Wouldn't that be completely out of character for him, since he's usually pretty hard on Apple for their mismanaged AppStore — especially when it comes to arbitrary refusals?
From his recent comment on an app being allowed into the store, then later rejected, for an offence that large numbers of high-profile games also commit and aren't punished for: "this is Apple being consistent, not inconsistent".
How is that not correct? Apple has stated that apps with runtimes interpreting code are not allowed, and now they're banning an app that does that. How is that not consistent?
I'm glad you asked, since apparently I wasn't clear in my previous post.
Firstly, only apps that download AND run code were not allowed, now apps that download OR run code are not allowed
That's inconsistent over time, not necessarily a bad thing, though it was a change made quietly which is a bit of a poor show.
On top of that there are still lots of apps, games mainly, running interpreters. That's also inconsistent, on a completely different axis.
So yes they are meeting the letter of the (current) law in the banning of this particular case, but "consistent" is not a word I would leap to using in this case. The simple fact that they're kicking out an app that was already in, rather than blocking entry in the first place, makes it a strange word choice.
"This sort of app should not have been rejected in the first place — shouldn’t even have been considered borderline. Resubmission and hoping for a different reviewer sometimes works in cases like this, but at this point, there’s no way for us to know whether Fiore is getting reconsidered only because of the publicity stink. It’s possible that it really is Apple’s policy to reject any app related to political satire. It’s also possible that it is not. That’s the core problem — that we don’t know."
I think this paragraph really hits the nail on the head:
Apple has built a little slab of Disneyland with its iPad, which is meant to be an experience unsullied by provocative or crude material. It’s beautiful and enticing-- the company has already sold more than a half million of them in the first two weeks it’s been available-- but it’s not the real world.
Disneyland is the perfect metaphor for the iPhone/iPad experience. It's a closed theme-park, which exercises tight control over what products and services it offers its patrons. It's not an open market, and is not intended to be.
I'm hoping that once people get this, the moral outrage (and all of the articles about the moral outrage) will die down.
Applications that are in violation of the TOS are going to be rejected by the App Store. That means they have to be written in the language that Apple specifies, and meeting the content standards that Apple specifies. If there's content that in "Apple’s reasonable judgment may be found objectionable", you're out of luck.
And, of course, it's well within Apple's rights to keep the leash so tight, just as Disney can tightly control which goods and services are offered within the confines of their theme parks. It's not anywhere near a monopoly situation, and there are plenty of opportunities outside the park walls for developers to make and sell whatever they like.
Applications that are in violation of the TOS are going to be rejected by the App Store.
As well as applications that are in violation of some future version of the TOS. Or compete against some future Apple product. Or that fail to meet an unknown arbitrary standard. The thing is, Apple is asking developers to invest in their product, and continuously changing the rules. Publishing for Apple products is becoming too risky.
I decided not to transition my sales force to iPad's because vendors like Appcelerator will almost certainly drop iPad support if the TOS changes. Developing glue code in Objective-C is like buying a supercomputer to play Solitaire. You can do it, but it's overkill, and that doesn't make it a good idea. We'll wait for the HP Slate or an Android tablet.
And yet, people love Disneyland. I'm not trying to defend Apple here, but the majority of the public just doesn't care about "freedom" (in terms of things you can do with the device) if you give them a good experience.
But no one wants to live in Disneyland. A manufactured experience can be nice for a while - it certainly achieves a level of perfection that other experiences cannot. But in the end, a walled garden only extends as far as the walls. And there's a whole world out there that's messy and dangerous and not as polished, but also more exciting, more fulfilling, more real.
Today, we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directives. We have created for the first time in all history, a garden of pure ideology. Where each worker may bloom secure from the pests of contradictory and confusing truths. Our Unification of Thoughts is more powerful a weapon than any fleet or army on earth. We are one people, with one will, one resolve, one cause. Our enemies shall talk themselves to death and we will bury them with their own confusion. We shall prevail!
