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Mentioning Android Is a No-No In iPhone App Store
donberryman writes "Apple has told a software developer that its application cannot be included in the iPhone App Store if it mentions Google Android. The developer just wanted to mention that the app was a finalist in Google's Android Developer's Challenge." The developer complied with apparent good humor. Here is their blog post, which includes the text of the iPhone store's not-quite-rejection.
There's not an app for that.
Wow the list of magical things you can't do with your iPhone app sure is growing.
The wording of Apple's reply is a gem in and of itself:
While your application has not been rejected, it would be appropriate to remove “Finalist in Google’s Android Developer’s Challenge!” from the Application Description.
Please log into iTunes Connect to make appropriate changes to the Application Description now to avoid an interruption in the availability of Flash of Genius: SAT Vocab 2.2 on the iPhone App Store.
That's a nice app you have there; would be a shame if anything happened to it...
So how is this developer's desire to port something from Android to the iPhone and advertise it different from Apple's desire to have Windows applications running on OSX and actively advertise it?
Oh, now I get it. You push the little guys around when you're the big man on campus. Certainly is interesting I can find literature about Symbian on your site. Tell me, if a very popular Symbian or Blackberry app was ported to the iPhone, would you allow the developer to advertise it? Because I'm betting you would.
My work here is dung.
Even if beginning with the best of intentions, a censor will always, eventually, come to use his power to censor to benefit himself.
Apple can't have Android inside Steve Jobs' Reality Distortion Field.
Does anybody think Barnes and Noble would be willing to post a sign saying your book was #38 in its category on Amazon?
Yes?
"Hey they book got good reviews, it must be good, let me buy it."
Impulse purchasing ftw.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Lots of books have their review list, etc. shown on the back. Do you think the Washington Post wouldn't review a book that has "#4 NYT Best Seller" on the cover?
- Michael T. Babcock (Yes, I blog)
I think everyone's going to dogpile on Apple for this, but I think they're missing the point, the point of the removal isn't the word Android, or Google, but the whole phrase of Google Android Developer Contest. They want to be disassociated with that contest. Given that Apple hasn't delisted apps that claim compatibility with other phones, and they even list a whole crap load of Android podcasts and other Android content in the iTunes store, I don't think Apple's paranoid about just the Apple or Google part.
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
I don't see this guy mentioning that his application was a finalist in a developer challenge as such.
If anything it makes it stand out...
Gee, how did Apple find out in the sea of 5,000 applications that turn your phone into a flashlight?
They probably search for 'android' and snuff the mention of it out.
It is their store.... they can do what they want and for that reason I don't buy from it.
I have seen tons of apps on the android store that mention iPhone or the fact that the same application was written for it.
We don't see Google snuffing those out....
This Apple has worms in it.
You clicked through and made 2 root level comments. That doesn't speak to you trying to ignore it.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
Yes, it does depend on what company does it. Anti-competitive behavior is legal until you're a monopoly, then its not. Doing things to undermine the competition is perfectly competitive until you're in a position where there is no more serious competition left in the market. Also, please be advised that the app store isn't the whole of "the market," the app store is apple's contribution to the market.
Of course not. It causes a ripple in the field bubble and will start a cascading collapse killing everyone inside or transporting pieces of them to random locations. We would have arms and other body parts fused to buildings all across Cupertino and that would be a big Faux Pas in social circles.
To avoid being embarrassed at the next dinner party keep all things android at least 20 feet from your apple iPhone or iTouch.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I wonder how a game where an archer (who just happens to look like a certain Android) shoots an Apple (that just happens to have a bite taken out of it) off of it's pedestal would be received? Hrmmmm...
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
It's not really illegal until you've actually eliminated or prevented competition through it.
As it is hopefully the backlash from their North Korea style platform management should be enough to handle it.
