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Bad PR Forces Apple To Reconsider Banning Mark Fiore's App

Posted by timothy on from the just-this-once dept.

cmiller173 writes with word from Wired that "After bad press over banning Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist Mark Fiore's app from the app store, Apple has asked him to re-submit the entry."

11 of 241 comments (clear)

  1. App Stores Dept. of Corrections? by LostCluster · · Score: 5, Interesting

    It seems like Apple is rethinking some of it's heavy-handed decisions and approving apps that would surely be rejected like Vonage's VoIP, Opera's web browser, and this one and letting them in on their delayed applications, or calling up submitters and asking them to resubmit previously rejected apps. This is far from an isolated incident, and I wouldn't be surprised if we find Google Voice in the app store soon.

    I think there's several factors involved here:
    - FCC investigation into AT&T... if they can't allow streaming video from Sling but can allow streaming video from MLB, what's the difference? If they can't allow streaming video because of lack of bandwidth, why didn't they buy more when spectrum recently went up for auction?
    - Government investigation into Apple... If they're abusing a monopoly app store when there's clearly ways to implement competitors on jailbroken devices... why the monopoly?
    - Bad press... every major app rejected is a reason to get a Droid or some other more open development platform's device.
    - Competition... When the EDGE iPhone first came out, it was revolutionary carrying only the default 20 apps because it was doing things that it's at-the-time competitors couldn't do. Now there's several platforms that look like the iPhone and do things the iPhone doesn't... that iDon't/Droid Does ad must have gotten to them.

    So there you have it... the tide is changing, and we might see some more "impossible" things happening soon.

    1. Re:App Stores Dept. of Corrections? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      It depends heavily on how narrowly the focus of a monopoly can be. They unquestionably do have a monopoly on iPhone/iPod/iPad applications, but is that too narrow to be considered for any sort of antitrust lawsuits?

      The other question is how much of the mobile application marketshare do they have? While they don't hold a monopoly on smartphones, they are said to have somewhere in the high-ninties of the mobile application market -- can mobile applications be considered a market that is able to have a monopoly, even if the platform most of those applications are for is not a monopoly?

    2. Re:App Stores Dept. of Corrections? by nickdwaters · · Score: 3, Interesting

      What market do you live in? I couldn't even use 3G in the San Francisco Bay Area and I sure can't use it in Phoenix. It drops calls like mad! Naturally I only discovered how utterly congested the network was until AFTER I'd shelled out $249.99 for my iPhone 3G. Advertisers won that round.

    3. Re:App Stores Dept. of Corrections? by Nulifier · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I think the argument that many of the people who call it a monopoly are trying to make is this:

      If I have a Ford truck, I can put non-ford replacement parts in it if they fit (compile for that architecture).

      However the the apple app store would be akin to your truck not starting if you don't have all Ford branded parts in it.

      Its not a monopoly in the actual meaning of the word as there is no-one forcing you to buy a Ford, but it comes back to the "I bought a physical thing, I want to do whatever I want with it" argument.

  2. I'd put anti-Apple links in it by YesIAmAScript · · Score: 5, Interesting

    If I were him, I'd put links indicating what Apple did wrong right in the splash/main screen of the app when I re-submit it. Then see if Apple dares to reject it again or will instead swallow their pride and approve it. I'd really hope for the latter, but either would help raise awareness of how problematic Apple's policies are.

    --
    http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
  3. They delete them after rejecting them? by jgreco · · Score: 3, Interesting

    He has to *resubmit* it? What, do they delete them after they reject them? That seems odd.

    1. Re:They delete them after rejecting them? by OrwellianLurker · · Score: 3, Interesting

      He has to *resubmit* it? What, do they delete them after they reject them? That seems odd.

      Probably so that they can say that the second application was slightly different and/or more appropriately reviewed. If they just change their minds, it would be a blatant acknowledgment that they "screwed up" or whatever.

      --
      'Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.' - Mao Tse-tung
  4. No rethinking by SuperKendall · · Score: 2, Interesting

    It seems like Apple is rethinking some of it's heavy-handed decisions and approving apps that would surely be rejected like Vonage's VoIP, Opera's web browser, and this one

    The first two would now "surely be rejected". There was no reason for Vonage or Opera Mini not to be accepted, they fell perfectly fine within the existing rules.

    The last one, the cartoon app - that did NOT fall within any published rule, and that is the problem. If you are going to have a rule, fine - but tell people what it is. There was no rule and so it lets Apple reconsider (as they are in this case) but the presence of any unpublished rules it what freaks developers out (and rightfully so).

    Frankly the whole rule seems really silly, I can can of understand the stance on nudity but ridicule seems absurd to ban.

    --
    "There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
  5. Re:Screw Them. They made thier choice by feepness · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Hey it is only 80million + devices versus um how many for android again?

    I love how in one breath the Apple-ites are claiming Apple doesn't have a monopoly and in the next they are saying developers can't afford to the miss the market.

    You gotta choose one guys...

  6. Re:Facts? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Hmm.

    I've been sitting here for a while now figuring how to paint you as just another Apple loving mindless reactionary, willing to offer a token resistance to a story that's really only a minor mussing in the great scheme of things.

    Is the love so great? I mean, I understand animism. I do.

    I loved my first car. It was painful to watch "her" go away.

    And I like baseball. I follow my team, I root for them. I even think it's a good thing for society to put so much attention toward who controls a ball if it'll contain old tribal urges.

    Heck, I even root for my country, even though it sometimes does things I wish it wouldn't, but I call it out when it does.

    I'm critical of all of these feelings I have.

    I even left my religion when it condemned my friends to hell even though I knew they were good.

    But fuck dude.

    Enjoy your iPad.

  7. Re:Two with one stone? by gyrogeerloose · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Why should you care what the underlying implementation is?

    Why can't the developer be free to write their application in the best language / tool for the job? You may not agree that Flash is the best for this purpose, but you're not the developer.

    I really don't care what tools a developer uses but if his product requires me to install software from another party before I can use it, it then becomes my concern. It is my computer, after all.

    If you'd ever used Flash on a Macintosh, you'd understand this. Adobe has a long history of producing second-rate Flash implementations for Apple products./p.

    --
    This ain't rocket surgery.