Apple Rejects Drone Strike App

eldavojohn writes "Developer Josh Begley, a student at Clay Shirky's NYU Media Lab, created an application called Drones+ that allows users to track U.S. drone strikes on a map of Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Far from innovative, the app in question merely relays and positions strikes as available from the U.K.'s Bureau of Investigative Journalism. First Apple rejected the application claiming it was 'not useful or entertaining enough,' then it was rejected for hiding a corporate logo. And the latest reason for objection is that Begley's content is 'objectionable and crude' and 'that many audiences would find [it] objectionable." Begley's at a loss for how to change information on a map. He's not showing images of the drone strikes nor even graphically describing the strikes. From the end of the article, 'The basic idea was to see if he could get App Store denizens a bit more interested in the U.S.' secretive, robotic wars, with information on those wars popping up on their phones the same way an Instagram comment or retweet might. Instead, Begley's thinking about whether he'd have a better shot making the same point in the Android Market.'"

Comments

apple just doesn't want to touch that

[Anonymous Coward]

with a ten foot pole.

Re:apple just doesn't want to touch that

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

apple just doesn't want to touch that with a ten foot pole.

Yep. That's one of the downsides of the walled garden. I'm still annoyed I can't get MAME on iOS.

Re:apple just doesn't want to touch that

[tchuladdiass]

When you write for iOS, you aren't working for yourself. You are instead working as a contractor for Apple. You are given the job of coming up with product ideas, implementing and marketing them. And you get paid a hefty commission on the sales. But as an Apple contractor, they are free to reject any idea or implementation thereof -- it has to be in line with what they would want to develop themselves.

If you think of it this way, it makes things so much easier.

Re:apple just doesn't want to touch that

[msauve]

What's with all these oldthinkers? They just don't have a bellyfeel for the doubleplusfreedom Apple provides its users. They need more goodthink.

There is no problem with this

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple is, and should be, free to prohibit any content they want on their store. It's their store, we shouldn't force them to add stuff they don't want.

The problem here is the locked down devices. You have no other way of installing things on an iPhone. Which is precisely why I don't own one.

app vs act(uality )

[tidepool]

If the 'app' is rated as objectionable and 'crude'', what does that make the actions themselves? Are we all so content as a society to hide our heads under our pillows, all the while chanting 'freedom in the USA!'?

I think the guy had a valid point -- If the app exists or doesn't exist, it doesn't change the data points that are being created (Monthly/Weekly/Daily?) nor the map itself.

Correlation is not causation - Apple should know this.

Of course they rejected it!

[Anonymous Coward]

A Drone Strike app which can't initiate strikes is like an email client which can't send email.

Apple deserves our thanks for keeping unfinished apps out of the App Store.

Or he could... you know...

[Anonymous Coward]

Put it on a website!

Why does everything have to be an app these days? If you just want to display information, isn't that exactly what the Web was designed for? Why turn it into something that only a minority of your potential audience can make use of?

We already went through this whole proprietary wrappers nonsense back in the early days of the Internet. I thought we learned our lesson. Apparently not.

End rant.

Oh yeah, and get off my lawn!

"objectionable" content....

[wierd_w]

In other words, this guy has discovered first hand what happens when content gets censored on grounds of being "objectionable."

It doesn't matter what the subject is, SOMEONE will find it objectionable.

Evolution? Creationists.
Fluffy Kittens? PETA.
Babies? Malthists
Picking flowers? Botanical conservationists.
Vaccination? Antivac-ers.
Birth control? Catholics
Lipstick? Orthodox muslims
Etc.

If the metric for rejection was "objectionable", then the only way for apple's store to remain open is if it has nothing to sell.

Rather, Apple has taken the shister path, and has conflated "unpopular" with "objectionable", since the real application of that word would exclude all products.

As such, anything sociologically or politically unpopular, regardless of factual content, is banned.

Exactly

[Tim Ward]

The problem is of course the current namby-pamby nanny-state commie liberal president you've got, who insists on signing every drone death warrant personally.

A real red blooded conservative president, who upheld the US citizen's right to bear arms properly, would allow users of the app to kill foreigners with drones as easily as they are currently allowed to kill fellow Americans with handguns.

bogus reason

[PopeRatzo]

And the latest reason for objection is that Begley's content is 'objectionable and crude' and 'that many audiences would find [it] objectionable.

There are "many audiences" that would find the content on the Adult Swim app "objectionable and crude", too, but Apple doesn't have a problem with that.

Here's the reason walled gardens are bad for you: Because you don't get to choose how to use your own device.

Welcome to the App Store

[Paul Slocum]

I'm an iOS developer, and keep in mind when you read this that there is an entire industry of developers whose business plan is to submit pointless novelty/spam games and apps to the App Store as fast as humanly possible. Because of this, Apple has made it so you can't submit any app that simply aggregates web content or has limited functionality, and I think it's good for the App Store to impose this. On the iOS forums I follow, people get rejected constantly for simple aggregator apps like this.

So being a bit of a collector of these spam apps and having seen a lot of them, I don't really blame Apple for not being able to tell the different between those spam apps and this -- which maybe deserves a bit more consideration than the average spam aggregator app. I blame the app spammers who have wrecked the system, not Apple.

And anyway, geez, just make the project a webpage and twitter account and it has the same effect and you aren't limited to iOS. Oh, but then it's not as "cool" because it's not an iPhone app!

Re:First Mistake: making it political

[cffrost]

I'm not surprised that Apple has rejected an App that has the purpose of getting people interested in the author's own political agenda.

There's a Mitt Romney app (and other politicians), apps for newspapers and TV news channels galore, and lots and lots of other apps that are about one political agenda or other. How is this one different?

This one is made by some filthy peasant... a mere citizen. The others were submitted by corporate partners, job creators, you know, the real American people.