No question now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
I don't think it is that new, it is just an instance of the same control fetishism that has permeated the company since it started to see itself as the only entity legally allowed to rip off the Xerox PARC user interface concepts some time in the mid 80ies, when they also removed the extension slots from their computers and the schematics from the documentation.
actually, Apple asked for, and received, permission to use the Xerox PARC interface. It also received about $1 million in funding from Xerox along with a reasonable number of engineers, glad to see someone finally understanding what they were doing
And then they went sueing other people over it. And it seems that Xerox didn't actually think they gave Apple this permission, as they in turn sued Apple over it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_v._Microsoft
Not arbitrarily. The prior licensing arrangement between Apple and Microsoft is central to that case.
And it seems that Xerox didn't actually think they gave Apple this permission
Xerox sued Apple, yes--but as even the Wikipedia article points out, it had much more to do with benefiting from the precedent that the case might have established than with anything they thought before. It's more evident--by the fact that they waited so long--that they didn't think they could deny permission (i.e. that 'look and feel' was subject to copyright, as Apple believed)--which ultimately is what the court effectively decided.
I think you underestimate what Comcast et al are trying to do to the Internet, with the help of various convenient politicians.
Things like the .xxx proposal and opposition to net neutrality are steps towards the same kind of 'clean, curated experience' you get on the iPhone today.
Thankfully they seem to be getting knocked back every time they try, but only with great expense and effort from groups like the EFF. And they keep on trying new ways to ruin the Internet all the time.
Exactly. And when they are nicely concentrated under the .xxx TLD, they will be easier to filter, no pesky URL lists that are difficult (=expensive) to maintain.
Yeah, that's good. A lot of people want to filter them. There'd be no way to keep pornographic or sexual content constrained to a .xxx domain even if regulations were implemented to try to make it so. I see it as a convenience for consumers, not governments; if we get to the point where the government is censoring the internet, I don't think the fact that there's an .xxx TLD is going to be that big of a deal. They'd all just bleed over into .com space again surreptitiously.
See how well they're doing stopping piracy of normal media? They'll do even worse stopping pornography. There's nothing to fear from a .xxx domain.
How certain are you of this? Would you be able to successfully defend every photograph or email you have ever produced against obscenity charges? I think, if it came down to it, the courts could find a hell of a lot of inadvertent pornographers out there.
Note I said 'could': Selective enforcement of over-broad laws is a boon and a horrible threat, because it implies everyone is guilty of something, so the government could pound anyone who bothers them if it chose to.
What goes in the .xxx domain? Who decides? One man's pornography is another man's art, unless you have a burning conviction that you should decide what other people get to look at. One woman's abortion advice is another woman's gross obscenity.
At first glance, it seems like a great idea, but as soon as you get into the details it's a nightmare. What .xxx and similar proposals mean is that someone, somewhere, possibly in another country and with values wildly at variance with yours, gets to censor the Internet for you. It's not a service I consider worth having.
Wait, is the proposal for all pornographic sites to be necessarily limited to .xxx? If it is, then I agree that it's a matter of concern. If it isn't, then I don't see your point.
What's the point, then, of a walled garden if it doesn't have a wall around it? cookiecaper says "There's nothing to fear from a .xxx domain" but if that's the case then, de facto, there's nothing to be gained from it either except a bit of marketing edge. If the argument is for "safety", then it has to be compulsory. And even if it doesn't start as compulsory, the "Think of the children!" brigade will soon start lobbying for it to be made so.
For someone born in China, who may be deeply patriotic about their country but hates their government; for them it is a catch 22 because they could move abroad but that means a big sacrifice.
No-one is forcing you to use an iPhone or an iPad; if you disagree with Apple's policies then walk down the street and buy an alternative product, or don't develop apps for the App Store.
Apple can dictate policies that irritate developers and content publishers because they have a better product offering to the consumers plus a critical mass of app offerings in the App store and they know it. If Microsoft had a superior tablet offering that everyone was raving about and an Android-based phone was kicking Apples ass in terms of iPhone sales, then perhaps Apple's stance would be more lenient.
Superior for a particularly humorless, prudish type of consumer apparently, but I don't care about that. What I do care about is the stark discrepancy between what "hackers" claim to be and what turns out to be the truth.
Well, as a developer/hacker, you should care what smartphone the majority of consumers use if you wish to reach the biggest possible audience (as an app developer). Even if they are "humourless and prudish". This is more a relection of Steve Jobs taste I think, than of consumers' taste.
