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Apple Bans Game App That Criticizes Smartphone Production
An anonymous reader sends word that Apple has removed from the App Store a game called Phone Story, which walks players through the creation of a smartphone, highlighting many of the negative aspects. There are four brief stages: running a mining facility in the Congo, saving suicidal factory workers, handing out phones to oblivious consumers, and generating e-waste through planned obsolescence. Apple said Phone Story violated sections 15.2, 16.1, 21.1, and 21.2 of the App Store guidelines, which make reference to "objectionable or crude content" and "offensive or mean-spirited commentary." A short video of the game has been posted at Kotaku.
Yeah, so much censorship, deciding what to carry in a privately owned store. They're still free to promote their app in other ways, on different devices. Hell, they can even make it an HTML5 app for the iPhone. Nothing at all stopping them doing that. What they can't do is sell it/give it away in the App Store, since that's Apple's decision. Subtle, but there it is.
I take it all Android phones are made in the US, right? Not made in the same factories as iPhones? Right?
Not that it makes outsourcing any better, but assuming any Android handsets *are* made in the same factories, the workers that make them are being paid less than the ones building iPhones sitting just across from them. I'm not sure how Samsung can "take the moral high ground" on that one.
Either way, silly of Apple to pull the app - it was clearly what the developers were hoping would happen. From no name to "from the makers that got banned from the App Store...." in one easy move. Genius marketing move- one worthy of the sort of Machiavellian scheming that /. likes to accuse Apple of being the master of. How ironic.