If I own a company and sell a product to another company, I don't have any realistic expectation to control what that company does. My part of the business deal has concluded.
Seriously Apple. Get real.
If the company you sold it to does something you don't want them to, you can choose to no longer sell to them. This is very common in the game console business as well as many others, including the conputer business. That's why consoles always cost the same everywhere, and why online stores sometimes make you add an item to your cart before it will show you the price.
Low-end is completely different than low-margin...
Yes, one is about the technology, the other is about the price. However, that distinction has no bearing on the topic at hand, because the low-end is low-margin.
If someone is buying the cheapest computer they can find, then undercutting the competition by even $5 can make a difference. On the other end of the spectrum, if someone is ready to spend more than $1,000 on a computer, they're already willing to spend more to get more, by definition. This allows for higher margins.
Low-end is completely different than low-margin... Actually, the GP has a point, how can you sell $500 a device that is supposedly "cutting-edge", and make a huge margin? Are the production costs that low? Then how is it high-end.
We were talking PCs, not handhelds.
And then there is the HP/DELL/Acer vs Apple argument... So how is a low-margin PC at $1000 crappier than a high-margin iMac at the same price?
$400-$600 is the low end, not $1,000.
There are no $1,000 iMacs.
I am quite sure that some PCs are sold at the same price range than some iMacs, the figure is not that important, replace by whatever price range you wish to compare
Yes it does matter, because once we leave the low-end, we also leave the razor-thin low-margin.
Now DELL or HP manpower is probably cheaper than Apple manpower (design isn't everything for those companies), so components are easily better in an HP or DELL machine than in an Apple machine, for the same price.
Non sequitur, and false.
Of course if you compare a $600 DELL to a $3000 iMac, you will probably find better hardware in the latter, but that's hardly the point, is it?
At last, an almost glimmer of insight. Apple doesn't have a $600 iMac because the iMac is overpriced, it doesn't have a $600 iMac because a $600 iMac would suck. Apple does have a $600 Mac mini, and that's as low as they go (and even then, it is incredibly small, while still avoiding the low-end components found in cheap PCs).
There isn't a single cogent point in your entire post.
It's solely up to the DA whether or not to press charges. Apple has no say one way or the other. It's solely up to the police whether to investigate, Apple has no say one way or the other.
The only thing Apple can do is request an investigation, or request that charges be made (they can also request the opposite). But in none of those situations do the DA or the police have any obligation to either press charges, or request, then execute, a search warrant.
However this still reeks of Apple marketing to me, Gizmodo are Apple fanboys in the first degree, this would not have happened without Apples explicit permission.
This is a monumentally absurd notion. Are you saying that Apple marketing planned to have Gizmodo/Chen investigated for buying stolen goods? How is that even remotely a rational marketing plan (even for marketing values of "rational")?
What's more, involving the police? Just look at how well that worked for the balloon boy's parents!
Next week we'll read about how Apple and Gizmodo talked and Apple have in good faith dropped all charges.
Apple isn't the one who presses charges. It's the DA. And as of yet, there are no charges, merely an investigation, which are at the sole discretion of the police, not Apple.
Personally Apple should be charged with misusing police resources
Not really. 1) Can be claimed that Apple "wiping" the phone thus removing *contact* information that could be used to identify the phone owner is the same as admitting not expecting return.
What? This demonstrates that they knew it was out of their possession. Whether or not they expected it returned doesn't alter whether it's stolen or not. If someone steals something from you, and you are resigned to the fact that you probably won't ever get it back, that doesn't mean it's no longer stolen.
2) Phone was lost or left behind unclaimed (not stolen) for WEEKS, seems noone came back for the phone or called the phone number to claim it.
The guy who lost it pestered the pub for WEEKS after he lost it to see if anyone had found and returned it. Even the dimmest bulb on the planet knows that if you find something at a bar, restaurant, etc., you take it to the proprietor since that's exactly where the person who lost it will check with first.
