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Bad PR Forces Apple To Reconsider Banning Mark Fiore's App
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."
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.
Er... the first link is to an article headlined "Satellites key to keeping aircraft away from Iceland's volcanic cloud." I guess it's a bit much to expect Slashdot editors to actually check the links in a summary, huh?
A programmer is a machine for turning pizza into code.
If the cost of losing customers due to bad press is greater than the cost of changing their policies/practices, they will change (usually temporarily) to alleviate the bad press. Next.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
This will be more the exception that proves the rule than anything particularly earth-shattering.
CG Pin-Ups?
so that any publisher could submit apps without Apple's editorializing.
It would be nice if more publishers were allowed onto the app store, instead of only Pulitzer-prize winners.
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
google's motto is "do no evil",
apple's moto is "do no bad pulicity"
and they both suck at it.
He has to *resubmit* it? What, do they delete them after they reject them? That seems odd.
How many small publishers, authors or artists without access to the media that Mr. Fiore has won't ever get the lordly invite to "resubmit"" their content for King Jobs' oh-so-kindly "reconsideration"?
"Remember when I said I would never lie? Well, that was the first time."
Who says it was due to bad PR? You might want to avoid stating guesses as facts.
And here's the proof
This ain't rocket surgery.
Fuck Apple. I'd go with the google app store and call it a day.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
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
wake me up when apple reconsiders its near-moronic app policy, not a single case. because it is the policy that is the problem, not its application.
Apple does have a monopoly on OKing & installing apps onto iphones.
Well that's the way I understand it.
They lied.
Actually free software stands in contradiction to "Every manufacturer has the monopoly on his own products." because free software means users have the freedom (permission) to develop competing products based on the free software they run. Hardware manufacturers are beginning to appear which allow one to develop competing products in much the same way. Apple's restrictions in their iPhone API license agreement are unusually hostile to distributing applications Apple does not approve of (see section 7.3 which says rejected iPhone applications can't be distributed anywhere else). The thing to note about Fiore's second bite at the Apple (so to speak) is that Fiore has an audience large enough to complain. Others who would use their freedom of speech (permission) by "ridiculing public figures" won't get a second chance because nobody will chat up their misfortune at choosing to deal with such an arbitrary power.
Digital Citizen
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...
No, you need to go figure out was is a monopoly according to the Sherman act and subsequent case law. Controlling the contents of a privately held store isn't a monopoly as far as Federal regulation is concerned.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
What lock in? You're perfectly free to go buy an Android handset if you don't like Apple's App Store policies. This has nothing whatsoever to do with lock in.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
I'm continually surprised by how much crap everyone is willing to put up with from Apple, while worshiping the ground that Steve Jobs walks on. The same guy who actually had to leave Apple before we got an Open Mac. How long before SJ starts selling once-worn mock turtlenecks on eBay for a few extra bucks?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
And when Microsoft Windows was declared a monopoly, you were perfectly free to go buy a Macintosh. By your description, you weren't locked in to Windows. (In fact, you were less locked in than you are with the iPhone, because you always could install OS/2 or Linux on your PC hardware - while there is no viable alternate OS for the iPhone.)
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.
Never heard of Mark Fiore before Apple making a stink out of an app. Checked out Fiore's website and love it, can't wait for the iPad app !!
Makes me wish Kafka was still around to try submitting an app.
Professor Karmadillo Songs of Science
The upshot of this seems to be that we're all now expected to seek out this "comic" b/c (1) it's been given a Pulitzer, and (2) reading it "sticks it to the man" (the man in this case is Steve Jobs).
Free PR notwithstanding, this "comic" is not really up to the standards of most parodies on youtube.
It seems to be a choice between being a "Pulitzer-zombie", or an "Apple-zombie".
In the end, a zombie is a zombie: "They're all messed up." --John Russo & George A. Romero
Yes, but commercial (and Linux) alternatives were squeezed out by MS by bullying the OEMs - "Only sell Windows preinstalled or you may just find your OEM licence cost increases".
There is no viable alternative OS for the Xbox 360 either, but they are not telling game shops that they mustn't stock PS3s or they may find the wholesale cost of the 360 might go up...
It's not illegal to be a monopoly - it's what you do when you are one that matters. Even at the height of the Windows monopoly, you were never locked into it in a literal sense, but practically you were, especially if you relied on being able to use office documents or Exchange.
If you currently rely on something specific to Mac (say MobileMe or something) and suddenly you find you need something that the iPhone doesn't offer then you face the same level of "lock in", but there is nothing stopping you changing platforms - there are plenty of other options.
Apple are also a long way from being a monopoly in the smartphone and cellphone market as a whole.
Apple is responsible for setting up the system this way. Either train the reviewers better, or stop exerting such anal-retentive control over your device.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Both Apple and news media organizations (press/newspapers, radio, television, etc.) were interested in the possibilities of the iPad (and other similar devices) as a news consumption device. This is especially true for newspapers that have been suffering due to falling revenue, especially from classifieds because of Craig's List and eBay, and a public less interested in reading news on dead trees.
But Apple's censorship of a Pulitzer winning cartoonist send chills down the spines of all of the news media organizations, since they suddenly realize how vulnerable their content is to the arbitrary and inconsistent censorship whims of companies like Apple, Amazon, Sony, etc. which have total control over the applications and media on their devices.
Imagine if Sony blocked all news publications on its Sony's Reader Store which have published accident and recall information about Toyotas in order not to harm or offend a fellow Japanese companies. Imagine if this was 60 years ago and each electronics company only sold TV's which would only receive programming from their affiliated stations.
Apple hoped that by allowing Mark Fiorre's app, they could do damage control, but I think that it is too late, since this incident really drove home how bad the censorship situation is with these locked down platforms.
At the end of the day, consumers pressure is not enough to be able to force companies to open up their platforms. In the growing mobile phone, media players, e-reader, and game console markets, not one of the major platforms is fully open for the consumer and are full of DRM that restricts options and allow censorship. (Yes that includes Google Android devices which are being locked down by many carriers!)
Governments need to step in and force all hardware and operating system manufactories and distributers to have an application and data distribution and execution model that is fully open to all. If you buy the device, it should be yours to do with as you see fit, as long as it does not interfere with others.