I know I certainly wouldn't have an iPhone at any price.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
No, but then Barnes and Noble isn't the only place you can sell your book. If you don't like their policies, you can also put it up for sale on Amazon, Books-A-Million, any number of local bookstores, and probably even stores like Wal-Mart, Target, etc.
On the other hand, Apple's app store is the only place to offer applications for iPhones, iTouches, and now iPads. The author of this application can't simply go through some alternate means of distributing his application without asking people to jailbreak their device, something that is at best iffy to do if they want to maintain service.
If Apple would let developers put their apps up for download from their own web site or alternate app stores, then I wouldn't complain. Apple has the right to accept, deny, or place any conditions on apps in its app store that they want. However, that's only half the story. My problem with their attitude is that they have set themselves up so that their store is the only store in town; they have a monopoly over distribution of iDevice applications. They have final authority over what I can and can't run on a device that I own, and as this story illustrates, they are grossly misusing that authority.
Personally, I can't understand why anyone would want to by an iPad, given that it is going to maintain this paradigm. With phones, people are somewhat used to this. With the iPad pushing into the netbook and ultraportable laptop market, though, it is completely unacceptable. Imagine if you bought, for example, an HP laptop, and they told you the following: "Congratulations on your new HP laptop! To obtain applications, visit apps.hp.com. Oh, and we're sorry if it causes any inconvenience, but that is the only way you may install applications on this new laptop. Everything else is blocked, and if we find out that you're trying to install apps from anywhere except hp.com, your laptop could be deactivated. Congratulations again!" Well, that's Apple, and it boggles my mind that anyone would tolerate it.
These shenanigans are precisely why I, as a developer, got a refund on my developer program application and told them that I will be not be developing for the iDevices. It's also why I, who used to be an advocate for Apple devices, am strongly urging people to not buy their products these days.
"Winner of the Google developer challenge for (competing app Apple forbids the name of)"
1984 was not supposed to be an instruction manual.
HEIL JOBS!
You know it's rather funny to see all the whining and bitching and demonizing of Apple over this when the app developer himself says:
I suppose it’s logical, and I’m not complaining; Apple is a wonderful company to work with. I took out the offending bit from the description.
IPhone's app market definetly has a larger marketshare than Android. They're using this to silence developers mentioning other platforms, basically that's like Microsoft telling an app vendor that their app will be erased from all Windows users' PCs if the app's packaging contains a "compatible with Mac" logo. And a "best Mac app of the year" award.
Android is now an un-word
Your droids ... They'll have to wait outside.
The latter, of course.
Apple could have come out with a phone that could not have any apps added to it at all. This would have been perfectly legal. Silly, perhaps, but legal.
Taking this same phone that can't have apps added to it and allowing apps to be added from Apple's site is no more illegal than the previous situation.
IOW, you are an idiot.
Because, 1) none their competitors do not have similar restrictions in place, and 2) they do not provide any venue for installing applications on one's iPhone apart from the App Store, so censoring that is effectively censoring the entire platform.
Also, Apple does not "subsidize" anything here. The developer wrote application for their own money, and a cut of any sales of the app go to Apple, part of which is used for store maintenance. It is a very large stretch to call that "subsidizing" in any way.
Well, I guess you're one of those guys who think that kicking people with t-shirts mentioning companies competing with Olympic sponsors out of Olympic venues was a grand idea. After all, the logic is exactly the same.
It works perfectly for users. Apple doesn't care about the developers. It never has.
Users have a simple App to access the store. All the apps are tested for compatibility, and the store won't let or will warn if you try to purchase an app that is not compatible with your device. The apps are tested to ensure they follow basic UI guidelines and that they fail gracefully when connectivity is limited or unavailable. Purely as a user, what's not to like?
I use Media Monkey and it does sync the iPod Touch... kind of.
First, it only syncs music, not apps. (duh)
More importantly, though, it seems like the sync is buggy as hell. I don't even try to use my iPod Touch to play music anymore, because it rarely goes more than three or four tracks without locking up and becoming unresponsive for a good minute or so, before finally failing to play the next song and giving up. Basically all I use the iPod Touch for now is as an authenticator for WoW and occasionally to listen to podcasts in the car.
