Full FeedNews Flash: People who approve iPhone apps still morons
Dear Apple: What, exactly, are the qualifications for working as an application reviewer for the iTunes store? Because while you have a great many of brilliant people working as programmers and designers, you seem to have gone to the trouble to have first invented time travel so that you could open a portal to the Victorian era and pass the jobs on to the people who went around covering piano legs so as not to inspire lust in the young lads. By realizing the power of the internet, then the power of wireless connections, Apple, you pulled yourself back from the brink of destruction. You gave the world the iPhone, which gave people unfettered access to the web, using the most amazing mobile browser I’ve seen: Safari for iPhone. And yet you seem to think that the people who buy the damn thing are all Shakers.
I’m thinking we should have a contest to come up with the stupidest reason you’ve yet given for rejecting an iPhone app. We might just have a winner with Eucalyptus, an e-book reader which downloads text files from Project Gutenberg. Project Gutenberg is, of course, an online repository of the most famous literary works in the world, or at least the ones that are in the public domain. It’s all there, free of charge: the works of Shakespeare, Mark Twain, the Bible…
But Eucalyptus has a problem: the people who approve applications for the iTunes stores are morons. Proof: they have rejected Eucalyptus for providing pornographic content, in the form of the Kama Sutra. Yes, that’s right, Apple has decided that their duty is to protect your children from the ancient book of love, which is not included with the application, mind you, but can be downloaded if the user looks for it, just like every other file on Project Gutenberg.
But no, your reviewers have taken valuable time out of their schedule of eating paint chips and breathing through their mouths to explain to the developer of Eucayptus, several times, that you can’t be having no pR0n on the iPhone. Except that, since Project Gutenberg is available freely over the web, you can simply download the files using Safari.
I have to wonder, Apple, what would happen if Safari itself were submitted for approval to the iPhone store. It would almost certainly be rejected in its current form: making explicit, hard core pictures freely available. True, the only video it supports is YouTube, but if the Kama Sutra offends your reviewers, what are they to make of the “age restricted” section of YouTube?
I’m not angry, Apple. You are, after all, only embarrassing yourself. I just want to know, why is your approval process so crazy? Why are some of your reviewers unable to understand the simple logic of what an ebook reader does? Why are applications required to be kid friendly, when you’ve put (almost) the whole internet in our hands?
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I told a bunch of overzealous meatheads that Apple may decide to change their decision on that eReader app and they did. Even umpires can change a decision by having a conference. Apple has that right to make judgment calls. Maybe Apple’s review system has to be fine-tuned. It’s still less than a year since the App Store opened and they’re turning over a lot more apps than any other handset company is, so give ‘em a break.
So I wonder what the next inconsequential complaint will be about. I suppose the rest of the corporate app stores will be perfect and never have to rescind a decision about an app. Dream on. Apple is about as good as you’re gonna get when it comes to a corporate app store.
Apple is not embarrassing itself. They call it as they see it first and then maybe take some time to rethink the situation. A real man can admit he was wrong and change. It’s all part of the learning process.
on May 25, 2009 at 03:55 PM - LINK@ Constable Odo: Apple IS embarrassing itself. It looks unprofessional and incompetent AND it is.
I for one don’t want Apple telling me what I can and can’t read.
on May 25, 2009 at 07:25 PM - LINK