If you are a hacker (and not an app developer) who has a major problem with Apple's policies, then you are absolutely corrrect; it would be highly hypocritical to both own an iPhone/iPad and hold that view simultaneously.
I imagine Steve Jobs as The Patrician in Terry Pratchett's Discworld series:
"Ankh-Morpork had dallied with many forms of government and had ended up with that form of democracy known as One Man, One Vote. The Patrician was the Man; he had the Vote."
Au contraire, Ankh-Morpork is a very liberal city. Anyone can do whatever they like, provided they don't step on toes of someone organized - then it is up to them (the organized group) to clean up the competition using market forces.
The are no bullshit rules and laws, just thought out recommendations to make the city run as well-oiled machine.
I was thinking more of the (relatively few) cases where someone ends up on the Patrician's bad side:
"The Patrician could not tolerate mime artists. It was a strange aversion, but there you are. Anyone in baggy trousers and a white face who tried to ply their art anywhere within Ankh's crumbling walls would very quickly find themselves in a scorpion pit, one wall of which was painted the advice: Learn The Words."
For the Patrician it was mimes, for Jobs presumably Flash, bikinis and now also satire ;-)
What metaphor? He didn't say "If Apple was a country, it'd be China". That's a metaphor. He said "If Steve Jobs ran a country, it'd be China". That's a hypothetical.
And really, do we want to go there? Did several million people die during the cultural revolution, several hundred die during Tianamen, and the continuing abuse of human rights, just so we could crack jokes about Jobs? It seems a bit in poor taste. Otherwise, let's just go whole hog, call him Hitler, paint a moustache on his portrait, and Godwin the whole thing.
...and tech issues are not cars, but we use car analogies anyway. Just because you can't take an metaphor and make it line up 100% does not make the metaphor worthless.
Many car analogies are often wrong. Perhaps you can explain to me the benefit of that metaphor. From what I gather, the insinuation is that Steve Jobs has a restrictive grip on the App Store. Now, comparing Apple to China is a pretty inflammatory statement, so the metaphor must have a substantial point to make in order to justify the hyperbole. From what I see, this is just another snappy Apple-bashing one-liner (which contribute practically nothing to the discussion). Perhaps I'm wrong, but in that case I'd really like to be filled in.
You mean running an app store with a forced monopoly on its respective platform and a (albeit not 100%) monopoly on the wider smartphone app market. Yes, it is similar in some ways.
However, this is not necessary for the statement "If Steve Jobs ran a country, it would be China" to be accurate. It need merely be shown that the general principles Jobs abides by match up in some general way to the philosophy of China. Whether his current company is similar in any way to a country is irrelevant — just whether his actions could lead one to believe he'd run a country that way.
I would argue that most companies are indeed dictatorships, but that is ignoring the complexities of the shareholders and investors.
Even if we do make such a simplification, I generally see Apple as a benevolent dictatorship, based on their impressive track record of making life better for the average person, despite occasionally questionable behavior.
Sometimes I wish the United States was a benevolent dictatorship, if only so that Obama could be more productive.
I'm actually not convinced that this is a wrong direction for the App Store. I'm not an Apple apologist or fanboy by any means. What Apple has created with the iPhone and iPad is actually perfect for "regular users". For my mom, for my grandmother. Even for my dad, who is just too busy these days to configure computers and phones, who easily has the knowledge and skill to do so. The ability of these people to do powerful things without having to spend time working on it is actually quite interesting.
I am completely turned off by the direction computing is taking, but people who think this is just a fad are wrong, and aren't looking at the big picture. People buy Apple products because it gives them what they want. Yes, Linux is much superior to OS X and Windows, but the majority of users don't not use it because of some FUD, its because they don't have the time or skill to work with it. Apple is taking that concept to the next level, where anyone can accomplish things in a much easier way.
This won't go away. Apple is being extremely successful, and I see many other companies who are going to jump on the bandwagon. But for us power users, there will always be the hardware that we are used to buying available. Linux is not going to go away. There is just going to be a bigger divide between what your nontechy family and friends use, and what you use. I don't know whether or not this will destroy the next generation of programmers, who won't have had the ability to tinker. I can see that happening. But really, this is not going to be a negotiable thing. This isn't something you can fight against. This is the way technology is moving. We have to adapt to it, not the other way around.
