A Mad Magazine contributor has been told by Apple that his iPhone app featuring drawings and contact information of members of the 111th Congress has been rejected because it depicts politicians in an objectionable light.
Richmond's iPhone app in action.
(Credit: Tom Richmond)According to Tom Richmond, who wrote about his app's rejection on his personal blog, his app--dubbed Bobble Rep-111th Congress Edition--in no way should have been construed as objectionable.
Richmond said that the focus of the app was to create a "database of all the members of the United States Congress which allowed the user to find the names and contact information of their senators and congressional representative either via Zip code or by using the iPhone's GPS location services." Rather than use the politicians' individual portraits, the app depicts each senator and representative in caricature form, which Richmond drew himself. All told, the app features 540 caricatures of the politicians.
... Read moreDon Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
First it was Steve Jobs' health. Then it was the layoffs earlier this year. Now the Google Voice rejection. Apple's credibility is being questioned yet again.
Anyone who deals with Apple on a regular basis knows it is a company that gives information on its own terms. But now even the federal government is having problems getting a clear answer regarding Apple's rejection of the Google Voice application for the iPhone.
On July 28, Google announced that the calling and message service application had been rejected from Apple's App Store. Three days later, Google, Apple, and AT&T, the iPhone's exclusive carrier in the U.S., received inquiries from the Federal Communications Commission regarding the app's rejection. In its answer to the FCC, Apple said that the application was not rejected, but was still "under review." In Google's response--the most interesting parts redacted until Friday--it told the FCC that a series of conversations took place between Apple Senior Vice President of Marketing Phil Schiller and Google Senior Vice President of Engineering Alan Eustace during the month of July, including one on July 7, where Schiller told Eustace that Google Voice was being rejected for duplicating the phone dialing function of the iPhone.
The discrepancy between what Google said and what Apple said in their answers to the FCC, of course, leads to many more questions. In response, Apple released the following statement Friday:
"We do not agree with all of the statements made by Google in their FCC letter. Apple has not rejected the Google Voice application and we continue to discuss it with Google."
So basically we have a classic he said, she said situation between two companies known to (formerly?) enjoy a close relationship: Google says it was told the application was rejected, by one of the highest-ranking people at Apple. Apple says the app wasn't rejected. So Apple is either: a) insinuating that Eustace somehow misunderstood what Schiller said, or b) suggesting that Google is lying, or c) being picky about how it's parsing words.
Perhaps "rejected" doesn't mean the same thing to Apple as it does to everyone else. While that sounds kind of silly, quite frankly, it's not outside the realm of possibility of how Apple is thinking. Perhaps Apple is planning to formalize such a category of App Store approval status where applications are neither approved nor rejected. Other applications have languished for months, but their developers have been unclear on what has caused the delay.
It's not impossible, of course, that Google misunderstood, or is itself misleading the FCC, though it's unclear why that would be. Especially since at the point when Google initially said Google Voice was rejected by Apple, Google CEO Eric Schmidt was still sitting on Apple's board of directors. (He has since resigned.) But this is also not the first time there's been the perception that Apple has been less than forthcoming on important matters.
Who could forget the uproar over Jobs' physical appearance last summer and his top spokesperson's response that he was "suffering from a common bug"? It came out later that he was having serious medical problems that resulted in a liver transplant earlier this year.
In March, when rumors swirled that some sales employees got laid off, Apple representatives denied the reports. The people who lost their jobs later came forward to confirm the reports.
And just last week, observers of the company wondered if Jobs purposely misled The New York Times when he told them they did not put a camera in the iPod Touch because it didn't make sense for customers--speculation that heightened after a tear-down revealed space for a camera sensor in the updated design.
Apple has a lot of sway in several industries and makes products that people like. But customer confidence in your ability to be forthcoming is important, especially when it comes to making a successful sales pitch for, say, an iPod Touch sans camera, when there could be a new model with a camera coming soon that's just been delayed because of manufacturing problems.
But there's also the reality that a lot of customers just flat out don't care. Apple has a particularly loyal fan base, and to date the company's bottom line hasn't shown distaste for deception or misleading information.
Frustrated programmers have highlighted what they believe to be double standards, strange policies, and flip-flopping among Apple's App Store guards.
