed the press, and it has frequently enraged developers, who suffer from the consequences of blank silence from Apple in between carefully-scripted WWDC keynotes and PR-scrubbed announcements. But in the context of the App Store, Apple’s inscrutability and arbitrariness has become actively malign.

Evil is as evil does.

I’m not saying that Apple is evil; it isn’t run by bluestockings or monopolists or cackling supervillains. But evil is a result of what you do [3], and actions are not excused by good intentions; in the real world those who do evil (excepting psychopaths) uniformly believe they’re working for the good.

Apple’s App Store approval process has, over the past year, shown that the company is:

acting like a Victorian-era book censor;
quashing competition by blocking apps that improve on Apple’s products;
blocking innovation by denying 3rd party apps access to the user’s legally-owned data (such as MP3s);
attempting to deny end-users the freedom to do what they want with the hardware they bought and paid for (viz. its current efforts to have jailbreaking declared illegal);
and causing undue hardship to small developers by arbitrarily withholding their ability to sell the apps they’ve developed.

Nor has Apple engaged in the slightest bit of dialog with its developers and users to work through any of these issues. The best that’s happened is that, after much public ridicule, Apple has without comment released some apps that it had previously blocked.

Maybe you think “evil” is too strong or melodramatic or exaggerated a word for this. Then feel free to substitute something that has fewer loaded connotations to you—“unethical” or “anticompetitive” or whatever. But if you’re one of those who, like me, has applied the “e” word to the past actions of Microsoft, or to groups that try to ban books from libraries, then I think there’s really no option but to use the same blunt language here and now.

[1] By these standards, Apple should have banned its own Mail app, too. It sends me these kind of lingam-enlargment messages all the time.

[2] This is arguably worse than the console video-game industry’s similar monopoly on approving games, because those companies listen to developer pitches up-front before development. (Also, this kind of restraint is much nastier when applied to all types of software, including books, than just to games.)

[3] This semantic distinction is one I’m not sure Google gets either. “Don’t Do Evil” would have been a better motto. But in its defense, Google does in practice seem to understand its responsibilities and is admirably open about its actions.

22 Responses

chucker23n (LJ) writes:
May 22nd, 200910:26 AMat

Just a minor niggle:

[T]he company is [..] blocking innovation by denying 3rd party apps access to the user’s legally-owned data (such as MP3s);

That may be currently the case, but is presumably a temporary issue — after all, one of the major new features of 3.0’s SDK is iPod media library access, so if Apple previously blocked such applications, they were probably trying to say “please wait for us to introduce a proper API instead of rolling your own”, though, due to their secrecy which you’ve mentioned, they unfortunately failed to state it in such an open, direct way.
Jens Alfke writes:
May 22nd, 200911:07 AMat

@chucker23n — Dang, I knew someone was going to bring that up, so I was going to footnote it, but I forgot. Here’s the footnote:

The iPod API in OS 3 doesn’t provide access to the MP3 data. It just lets apps drive the iPod app, by reading the basic metadata of the tracks in the library, and telling the iPod to play them.

This is a big difference, and precludes apps from processing the waveforms (crossfading, adding effects, remixing), analyzing the sound (like Tangerine on Mac OS), adding or removing tracks (like Amazon or eMusic’s downloaders on Mac), etc.

The apps don’t have real access to the user’s own music files, any more than you have access to the records inside a jukebox at the diner.
ssp writes:
May 22nd, 200911:36 AMat

I might be willing to agree to your point on the potential good sides of a locked down device “primarily that it helps keep the platform secure from malware” _if_ Apple guaranteed me as their paying customer that no application I download does that. But they’re too scared / incompetent to do that. Instead Apple went for the lose-lose setup: no freedom for programmers, no benefits for users.

Thus my guess is that the cost of getting some malware into Apple’s store should be roughly the cost of an iPhone developer programme membership…

Let’s hope for more competent competitors in the near future. If markets worked they could offer more user and developer friendly devices.
Bob writes:
May 22nd, 200912:36 PMat

We should organise a campaign to send copies of that book to Apple.
Dan Hallock writes:
May 22nd, 200912:49 PMat

I suggest a distinction: Apple is being stupid. An App Store reviewer is being evil.

There’s ample precedent at this point for them to reverse idiotic app rejections once they get attention, and there’s no reason to think that won’t happen with Eucalyptus. Those repeated instances of app rejections being reversed indicate that this is a poorly applied policy, rather than an outright attempt by Apple as an organization to root out all apps with any potentially lewd usage. It may be a semantic distinction, but I think it’s an important one.
Jens Alfke writes:
May 22nd, 200912:59 PMat

@Dan — The distinction between an organization and its members is a complicated one. If this were an isolated case and had been resolved quickly, I would agree with you. But these arbitrary rejections have been going on ever since the App Store opened, making it obvious that the process is broken, and Apple hasn’t done anything about it.

