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Apple Just Says Yes To iPhone Smoking Game
ZosX sends along a puff piece from Wired's Brian X. Chen: "Apple on Monday approved Puff Puff Pass, a $2 game whose objective is to pass a cigarette or pipe around and puff it as many times as you can within a set duration. So much for taking the high road, Apple. The game allows you to choose between smoking a cigarette, a cigar, and a pipe. Then you select the number of people you'd like to light up with (up to five), the amount of time, and a place to smoke (outdoors or indoors). And you're ready to get right on puffing."
"Folks who want cancer can buy an iPhone"
That is crazy... You know what I saw the other day? A game that you could kill humans with assorted weapons. The gore was obscene! You could beat hookers up and kill puppies all while driving a car down the sidewalk.
What were we talking about again? Smoking? Ban it!
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The problem is not that Apple is making moral decisions about which applications to allow in the App Store. The problem is their ever-changing, wildly inconsistent approval guidelines. This application might get approved while other seemingly identical applications might get rejected. That's the real problem: developers simply have no way to know which way the App Store approval process wind is blowing on a given day. I wouldn't have such a bone to pick with Apple if they just picked a position and stuck with it consistently.
-William Brendel
And just to clarify, I believe people should be allowed to run third-party applications on their iPhone without having to go through the App Store (or jailbreaking). I'm just saying that the inconsistency is what really bugs me. If they want to sell a G-rated phone, that's fine with me. Advertise it as such and enforce that policy consistently, but don't blame me when I take my business elsewhere. As a matter of fact, I'm switching to an Android-based phone on Thursday.
-William Brendel
Apple has been taking the "moral high ground" by banning apps with jiggly women, excessive violence, and political satire. They have said that they want to be a family safe zone, and have hurt many developers to become that.
Also, developers are particularly upset about the inconsistent interpretation of Apple's ever-shifting rules. For a while, slightly dirty apps were OK so long as they were wearing underwear, then they were mass banned. Apps have been banned for "duplicating functionality" of Apple applications that hadn't been released or announced at the time of the rejection. They recently banned 3rd party code interpretation tools, due to their years-long war with flash, which has thrown into doubt the state of thousands of popular applications.
At this point, basically everyone except Steve Jobs would like to see Apple stop babysitting their users and actually utilize the ratings system that they implemented. Short of that, they need a degree of consistency that they are nowhere near achieving.
The ______ Agenda
Come one... how many people sit in a circle and pass around a cigarette. You all know this is a pot smoking game. They might have well specified the items as 'joint, fatty and bong'.
"It is better to die on one's feet than to live on one's knees." - Albert Camus
Then go Android and be treated like an adult. If you want to think for yourself, you're not in Apple's demo anyhow.
MSIE: The world's most standards-complaint web browser.
I think you're missing the point, along with a lot of others in this thread. This story was not created and posted because a smoking application was approved for the iPhone. I really doubt anybody here cares, much less objects. In fact most probably would prefer the app DOES exist because most people here are all about letting each individual make these choices for themselves.
Rather, this story is here because Apple has appointed themselves gatekeeper of the application universe for iPhone, and because their decisions are seldom intelligible or predictable. An application for a Pulitzer prize-winning cartoonist gets banned (until public disgust forces them to reconsider). An application where you shake a baby to death is approved (though later removed.) Applications for lingerie are banned. If memory serves, even ones that do not have any sort of model shots, just the products themselves, are banned. Meanwhile an app for Playboy is passed. Now, an app about smoking a joint* with your friends has no trouble passing muster. I would not be surprised in the least if it turns out these people wrote the app explicitly to see whether or not Apple's ever-inconsistent "morality" would catch it.
I don't think it was worth a story here (Wired is free to write whatever they want for whatever reason they want), because I find the value in Slashdot to be the discussions and this is not the type of story that will encourage a decent one. There will be fanbois and haters going back and forth with little actual thought put into anything, which is almost reason enough NOT to post it for me.
But anyway. Nobody cares that this app was approved, they care that this app was approved relative to other ones that have been rejected. It's entire purpose is to take shots at Apple for playing gatekeeper, and for doing it in such a wildly inconsistent manner. I'm not sure it's worth posting on that basis alone, but the reason it is on Slashdot, at least, has nothing to do with whether or not it encourages smoking.
* Sorry, a "cigarette." Yeah, right. When's the last time anybody sat around in a circle passing a cigarette around with five of their friends?