What's the line from Dark Knight? Every hero either dies young, or lives long enough to become the villain. The older I get, the more I see that pattern replicated.
Apple seems to have drifted away from it's carefully trod line of empowering and protecting users into the realm of protecting users from themselves.
I tend to think that Apple signed some of it's soul away when making media deals and situations like this may be a part of those legal agreements.
Not to troll but I think Microsoft started focusing on it's business to business dealings more than on it's users at one point and eventually became what it did.
Unfortunately this is a common pattern for successful corporations. I wonder if it is driven purely by fear (of lawsuit?) or by the types of executives you get when you reach a certain size.
I don't think what you and others are implying is the case at all, I think it's pretty clear that the app store is being mismanaged and that the approval process is severely broken, but I don't think Apple is imposing it's oppressive will upon the masses. If that were the case, I think they would be more consistent.
I guess the real question is, did the other ebook readers currently in the App Store that allow access to the same material slip through the cracks, or was this a case of an over zealous App Store employee making a mistake?
You can disable Safari with iPhone's restrictions. Apparently the new 3.0 firmware will allow apps to be rated Explicit and restricted like music. Once the new firmware is released, these stories will probably go away (or be replaced with stories about apps being unfairly marked as explicit).
Since the rejection is based on the results of a search, it looks like a deliberate attempt to torpedo the review process - maybe on the basis that they don't want users going to content that isn't monetizable?
Perhaps a good response would be to put apple on the spot by 'complaining' that Safari (or some other iPhone app) gives access to salacious parts of the Bible or some other cultural shibboleth. With cases like these, Apple is setting themselves up for a class action suit or FTC review. Given that people pay for the development tools, these kind of rejections seem like a deliberate restraint of trade.
Since the rejection is based on the results of a search, it looks like a deliberate attempt to torpedo the review process - maybe on the basis that they don't want users going to content that isn't monetizable?
Doubt it - I have a reader on my iPhone (Stanza) that can download free eBooks just like this application.
The best word to describe Apple's approval process is Kafkaesque. It's not their rules that are the problem; it is the total internal inconsistency.
Tuth be known, I couldn't help wondering if the author truly was outraged, or if he was just trolling for publicity. I mean, it would have been five minutes work to add a filter to remove Karma Sutra from the list of books, yet instead he preferred to enter a back-and-forth with Apple, a no-win situation, instead of making the quick mod and getting his app out there.
Of course, I know that we hackers do like to take a stand for our priciples, so maybe he has a more altruistic motivation, but considering that he takes pains to add the possibility to register to be notified when the app comes out on his website (something which would take way longer to code than to filter the book in the first place), I have my doubts.
These stories make me ever more excited for the Pre. Palm's always been extremely open about third party apps. It's one thing to block an app from the "Official store." It's another thing altogether to prevent third party apps from being installed from everywhere except the official store. I suspect if users could install their own apps manually, all this hubbub would go away.
Of course, I couldn't possibly see Apple allowing this, for fear of someone else creating their own App Store app and developer submission network, without Apple's complete lack of written guidelines, and apparently inconsistent application of whatever it's own internal guidelines are.
I suggest a new meme: Showing banned content on iPhones and blogging photos of the iPhone showing it loud and clear. Or something like that. I mean, come on, is that what they are afraid of?!??
Note the difference between Apple and Craigslist. Craigslist goes out on a limb based on their strongly stated belief structure; Apple actively fights those very same principles, preferring that nothing muck with the pristine image.
I think you know which CEO I want in a foxhole with me. Hell, I think Craig should run for public office.
Back to the problem at hand, it seems everyone and their brother wants to print cash through some new walled garden, and the apologists will trot out the familiar stinky logic, things like, "well they've got a lot of buyers don't they, how could THAT be wrong?!?"
But the computer industry grew with tinkering, hell it grew with HACKING, and even that old devil of a heel, Microsoft, had a big part in the growth of open hardware systems. Don't bother to trot out the exceptions, there will always be exceptions, but big picture is the PC exists and is the mad playground today that it was the instant IBM flew with MS-DOS way back when.
Sure the iPhone is a great design, sure the Mac has their beautiful craftmanship. But they are as closed systems as Apple can conceivably get away with, and the fan boys and girls who are also hackers are letting us all down by trying to drown out the calls for more openness. Let's call a spade a spade: the hardware engineering is cool, but the wall-in garden attitude sucks like hell and is harmful to hackers, to consumer, to freedom-lovers of all stripes.
You can't argue with profits...unless you think that there are things more important than money.
My suspicion is that Apple outsources the content review process (if not the whole thing). Thus you get completely asinine and inconsistent rejections like this and others.
Well, on one level, I'm kind of amused by the reviewers attention to detail... On another level, this thing reads like a comedy piece someone would make up about the dangers of censorship.
At BarCamp, a speaker complained that Apple rejected his quick-links app because the reviewer queried wikipedia for an offensive word, and then followed links in the resulting page onto more offensive topics.