In that case, when an organization’s policies tacitly allow this kind of abuse and there’s no competent oversight of the abusers, the blame spreads upwards and taints the whole organization.
Joe Zydeco writes:
May 22nd, 20091:10 PMat

I can think of an API case worse than the iTunes library: Mail.

If I wanted to write an app that accessed the mailbox, even in read-only fashion, I can’t do it. I could write my own IMAP/POP3 client and slurp the mail directly from the users’s server, but then the app would get rejected for duplicating the functionality of the native Mail app.

At this point I’d kill for even a “jukebox” API to work with the mailbox.
Dan Hallock writes:
May 22nd, 20091:16 PMat

Okay. I think I agree with your principle, and I’m not here to defend their rejection of Eucalyptus; they are insanely, completely, and blitheringly in the wrong on this. It’s just that so far, my experience has told me that Apple corrects the things I dislike about them, it just takes time. So I’m not ready to attribute that taint all the way up, just yet. But I understand if you are. Certainly I’m watching them more warily (and wearily) than should be needed.
dave writes:
May 22nd, 20091:59 PMat

@Dan - you’ve got the distinction right.

Apple are stupid for putting this sort of power in the hands of a single app store reviewer. There are documented cases of application submissions that are rejected, re-submitted unmodified, only to be accepted into the store by a different reviewer.

Every developer who had written anything mobile jumped with joy when they no longer had to get carrier permission to get onto a handset. None of them realised that the situation would be replaced with the random, fucked-up crap-shoot that is the App Store approval process.

I would expect this to improve over time, also with the addition of parental controls, however I also expected the App Store browse/search interface to improve, and that never happened. It started to suffer when there were 350 apps in the store - with 35,000 it is unusable.
Sam writes:
May 22nd, 20093:22 PMat

I am glad that finally a notable developer is speaking up about this utter crap Apple is doing here. The iPhone/iPod Touch is such a wonderful platform (for users and developers), but all these restrictions really start to annoy people (also users). In fact this whole exclusive carrier and simlock thing is another component of this restriction trend. There are a ton of simlocked iPhones which are uncharged, unused and covered with a huge amount of dust - their owners are just normal users. They would use their used-ebay-iPhones and buy stuff in the AppStore (which is good for developers and for Apple), but they are less tech-savy then we are and thus didn’t jailbreak and unlock their phones (and they wont do it)…

Apple HAS to change this restriction course - otherwise projects like Ubuntu and Android might overtake in 5 years and Apple might loose even it’s strongest supporters.

This anti-competetive-policy even applies to their downloads section. I read about at least one case, where a developer team stopped working on the iPhone version of their app because Apple didn’t even verify their desktop app: http://blog.fruux.com/2008/12/16/fruux-and-the-desktop-appstore/
howsthisforanidea writes:
May 22nd, 200910:21 PMat

So the APPLE platform is a dictatorship. Get over it. Lets buy another phone and either develop or use an app for a more open platform. Or is the price of being a fashion victim that high (note - i am writing this on a Mac, so i am not anti apple, just anti stupid things).
xilun writes:
May 22nd, 200911:49 PMat

Oh my god! The iPhone platform is crippled by DRMs and Apple totalitarism and is worse than just proprietary software. What a news!
The thing is the typical iPhone user doesn’t give a shit about all that. He got one because it’s cool and fashion and so over. And he just buy whatever Apple wants to let him buy, because well, that’s not like he has the choice. He even think the central repository of applications is an Apple innovation.
What you can do? Nothing. If you have a bright idea to painlessly steal their money from the sheeps in a blessed way do it. Otherwise forget about the iPhone and move along — too much thinking about DRM crippled platforms and voluntary enslavement is bad for the nerves.
Drunken Economist writes:
May 23rd, 200912:46 AMat

With all due respect-

- You’re putting too much thought into this. Apple outsourced the review process to some place that is very cheap and Victorian. Care to guess where?

- The Kama Sutra thing is the sticking point for the reviewer. Somebody pissed in his curry…

- Because these reviewers factor into the profit model, Apple isn’t going to change the process unless they are shamed enough that the stock price dips 5% or more.

So to review: It literally is the Kama Sutra and one offended reviewer. Outsourcing, no matter how well hidden by the main vendor, sucks; and only shame powerful enough to influence the stock price, the only thing the MBAs care about anyway will effect ‘change’..

I really think the author should release on Cydia, just to shame Apple. I also think this story should be pushed to CNBC, because of course the douches who are sitting in for SJobs watch that.