3) You argue that they knew what they were doing for paying so much?! Prove it!!! It was disguised to look like a 3GS, and could be or not a fake!
It was in a 3GS-shaped case. The guy who stole it had already taken it out of that case and identified it as not being a known iPhone model. Giz had photos of it, and they paid a lot, either knowing for sure, or highly suspecting, that it was the real deal.
4) They tried to return it to Apple long before but weren't taken seriously.
No they didn't.
Apple is using "creative" law to subdue people... and i'd like to know which law they infringed using a computer as mentioned in warrant... that itself is ridiculous.
It's not Apple who decides whether to file criminal charges, or to file for a search warrant. It's the DA and the police. It appears a crime may have been committed, so the search warrant, and any future arrests, are legal, even if Apple has absolutely zero desire to see criminal charges filed. The only thing can really do to completely quash this case is to claim either that the phone was never lost, or that they had a deal with Gizmodo to pick up the phone for them.
You should also look into California's journalistic "shield" law.
You should realise that only provides protection for the case of a journalist refusing to reveal a source of information. Not a source of stolen goods.
Even more to the point, it doesn't protect a journalist from committing a crime, which is what, potentially, Chen or someone else at Giz did by buying what they had every reason to know was stolen goods.
On an infinite timeline the chances of hating Apple is 100%, some of us just get there sooner than others.
Not sure exactly what you mean by that. You can replace "Apple" with any noun. Besides, we aren't infinite beings (neither is Apple an infinite corporation). So what do I care if, at some time infinitely in the future, that I'll completely hate Apple? What matters to me is if I hate them now (or am beginning to hate them such that I'll likely end up hating them soon).
Huh. iPhone is the leader? I think maybe you should try explaining that to RIM. Their 40+% marketshare might disagree.
The context was between Android and Apple.
But even so, do you think RIM would not instantly jump at the chance to trade places with Apple?
You think it's impossible for them to lose any ground? They can grow forever but Google can't even keep growing through the end of the year? I sense bias.
Please cite where I said anything like that. I sense straw man.
Oh and the Apple profits that you vaunt are a direct result of gouging the consumer. Margins like that can't proceed from high quality hardware.
No, you have it exactly backwards. Margins like that can't proceed from crappy hardware. The margins on the low end are razor thin. That's why HP, Dell, and Acer (and sometimes Toshiba) sell more PCs than Apple, but make much less in profits. The bulk of those sales are on the low-end, low-margin segment of the market.
Only so many people will be duped by that, which is why Apple has a completely flat line of market share in the computing world. They've been at 'around an 8% market share' for years.
With the exception of the time between when the Intel switch was announced, to the time the Intel Macs finally shipped, Apple's growth has exceeded the market as a whole for the better part of a decade.
Well, shit, what more should I have been going for, exactly?
Apple is #1, android is gaining. Apple recognises it has competition, its negative statements about the android market reflect that. If you want to characterise that as quaking or not is a semantic argument best left to marketing types.
No, it's not semantics, it's downright false. You're correct that Apple faces competition from Android, but the notion that Steve Jobs is "Steve Jobs has been quaking like a motherfucker" is completely nonsensical, even with granting abundant leeway in the semantics of that phrase.
Now, what will the future hold? I don't know. You don't know. Apple and Google doesn't know.
I was talking about the present, and specifically how you can't simply extrapolate into the future.
If you tried arguing with some one back in 1991 that Apple was going to end up on the brink of bankruptcy in six years and would have to rely on Microsoft to prop them up
Apple was never close to bankruptcy, and MS never "propped them up". Apple had billions in the bank when MS invested $150 million in Apple stock, as part of their agreement for Apple to drop their lawsuit against them. The only part of that agreement that really helped Apple in the short term was MS's agreement to continue selling Office for the Mac for a period of time (5 years?). That agreement was never about MS actually pulling Mac Office, since that was extremely unlikely, but to prevent them from being able to use that as a bargaining chip against Apple (which they had done in the past).