Also worth mentioning that for MM to sync the iPod Touch, you need to have iTunes installed... And a very, very specific version of iTunes at that.
How is saying an app won an Android Developer Contest not irrelevant to the iPhone platform? That strikes me as the very definition of irrelevancy, because it's not the same platform.
It's an application doing the same thing, and written by the same people. Yes, I think that's relevant. You know those stickers they often place on movies - e.g. "Avatar, from the director of Titanic"?
As a side note, you yourself have cherry-picked one particular highlight, and ignored the other two, which plainly state that "platform compatibility" and "general platform references are not relevant" - which, to me, unambiguously says that even mentioning that there is an Android version of the same app would already break this rule.
Furthermore, the original poster is pointing out that many apps in the app store today mention Android. Well you just totally blew by that one, didn't you? How do you mesh you assertion that Android is verboten when plainly it's not by the presence of counter-examples?
It's very well documented that Apple review process is extremely inconsistent, and one application can pass, while another one can be blocked, both featuring the exact same thing. We've also seen cases of an application being allowed, but a subsequent version being blocked, because of something that was present in the original version. There have been a slew of /. stories on this - I'm too lazy to look them up, so JFGI.
So, I'm not at all surprised that some applications got away with mentioning Android, while others did not.
A giant customized Starbucks in Cupertino California where lattes and no soy skim macchiatos are given out free to all employees. The background music involves a playlist of Nora Jones, David Matthews, John Mayer, and Bono on loop from an Ipod docked somewhere in the Apple/Starbucks facility. Hours are long but morale is surprising high as developers, hardware and software, are given 30 minute breaks to masturbate to the new itunes interface.
All developers sit at cafe type tables with a Mac Book Pro while their lord and master Steve Jobs stands deskless in his predictable attire of a turtleneck and jeans. In fact, this is the preferred (mandatory) dress code at Apple. Jobs walks around to each and every department, separated by latte and vegan preferences, and checks on the performance and efficiency of his developers. At any given point in the day one may see Mr Jobs yelling at a programmer for not implementing a button in the perfect shade of corn flower blue (#6495ED) and immediately sends him to the apple punitive chamber, consisting of a HP Compaq running Vista Basic.
There are 2 software development departments and 2 hardware development sections in Apple. For software there is the Apple core team, Apple Open Source team. In hardware there is the Apple systems and management team and the iDevice team. Since the OSX kernel consists of a BSD darwin kernel there is no real need for low level programmers and as such the entirety of the Apple core team consists of UI designers and photoshop junkies. All software churned out from the core team is designed in a program strikingly similar to Visual Studio's form designer but with Cocoa Objective C generated instead. The 16 hour day (Jobs demands 16 hour days since he himself never sleeps) of a core dev involves lining up the right shade of chrome with the latest photoshopped graphite button and maintaining the correct color scheme, not an easy job at all.
The Apple open source team involves a little bit more coding, which is mandated to be done in TextEdit or the option of a $80 third party mac text editor. The Apple open source team doesn't actually create much code but searches the internet for interesting BSD licensed software and modifies it as it's own through obfuscation and conversion to objective C. Many of the items a mac user sees comes from the open source world stamped by apple such as the ability to play music taken from 67 different originally linux based players, CD burning, and the overall ability to click a mouse. Apple's legal department has no qualms about this practice and has assured many that since most of the code is BSD and if any is GPLed many Linux hippies should be grateful that Apple fostered WebKit by using KHTML and adding some Gecko bloat. Perhaps one of the most important items that the open source team has done to date is use parts of the FreeBSD to keep the kernel up to date.