Nothing could be finer than Jim Cramer calling you a douchbag on national TV.
Pierre Lebeaupin writes:
May 23rd, 20095:01 AMat

Hmm… if it hadn’t been done to death already (and I had any talent for that), I’d make a new spoof of the 1984 ad: “Today, we celebrate the glorious anniversary of the iPhone application purification commitee… secure from the malware…” etc.
Mr. Reeee writes:
May 23rd, 20097:22 AMat

Dan is correct:
“I suggest a distinction: Apple is being stupid. An App Store reviewer is being evil.”

If you look at it, out of 35,000+ apps released in the App Store, only a few have been rejected. AND it seems that the pace has accelerated and the profile of these rejections risen lately.

I bet there is some church lady app review who is red pencilling apps which offend his/her delicate sensibilities.

Here’s MY theory:
On the other hand, Apple is the MASTER of manipulating the press. It’s very interesting that suddenly every rejection has boiled over into a little tornado of “headlines”.

Apple is due to release the iPhone/iPod touch OS 3.0 update very soon.
Apple wants to sell $10 upgrades to 16 million+ iPod touch owners.

So, instead of making ads for new features in an OS upgrade… high snooze-factor and Apple NEVER advertises features. Parental Controls? Who wants to watch an ad about THAT?

Why not get the press to create an emotional firestorm by rejecting a few apps and drumming up some emotional outrage? Crank up the fear factor.

Apple is hitting all the bases with their “selections”, too!
Baby Shaker, Trent “Washed Up” Reznor, Kama Sutra… evil from the 60’s reemerges…

There are BAD apps and DIRTY words and SEX that poor little children could download from the App Store. OMFG!

And there you go, millions of iPhone and iPod touch owners are suddenly aware of a new OS 3.0 upgrade and that you NEED these new features to protect innocent eyes and ears!

$16,000,000.00+ ain’t chump change, either!
Neil Anderson writes:
May 23rd, 200911:35 AMat

Looking forward to the 3.0 upgrade.
Thomas W writes:
May 24th, 20093:36 AMat

It looks like Apple finally reversed their decision, but it just underlines the fact that the process is broken. http://www.macworld.com/article/140764/2009/05/eucalyptus.html
Jens Alfke writes:
May 24th, 20099:46 AMat

@ howsthisforanidea — I wouldn’t be yelling about it if I didn’t at heart love Apple and the iPhone platform. The problem with more open alternatives is that, to put it bluntly, they suck. I own an Android phone, and after an hour of playing with it I put it back in the box, where it remains. It’s pretty good compared to other cellphones, but it still sucks compared to iPhone and I have no desire to use or develop for it.

I don’t want to give up and go to some mediocre platform. I want Apple to come to its senses and fix its processes, and widespread shaming and condemnation is one way to go about that.
Jens Alfke writes:
May 24th, 20099:55 AMat

@Drunken Economist — I think we’re in agreement, basically. As I said, I don’t think Apple has a policy to ban naughty language. What it does have is a policy that’s overly vague (what does “offensive” mean exactly?), coupled with an approval process that’s completely opaque, wide open to abuse by individual reviewers, and without any formal means of redress. In these circumstances, the blame for the individual bad actions flows upstairs to the level at which these policies are created and enforced.

(I’ve been trying to avoid comparisons with Abu Ghraib, because the difference in magnitude is so ludicrously huge. But it does show the same basic moral principle I’m describing.)
Matt Carrell writes:
July 7th, 20093:52 AMat

In all reality, I think all this discussion is a moot point. The very limited number of unfair rejections that have become public pales in comparison to the vast number of apps which were appropriately accepted. Keep it in perspective how few problems really exist in comparison to how many developers did not experience problems and this “issue” really isn’t as big as you’re blowing it up to be. This is a lot like a newspaper front page headline saying “OMFG there were 1500 traffic fatalities nationwide last year - up 5% from previous year” when the cold and indifferent truth underlying the article that isn’t mentioned is that there were 10% more new drivers on the road from the previous year, so in terms of the ratio of fatal accidents to total number of drivers, the fatalities per driver ratio actually FELL. This is a typical ploy used in politics and media to hype up something out of not much or in fact nothing.

When the truth is that 50,000 apps have been approved, a few hundred crappy apps that deserved rejection were and maybe 10 apps were unfairly rejected and got high profile whine-bag express treatment in the blogosphere, I would have to say looking at this a little less microscopically, this “issue” is mostly just a bunch of whining here people. So there is one bad reviewer in Bangalor Valley. Apple will end up firing them with enough complaints and embarassments. OK PEOPLE, NOTHING TO SEE HERE.. MOVE ALONG…

» Substance:WordPress » Style:Ahren Ahimsa