It's one out of dozens of Android phones, each model with it's own features and price ranges.
Steve Jobs has been quaking like a motherfucker (and not in the fun way) if the reports of his Google tantrums are true...
Contrary to common misconception here on Slashdot, iPhone far, far outsells *all* Android handsets combined.
One thing that people often bring up is Android's rate of market share growth, as though this growth is sustainable. The first problem is that such growth is, by its very nature, unsustainable. If it were, there would be trillions of Android phones in no time. The other problem is that few people look into the reason for the growth. With Droid, Nexus One, and Incredible, Android handsets are finally at a point where they are at least somewhat respectable competition for the iPhone in the mass market, so it's natural the number of units being sold would increase at a rate faster than before.
The notion that Apple, or Steve Jobs, are "quaking like a motherfucker" is absurd. iPhone is the leader. And even if Android makes it onto more total phones, the market is fractured, which will still leave Apple in the top spot between Android handsets and iPhone for a long time to come. This is the same dynamic that has Apple as the number four (sometimes number five) PC maker in the US, even with only around an 8% market share. Further, Apple is number one in terms of profits. In other words, HP and Dell would rather trade places with Apple, than the other way round.
In the smart phone market, companies like HTC and Motorola may see increased profits due to increased sales of Android phones, but each and every one of them would similarly trade places with Apple in a heartbeat if they could. If Android is bound to knock Apple off its perch, it's going to take many, many years.
So, do explain why you'd think that anyone in Apple's position would be "quaking"?
Anything that could emit a wireless signal could trigger something harmful, so there has to be limits on those things.
I appreciate what you're saying about the Israelis having tighter anti-terrorism security measures, but a few things:
1. It's absurd that the WiFi on an iPad (or any computer) would be a threat in numbers, but not in the singular. 2. Anything with metal and electricity, or even just a magnet, can emit a wireless signal. 3. The iPads were confiscated at customs. The plane has already landed.
Without further evidence, this wasn't a "war on terror" thing, it was a standard regulatory thing. In spite of common(?) misconception, the Israeli government addresses issues that have nothing to do with terrorism.
Only in your commercially centered world. "Free" has several meanings and co-opting it to mean only the commercial version is a political statement in itself.
But as a rule, "free as in liberty" is reserved solely for humans, groups of humans, or sometimes animals.
The idea of software having freedoms is absurd. The notion that RMS is trying to put forth is *not* absurd. Unfortunately, natural human language is not based on logic, thus such contradictions are allowed.
Which is why people are so adamant about using the term "Free Software" as a proper noun, because it indicates a specific branding. Whereas "free software" is generic, and in standard material parlance, means "no charge".
You're kidding, aren't you? There are far more RMS-haters on Slashdot than RMS fans, at least overt ones.
When he wrote "free to do as RMS approves.", he was counting himself in (at least for humorous effect, if not in earnest) the group of "RMS-haters". As is/are the people who modded him up, as well as those that modded you down.
A) Banned any advertising network other then it's own from doing any analytics of any kind. This drastically lowers the effectiveness (and thus the value) of any ads google can deliver. If google can't target an ad based on any information coming from the phone, they have lost all of their vast analytical value.
I think you mean, Apple has banned using geolocation for ads.
B) Google most certainly did not implement their turn by turn in Objective C. Since apple has banned implementing any app in any non apple language and then cross compiling, Google would have to reimplement the entire thing from scratch.
Why? Apple approves plenty of turn-by-turn nav apps. They actually would have denied them before iPhone OS 3. The terms for iPhone OS 2 disallowed turn-by-turn apps. But now, Google should be fine with this one.
The problem here is arbitrary application of rules. If Google's app was indeed approved as GP says, and Apple reversed their decision based solely on the fact that Google is now competing with them, then it just goes to show that no-one can truly trust Apple review process in any way whatsoever, and all rules they have are just rubbish.
Except that's not what happened, so it doesn't show any of the things you said it did.