I think most people won't care. They want the shiny. If political satire is missing, most people won't miss it or even notice, they'll be too busy laughing at their cat batting games on their iPad. The same for other political commentary, or news that puts some politician or institution in a bad light.
The iPad may help news corporations survive, but it is certainly no saviour to journalism. In an age where editors would fight government censorship to the point of jail and beyond, they'll STFU and follow Apple's rules to stay in business.
That's a good point, in the spirit of "routing around censorship."
But if people really do pay for information apps, information corporations are going to notice that. Editorial control will be increasingly given over to Apple (or whoever). Less to little to no effort will be made on the sites of at least those corporations.
Of course it only works if consumers go that way. We'll hang ourselves, and buy the rope from information corporations and the scaffold from Apple.
8. Public Figures — Brian’s original article included “political lampooning.” I’ll extend that to include association or portrayal of public figures. Two examples: around Obama’s inauguration, CodeMorphic created an app called Obamify that manipulated photos to appear like those iconic posters from the campaign; the app went into infinite review. Yak Apps had to remove imagery containing Mr. and Mrs. Obama before their “First Dog” app was approved.
No. It could've included a photo of any public figure without satire, and it would've been rejected. Therefore the title of the article is misleading. It wasn't rejected because of satire, it was rejected because it represented a public figure in any capacity.
You'll notice an app got banned for just including images of the Obamas.
I'm surprised at the upvotes of people dissenting with me, and my associated downvotes. Voting doesn't change facts. Apple had an existing policy in place which had nothing to do with satire, which is why this app was removed. If he was satirizing himself somehow, it would have been approved. Back to my original statement - Apple is not banning satire, and this is not new news.
This rule excludes a slew of apps from the app store – not just satire but definitely also satire (satire is usually aimed at public figures and as a consequence includes representations of them, getting consent for those representations would defeat the whole purpose of satire). I don’t see how a rule that indirectly excludes satire is any better than a rule that directly excludes it.
Free speech doesn’t seem to be very important for Apple and that makes me pretty sick. iPads are supposed to be the places where we read our newspapers tomorrow, we as a society should only allow that if we also force Apple to put everything in the App store which is covered by free speech. (I do believe that free speech should limit the rules a private company is allowed to make. ISPs, for example, shouldn’t be allowed to filter out whatever they want.)
Free speech doesn’t seem to be very important for Apple
Let me know when they stop supporting the single most democratized mass communications medium the world has ever known.
we as a society should only allow that if we also force Apple to put everything in the App store which is covered by free speech.
You may not like what Apple chooses to sell, but if you want to replace their freedom to do so with the government, I don't really think you've thought that through.
ISPs, for example, shouldn’t be allowed to filter out whatever they want.
Making sure that there is plurality in the media is a task of the state. That’s my opinion, alright. I have thought that through. (That first sentence is also a true statement in at least some countries.)
Making sure that there is plurality in the media is a task of the state.
You've left a massive gap between ensuring it can exist and the forcing of retailers to stock it. That is something I'd like you to explain more clearly. Would you be willing to throw me in jail if I owned a book store but refused to stock a certain book or class of books?
You are correct, but the basis of the rejection is fundamentally flawed. Simply reusing the likeness or identity of a public figure (eg in a sliding tile game) is potentially an infringement on the person's right to publicity, as well as possibly the originator of the image if it involves commercial photography. Partaking in any profits from such an app would expose Apple to liability and is justifiably avoided.
However, the parodic nature of cartooning, and especially political cartooning (of figures who hold public office), is very strongly protected by the first amendment and masses of legal precedent, or newspapers would be getting sued right and left. Liability is not an issue here, as evinced by the ability of editorial cartoonists to freely ply their trade in newspapers (many examples of which, from large publishers, exist on the iPxx).
Having something protected by the first amendment doesn't mean you can do whatever you like, whenever you like. Private companies can make private rules. Do you think you can say whatever you like at work and not get fired?