There's not much to say about the Apple systems and management team. I suppose they can be classified in to desktop and laptop systems. Because hardware work is beneath Apple in general and thought of being only worthy of Windows Users and as such can be found working on these beauties in the starbucks bathroom. Desktops are currently made by buying dell machines and putting them in Lian Li cases, where the majority of the costs goes to buying titanium Apple emblems to paste on the sides. Laptops consists of the rebranding of only the most silver and black Sony Viaos but talk has been going around about rebranding Asus EeePCs for a new Apple netbook but you didn't hear that from me, for fear of my life.
The iDevice team's job is to develop for the ipod, iphone, itouch, and many other portable electronics apple may release in the future. Their jobs are very interconnected with the open source team as well as the core dev team. Using firmware from random samsung devices and giving it an OSX skin the ipod stands as a shining example that infringement only applies to greasy file sharers and that the music player remains the best in market
with Apps involving sex, Hitler's Mein Kampf, and Android.
So much for my dream of making a game where you fight Nazi hooker androids.
You are using a false analogy.
The Washington Post does not sell the book, only it's reviewer's opinion of the book. At no time does the Washington Post have to mention the NYT or it's best seller list and Post's customers never see the competitor's name in the Post's review.
In this case, the description of the product in the App store mentions Android and the Android contest. Android and Google is in direct competition with Apple and its devices.
Do you think you would see "#4 best seller on Amazon.com" on a book sold at Borders or Barnes and Nobles?
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
It would probably be rejected, and you'd be sued for copyright and trademark infringement by both Google and Apple.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
Announcer: Buy an iPhone and see why 2010 will be like "1984"
You guys have it all wrong. This is a good thing. Apple isn't competing with Google. They are just trying to protect users from malware apps that turn users into evil androids! Have you people not seen Blade Runner?
I'm sick of seeing app descriptions like the one used for this app before the change.
Telling people that its great for Android is of no value what so ever to an iPhone user.
Its just a wasted fluff piece that takes up space for what should be a real app description.
Listing off the reasons why other people think your app is awesome BEFORE you actually tell anyone what your app does is fucking annoying for those of us looking for apps.
Most of us don't give a shit what awards you've one, awards are generally politically based and rarely a direct relation to how good something is, regardless of the award.
I don't want to read about 10 different awards you got, I want to know what the app does and what features its got that make it worth my money and/or time.
Everyone here is bitching about Apple being so controlling and 'censoring' and you guys STILL DON'T GET IT. You keep going on about how Apple is wrong all the while ignoring that they have a growth rate thats off the charts.
I appreciate that Apple wants this pointless bit of information removed from the description, it does nothing useful to me. I don't use android, and if I'm buying a flashcard app for my iPhone I'm probably not also going to carry it around on my Android phone since having both would be retarded in and of itself.
You might be wise to listen to their marketing department. They've always been the smaller company that could. People like Apple (outside of the fanboys of geekdom, we all have our own things that we love, we don't count) for a reason, maybe its cause they are trendy, but I think its more than that, and this is an example of one of those reasons.
When you go to the store and buy a boxed application that runs on OS X and Windows, and it says so on the box, its because it runs on both. They don't put the OSX version in the box and advertise that you can go buy a Windows version if you want also. Nor do Windows only versions of software tell you about the Mac version. This App is sold in a store for software that when you buy/download it, it will only work on the iPhone (barring some hacked device that runs iPhone OS or a vm or simulator), so theres no reason to mention Android, it will just confuse all the people who have NO FREAKING IDEA what Android is, which is pretty much everyone outside this community. They may know that Google has the Nexus One, or that you can buy a Droid, but they have no clue what Android OS is.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
that's like saying "if you open a restaurant, and don't allow anyone to eat there, that's legal. so if you open a restaurant, and only allow white people to eat there, that should be legal too." now, you may or may not be right about apple's practices being legal, but your argument is, IMHO, invalid, as i tried to demonstrate through that analogy.
(btw, "idiot" is one of those pesky little words that, when used in an argument to attack the opponent, says much more about the person that said it than anyone else)
weinersmith