It's even worse that than. Even if what was said is what happened (it's not), the thing about "no one can trust the process in any way, all rules are rubbish" is patently false. Thousands of developers have successfully trusted Apple's review process, and many of the rules have kept buggy, crappy software out of the App Store (people like to point out the Fart app as a counter-example to this, but consider that the Fart app is the bottom of the barrel. That barrel would have been far deeper without the approval process.
As a final point, there is no pre-approval for apps. I don't know where you heard that but you were mislead.
Is Apple a good enough source for you?
Um, you're misreading what DJRumpy wrote. He's not saying that Apple doesn't approve apps, he's saying they don't pre-approve apps. In other words, they don't tell developers, ahead of time, "sure, write that app, you are pre-approved and we absolutely will not block it". Each and every third-party app is submitted and reviewed, after it's developed, not before.
Good job on getting "+5 Informative" while being 100% wrong. Slashdot should have an Achievement for that!
Slashdot Mirror
What, banning online sales to force people to buy at retail (and likely from Apple Stores)? It's at least an anti-consumer move.
I seem to have missed the part where you explain how this is evil.
Oh, please do explain how this is "evil".
If I own a company and sell a product to another company, I don't have any realistic expectation to control what that company does. My part of the business deal has concluded.
Seriously Apple. Get real.
If the company you sold it to does something you don't want them to, you can choose to no longer sell to them. This is very common in the game console business as well as many others, including the conputer business. That's why consoles always cost the same everywhere, and why online stores sometimes make you add an item to your cart before it will show you the price.
Low-end is completely different than low-margin...
Yes, one is about the technology, the other is about the price. However, that distinction has no bearing on the topic at hand, because the low-end is low-margin.
If someone is buying the cheapest computer they can find, then undercutting the competition by even $5 can make a difference. On the other end of the spectrum, if someone is ready to spend more than $1,000 on a computer, they're already willing to spend more to get more, by definition. This allows for higher margins.
Low-end is completely different than low-margin... Actually, the GP has a point, how can you sell $500 a device that is supposedly "cutting-edge", and make a huge margin? Are the production costs that low? Then how is it high-end.
We were talking PCs, not handhelds.
And then there is the HP/DELL/Acer vs Apple argument... So how is a low-margin PC at $1000 crappier than a high-margin iMac at the same price?
I am quite sure that some PCs are sold at the same price range than some iMacs, the figure is not that important, replace by whatever price range you wish to compare
Yes it does matter, because once we leave the low-end, we also leave the razor-thin low-margin.
Now DELL or HP manpower is probably cheaper than Apple manpower (design isn't everything for those companies), so components are easily better in an HP or DELL machine than in an Apple machine, for the same price.
Non sequitur, and false.
Of course if you compare a $600 DELL to a $3000 iMac, you will probably find better hardware in the latter, but that's hardly the point, is it?
At last, an almost glimmer of insight. Apple doesn't have a $600 iMac because the iMac is overpriced, it doesn't have a $600 iMac because a $600 iMac would suck. Apple does have a $600 Mac mini, and that's as low as they go (and even then, it is incredibly small, while still avoiding the low-end components found in cheap PCs).
There isn't a single cogent point in your entire post.
It's solely up to the DA whether or not to press charges. Apple has no say one way or the other. It's solely up to the police whether to investigate, Apple has no say one way or the other.
The only thing Apple can do is request an investigation, or request that charges be made (they can also request the opposite). But in none of those situations do the DA or the police have any obligation to either press charges, or request, then execute, a search warrant.
However this still reeks of Apple marketing to me, Gizmodo are Apple fanboys in the first degree, this would not have happened without Apples explicit permission.
This is a monumentally absurd notion. Are you saying that Apple marketing planned to have Gizmodo/Chen investigated for buying stolen goods? How is that even remotely a rational marketing plan (even for marketing values of "rational")?
What's more, involving the police? Just look at how well that worked for the balloon boy's parents!
Next week we'll read about how Apple and Gizmodo talked and Apple have in good faith dropped all charges.