As terrible as the App Store situation is today, it will get better starting in June/July. I have a hunch that Apple is going to solve this problem with parental controls.
I don't think that will solve the problem. Why should a book reader with access to Project Gutenberg carry the burden of an adults-only application? And doesn't that kind of prudery render the explicit tag meaningless to parents? The only thing it does is covers Apple's ass^Wbackside.
Repeat after me: censor-ware does not work. It's like spam -- since you can't even define what constitutes offensive content in a consistent, formal way, how in the hell can you expect any system (human or algorithmic) to make an effective, fair determination about what goes in which bucket?
Apple does a great job of design, usability, hardware hacking, and recently they've even been pretty effective at getting content owners to move in the direction of reasonable licensing terms for digital distribution. However, they do not have magic pixie dust which makes them immune to brain-dead "content filtering" algorithms, whether human-mediated or not.
[+] [-] paulgb|17 years ago|reply
The company's 1984 ad now seems a bit ironic.
[+] [-] lukifer|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bap|17 years ago|reply
I tend to think that Apple signed some of it's soul away when making media deals and situations like this may be a part of those legal agreements.
Not to troll but I think Microsoft started focusing on it's business to business dealings more than on it's users at one point and eventually became what it did.
Unfortunately this is a common pattern for successful corporations. I wonder if it is driven purely by fear (of lawsuit?) or by the types of executives you get when you reach a certain size.
[+] [-] alexfarran|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tvon|17 years ago|reply
I guess the real question is, did the other ebook readers currently in the App Store that allow access to the same material slip through the cracks, or was this a case of an over zealous App Store employee making a mistake?
[+] [-] tlrobinson|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrisbolt|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rufo|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anigbrowl|17 years ago|reply
Perhaps a good response would be to put apple on the spot by 'complaining' that Safari (or some other iPhone app) gives access to salacious parts of the Bible or some other cultural shibboleth. With cases like these, Apple is setting themselves up for a class action suit or FTC review. Given that people pay for the development tools, these kind of rejections seem like a deliberate restraint of trade.
[+] [-] frossie|17 years ago|reply
Doubt it - I have a reader on my iPhone (Stanza) that can download free eBooks just like this application.
The best word to describe Apple's approval process is Kafkaesque. It's not their rules that are the problem; it is the total internal inconsistency.
[+] [-] veritgo|17 years ago|reply
- Eventually it will get into the app store
- All the publicity, fovorable reviews, and outrage over it will probably spur quite a few purchases / downloads. Maybe enough to make a top 10 list.
[+] [-] ciupicri|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] demallien|17 years ago|reply
Of course, I know that we hackers do like to take a stand for our priciples, so maybe he has a more altruistic motivation, but considering that he takes pains to add the possibility to register to be notified when the app comes out on his website (something which would take way longer to code than to filter the book in the first place), I have my doubts.
[+] [-] chops|17 years ago|reply
Of course, I couldn't possibly see Apple allowing this, for fear of someone else creating their own App Store app and developer submission network, without Apple's complete lack of written guidelines, and apparently inconsistent application of whatever it's own internal guidelines are.
[+] [-] madair|17 years ago|reply
Note the difference between Apple and Craigslist. Craigslist goes out on a limb based on their strongly stated belief structure; Apple actively fights those very same principles, preferring that nothing muck with the pristine image.
I think you know which CEO I want in a foxhole with me. Hell, I think Craig should run for public office.
Back to the problem at hand, it seems everyone and their brother wants to print cash through some new walled garden, and the apologists will trot out the familiar stinky logic, things like, "well they've got a lot of buyers don't they, how could THAT be wrong?!?"
But the computer industry grew with tinkering, hell it grew with HACKING, and even that old devil of a heel, Microsoft, had a big part in the growth of open hardware systems. Don't bother to trot out the exceptions, there will always be exceptions, but big picture is the PC exists and is the mad playground today that it was the instant IBM flew with MS-DOS way back when.
Sure the iPhone is a great design, sure the Mac has their beautiful craftmanship. But they are as closed systems as Apple can conceivably get away with, and the fan boys and girls who are also hackers are letting us all down by trying to drown out the calls for more openness. Let's call a spade a spade: the hardware engineering is cool, but the wall-in garden attitude sucks like hell and is harmful to hackers, to consumer, to freedom-lovers of all stripes.
You can't argue with profits...unless you think that there are things more important than money.
[+] [-] swilliams|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rudyfink|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vlad|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tophat02|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] KC8ZKF|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rcoder|17 years ago|reply
Apple does a great job of design, usability, hardware hacking, and recently they've even been pretty effective at getting content owners to move in the direction of reasonable licensing terms for digital distribution. However, they do not have magic pixie dust which makes them immune to brain-dead "content filtering" algorithms, whether human-mediated or not.
[+] [-] Dauntless|17 years ago|reply