The bobblehead congress app was rejected for ridicule of public figures as well (http://blogs.zdnet.com/Apple/?p=5203) getting "Tom Richmond, of Mad Magazine fame" a lot of press.
Deliberate or not, this is a good PR stunt for the cartoonists to get coverage. The fart apps guys did this too.
The process (submit app in violation of guidelines, tip off press, enjoy web-wide mentions and increased linkage) is replicable.
Apple refusing to allow any content that satires public figures or draws controversy in some way is akin to a religious person being afraid to read a Richard Dawkins book or listen to him speak for fear of being tainted, or hearing something that contradicts their own world view.
Both to me would seem to indicate that a person or organisation has a deep-seated lack of conviction in their own position, whatever that position may be.
That's a poor analogy. Apple is not acting in the role of the "reader" here. They're the store. They are choosing what they want to sell. It makes no sense to attribute something as simple as not wanting to be in the soapbox business to fear and lack of conviction. It projects emotion onto something that can be much more accurately attributed to the entirely reasonable and rational desire to run a store that makes a lot of money without a lot of complaints. If you really believe that retailers should be required to stock everything that anybody wants to sell, regardless of whether they want to be in the business of selling that product, I'd ask why.
I find this far more troubling than their recent TOS changes. It's one thing to make arbitrary and capricious changes to the technical terms of their developer agreements. It's quite another to arbitrarily censor content. If Apple really aims to be the savior of print journalism they have a moral responsibility to take their role more seriously and more sensibly. I think it's pretty clear at this point that Apple is the wrong steward for the next generation of online communications technology.
Apparently Apple has asked him to re-submit the app:
The cartoonist who won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning
this week says Apple has asked him to resubmit an iPhone app that
it earlier rejected because it “ridicules public figures.”
When will the app store ban stories not be news anymore? I see multiple variations of it every day. One part of me wonders why everyone can't just get over it and face the fact that Apple is going to do what they want and the other part of me sees the value in complaining.
If you really want to complain, don't buy their products and don't develop on their platform.
The whole hammer throwing thing from the 80s just seems so ironic now.
I'm not even sure how to reinterpret it today. The Big Brother figure speaks of a garden of pure ideology, and it appears the woman is an app who is about to get rejected by the app store cops.
Is the meaning of the hammer throw that I should go get an Android phone so I don't have to subject myself to the approval of the Big Brother character?
Unfortunately, I don't think so, at least not for serious commercial development. Android and the Web both have big drawbacks for producing profitable apps.
Apple has a huge line of people with their credit cards out on the App Store and everyone knows it. Android has relatively few users and they are not known to be big spenders in general. The Web has lots of users but very few are likely to ever find your product and unless it fits in a few well-defined categories it's tremendously unlikely they'll be willing to pay for it (and ad-supported is not a reliable business model).
That's subscribers. I was talking about app sales. The two aren't necessarily corelated all that strongly - which is kind of my point. I remember one study recently that estimated Apple was responsible for more than 99% of all mobile app sales: http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/01/apple-responsible-...
I think it won't happen, at least for now. The strength of the user experience and the seamless integration of iPhones with the app store is what is luring users and developers.
Android can win on Apple Flaws, but it has to become better, in my opinion. Only then it will be able to force Apple out of it restricting decisions.
I hope it will happen someday. Unfortunately I don't think it will happen soon.
A lot of my friends have moved from Linux to Mac as their primary computing platform over the last few years. I've considered doing the same myself. But now I'm determined that I won't, since I will never do business with someone as unethical and frankly fascistic as Steve Jobs.
Yeah that can only be viewed as a bad thing for Apple and the App Store. I have no idea how the leaders and decision makers (presumably the same people) at Apple don't see what nearly every other developer I know sees clear as day - it's no longer enviable to write iPhone or iPad apps. It's not even cool anymore thanks to them destroying many great ideas.
Apple's App Store is quickly heading the direction of hmmm... Not Microsoft because you can write anything you want for their OSes. Maybe early AOL or late Compuserve had this same feel of a walled garden (their respective portals) and they both slowly and dimly failed while technology passed them by. It'll still take some time but eventually innovators will skip past the app store and at that point there is no recovery.