Apple isn't the one who presses charges. It's the DA. And as of yet, there are no charges, merely an investigation, which are at the sole discretion of the police, not Apple.
Personally Apple should be charged with misusing police resources
For...?
Not really.
1) Can be claimed that Apple "wiping" the phone thus removing *contact* information that could be used to identify the phone owner is the same as admitting not expecting return.
What? This demonstrates that they knew it was out of their possession. Whether or not they expected it returned doesn't alter whether it's stolen or not. If someone steals something from you, and you are resigned to the fact that you probably won't ever get it back, that doesn't mean it's no longer stolen.
2) Phone was lost or left behind unclaimed (not stolen) for WEEKS, seems noone came back for the phone or called the phone number to claim it.
The guy who lost it pestered the pub for WEEKS after he lost it to see if anyone had found and returned it. Even the dimmest bulb on the planet knows that if you find something at a bar, restaurant, etc., you take it to the proprietor since that's exactly where the person who lost it will check with first.
3) You argue that they knew what they were doing for paying so much?! Prove it!!! It was disguised to look like a 3GS, and could be or not a fake!
It was in a 3GS-shaped case. The guy who stole it had already taken it out of that case and identified it as not being a known iPhone model. Giz had photos of it, and they paid a lot, either knowing for sure, or highly suspecting, that it was the real deal.
4) They tried to return it to Apple long before but weren't taken seriously.
No they didn't.
Apple is using "creative" law to subdue people... and i'd like to know which law they infringed using a computer as mentioned in warrant... that itself is ridiculous.
It's not Apple who decides whether to file criminal charges, or to file for a search warrant. It's the DA and the police. It appears a crime may have been committed, so the search warrant, and any future arrests, are legal, even if Apple has absolutely zero desire to see criminal charges filed. The only thing can really do to completely quash this case is to claim either that the phone was never lost, or that they had a deal with Gizmodo to pick up the phone for them.
You should realise that only provides protection for the case of a journalist refusing to reveal a source of information. Not a source of stolen goods.
Even more to the point, it doesn't protect a journalist from committing a crime, which is what, potentially, Chen or someone else at Giz did by buying what they had every reason to know was stolen goods.
On an infinite timeline the chances of hating Apple is 100%, some of us just get there sooner than others.
Not sure exactly what you mean by that. You can replace "Apple" with any noun. Besides, we aren't infinite beings (neither is Apple an infinite corporation). So what do I care if, at some time infinitely in the future, that I'll completely hate Apple? What matters to me is if I hate them now (or am beginning to hate them such that I'll likely end up hating them soon).
Which brings us to the reason for your lack of a hot girlfriend in this universe...
Huh. iPhone is the leader? I think maybe you should try explaining that to RIM. Their 40+% marketshare might disagree.
The context was between Android and Apple.
But even so, do you think RIM would not instantly jump at the chance to trade places with Apple?
You think it's impossible for them to lose any ground? They can grow forever but Google can't even keep growing through the end of the year? I sense bias.
Please cite where I said anything like that. I sense straw man.
Oh and the Apple profits that you vaunt are a direct result of gouging the consumer. Margins like that can't proceed from high quality hardware.
No, you have it exactly backwards. Margins like that can't proceed from crappy hardware. The margins on the low end are razor thin. That's why HP, Dell, and Acer (and sometimes Toshiba) sell more PCs than Apple, but make much less in profits. The bulk of those sales are on the low-end, low-margin segment of the market.
Only so many people will be duped by that, which is why Apple has a completely flat line of market share in the computing world. They've been at 'around an 8% market share' for years .
With the exception of the time between when the Intel switch was announced, to the time the Intel Macs finally shipped, Apple's growth has exceeded the market as a whole for the better part of a decade.
That's a good counter argument, but nothing more.
Well, shit, what more should I have been going for, exactly?
Apple is #1, android is gaining. Apple recognises it has competition, its negative statements about the android market reflect that. If you want to characterise that as quaking or not is a semantic argument best left to marketing types.