Several developers whose applications have been rejected from the store, which hosts third-party software developed for the iPhone and iPod Touch, have published their correspondence with Apple.
Apple's rejections of apps accused of infringing a patent or copyright make sense to most industry insiders. But some App Store rejections have raised quite a few eyebrows.
In an attempt to highlight--and perhaps make some sense of--a few of the more questioned rejections, I've compiled a list of those that caused me to scratch my head.
The shock starts here
CastCatcher
CastCatcher is still in the App Store.
(Credit: R7 Developers)Apple wrote in a letter to CastCatcher's developer, Amro Mousa, that the application's update was rejected because it transferred "excessive volumes of data over the cellular network." Mousa was a little perplexed by Apple's decision to suddenly deny the application access to the store, considering that the new version of the app didn't transfer more data than previous, approved versions. Worst of all, Mousa said, his app was using the same amount of data as competing streaming-radio applications.
Current status: Eventually, Mousa and Apple were able to reach a middle ground, and new versions of the application were allowed into the App Store. CastCatcher 1.4.4 is currently offered in Apple's store for $1.99.
Eucalyptus
Eucalyptus, an e-book reader app, was denied access to Apple's App Store after the company found that it allowed users to read the Kama Sutra. The ancient book on sexuality was downloaded from Project Gutenberg, which the app used to acquire books.
In a letter sent to Eucalyptus developers, Apple said that the app was denied because it gave users access to "objectionable" material. If the developers removed the Kama Sutra from its book listings, Apple would have allowed the app into the Store.
Current status: After having some discussions with Apple, a Eucalyptus developer wrote on the company's blog that Apple had relented and would allow the full version of the app, Kama Sutra and all, into the App Store. It's currently available for $9.99.
FreedomTime
Freedom Time takes on former President Bush.
(Credit: Screenshot by Don Reisinger/CNET)The app featured President Bush on an analog clock as it counted down until President Barack Obama's inauguration. When users clicked on the President's body, it played so-called "truthisms," clips from speeches President Bush had given about leaving office.
Apple rejected the application on the grounds that it was "defaming, demeaning, or attacking political figures." That's an App Store no-no, evidently.
Current status: FreedomTime is still not available in the App Store. In its place, a Web site has been built to countdown the number of days former President Bush has been out of office.
... Read moreDon Reisinger is a technology columnist who has written about everything from HDTVs to computers to Flowbee Haircut Systems. Don is a member of the CNET Blog Network, and posts at The Digital Home. He is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
Since this report was published, Apple has decided to approve the app for the App Store. Read the updated story here.
Updated at 3:10 p.m. PDT with comment from Tweetie developer.
Remember the time your mom withheld your dessert because you said a bad word? Apple is doing something along those lines, with one major difference: it's because a bad word has been heard in the neighborhood.
Tweetie won't be getting an update, at least not right now, due to the Trends report above.
(Credit: twitpic)According to iLounge, Apple has rejected version 1.3 of Tweetie, the popular Twitter client application for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The reason? An offensive word appeared in Twitter's Trends data.
Somewhat similar to Google Trends, Twitter's Trends is a list of the most frequently used topics or words on Twitter at any given moment. This means this live list of words/topics changes constantly (I checked it just now and the offensive word--which starts with an "F," by the way--has gone). Yet, somehow it still bothers Apple enough to take action.
It seems that Apple, as a matter of policy, does not comment on the approval process for Apple applications. We have, however, contacted the company, and will update this post if we hear back.
In an e-mail to CNET News, however, Tweetie developer Loren Brichter said Apple quoted this part of the company's guidelines as a reason for the decision:
"Applications must not contain any obscene, pornographic, offensive, or defamatory content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, etc.), or other content or materials that in Apple's reasonable judgement may be found objectionable by iPhone or iPod Touch users."
"The question then becomes whether is it an individual app's responsibility to censor everything it gets from the Internet," Brichter said. "Twitter themselves create the "top trends" list; Tweetie just displays it. The consensus is pretty much that it would be ridiculous to expect that.
"At the same time," the developer added, "this could have been just a goof on Apple's part. The App Store is still very young, they're working out the kinks."
Here's the long list of improvements in Tweetie 1.3 that all you naughty Twitterers with iPhones and iPod Touches are gonna miss out on--at least for now:
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