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Mentioning Android Is a No-No In iPhone App Store

Posted by kdawson on from the wash-your-mouth-out dept.

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.

16 of 441 comments (clear)

  1. Android by d34dluk3 · · Score: 5, Funny

    There's not an app for that.

  2. We're all mind readers by SQLz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Wow the list of magical things you can't do with your iPhone app sure is growing.

    1. Re:We're all mind readers by ahankinson · · Score: 5, Funny

      Want an app that mentions Android? There's an app for.... oh, wait. Scratch that.

    2. Re:We're all mind readers by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      And what kills me is that all of the iPhone limitations are caused by Apple being shitty company. Seriously, Apple, why the fuck can't I sync my iPod Touch on Linux? It's not that nobody is willing to make a program to do it; its that Apple went out of their way to make this impossible. It's the first and last Apple product I'll ever make the mistake of buying.

    3. Re:We're all mind readers by Tim+C · · Score: 5, Informative

      I was rather irritated to find that my nice, new 16GB iPod Touch, shiny and gorgeous and amazing as it is, does not present as a USB mass storage device, unlike pretty-much every other mp3 player including most iPods to date. Great, so now I need to carry a USB memory stick with me as well? Thanks Apple.

      --
      It's official. Most of you are morons.
    4. Re:We're all mind readers by maxume · · Score: 5, Interesting

      I've had it explained to me that it makes much more sense to build the metadata index on a powerful PC, rather than building the functionality into each mp3 player.

      My $40 sandisk indexes a couple of gigabytes in about 10 seconds, so I scratched my head too.

      --
      Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
    5. Re:We're all mind readers by marcansoft · · Score: 5, Informative

      You can use libimobiledevice and ifuse to mount your iPod Touch under Linux, if that's all you need. You can use it as a generic mass storage device (no need to jailbreak either) as long as you have these tools.

      For what it's worth, I understand Apple's decision on this regard. There is a void in USB regarding smart devices with onboard filesystem drivers which run an OS. Basically, there's no USB File Transfer Protocol, just raw block-device USB Mass Storage (which is useless for devices that run their own OS and can't just expose a block device - not to mention that iPhone OS devices use HFS, not FAT). There's a Picture Transfer Protocol for digital cameras, and Apple does support that, but only for pictures. They made their own protocol for the other stuff. Really, iPod Touch devices aren't music players, they're embedded computers with an OS which you just happen to be able to play music on, and there's no standard "USB file transfer between OSes" protocol.

      What is inexcusable is their insistence in trying to cryptographically stop people from syncing their iPods and iPhones with third-party software. But this is one layer above, and it affects the music database. The underlying nonstandard USB protocol was a practical necessity (although, incidentally, their implementation is horrid).

  3. The wording of Apple's reply by shutdown+-p+now · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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...

  4. When is this ever false? by QuoteMstr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Even if beginning with the best of intentions, a censor will always, eventually, come to use his power to censor to benefit himself.

  5. Makes sense by Flavio · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Apple can't have Android inside Steve Jobs' Reality Distortion Field.

  6. Re:Flash of stupidity... by MikeBabcock · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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)
  7. Re:Remember a time.. by bsDaemon · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  8. New app submission by ArhcAngel · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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
  9. We don't serve their kind here! by xleeko · · Score: 5, Funny

    Your droids ... They'll have to wait outside.

  10. Soy Nuts and Anger by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    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

  11. The new smash hit Apple TV commercial... by dskoll · · Score: 5, Funny

    Announcer: Buy an iPhone and see why 2010 will be like "1984"