No, it's not semantics, it's downright false. You're correct that Apple faces competition from Android, but the notion that Steve Jobs is "Steve Jobs has been quaking like a motherfucker" is completely nonsensical, even with granting abundant leeway in the semantics of that phrase.
Now, what will the future hold? I don't know. You don't know. Apple and Google doesn't know.
I was talking about the present, and specifically how you can't simply extrapolate into the future.
If you tried arguing with some one back in 1991 that Apple was going to end up on the brink of bankruptcy in six years and would have to rely on Microsoft to prop them up
Apple was never close to bankruptcy, and MS never "propped them up". Apple had billions in the bank when MS invested $150 million in Apple stock, as part of their agreement for Apple to drop their lawsuit against them. The only part of that agreement that really helped Apple in the short term was MS's agreement to continue selling Office for the Mac for a period of time (5 years?). That agreement was never about MS actually pulling Mac Office, since that was extremely unlikely, but to prevent them from being able to use that as a bargaining chip against Apple (which they had done in the past).
Microsoft isn't a PC maker.
Google has many phones at various price points on many carriers.
Google has one phone, sort of.
Also, Android (overall) sales may eclipse iPhone in the next 2 years.
Markets don't work like that. You can't just follow a trend line, then extend it two years into the future.
It's one out of dozens of Android phones, each model with it's own features and price ranges.
Steve Jobs has been quaking like a motherfucker (and not in the fun way) if the reports of his Google tantrums are true...
Contrary to common misconception here on Slashdot, iPhone far, far outsells *all* Android handsets combined.
One thing that people often bring up is Android's rate of market share growth, as though this growth is sustainable. The first problem is that such growth is, by its very nature, unsustainable. If it were, there would be trillions of Android phones in no time. The other problem is that few people look into the reason for the growth. With Droid, Nexus One, and Incredible, Android handsets are finally at a point where they are at least somewhat respectable competition for the iPhone in the mass market, so it's natural the number of units being sold would increase at a rate faster than before.
The notion that Apple, or Steve Jobs, are "quaking like a motherfucker" is absurd. iPhone is the leader. And even if Android makes it onto more total phones, the market is fractured, which will still leave Apple in the top spot between Android handsets and iPhone for a long time to come. This is the same dynamic that has Apple as the number four (sometimes number five) PC maker in the US, even with only around an 8% market share. Further, Apple is number one in terms of profits. In other words, HP and Dell would rather trade places with Apple, than the other way round.
In the smart phone market, companies like HTC and Motorola may see increased profits due to increased sales of Android phones, but each and every one of them would similarly trade places with Apple in a heartbeat if they could. If Android is bound to knock Apple off its perch, it's going to take many, many years.
So, do explain why you'd think that anyone in Apple's position would be "quaking"?
Sorry dude Even with an infinite number of dice rolls, you can never roll a 7.
Anything that could emit a wireless signal could trigger something harmful, so there has to be limits on those things.
I appreciate what you're saying about the Israelis having tighter anti-terrorism security measures, but a few things:
1. It's absurd that the WiFi on an iPad (or any computer) would be a threat in numbers, but not in the singular.
2. Anything with metal and electricity, or even just a magnet, can emit a wireless signal.
3. The iPads were confiscated at customs. The plane has already landed.
Without further evidence, this wasn't a "war on terror" thing, it was a standard regulatory thing. In spite of common(?) misconception, the Israeli government addresses issues that have nothing to do with terrorism.
Only in your commercially centered world. "Free" has several meanings and co-opting it to mean only the commercial version is a political statement in itself.
But as a rule, "free as in liberty" is reserved solely for humans, groups of humans, or sometimes animals.
The idea of software having freedoms is absurd. The notion that RMS is trying to put forth is *not* absurd. Unfortunately, natural human language is not based on logic, thus such contradictions are allowed.
Which is why people are so adamant about using the term "Free Software" as a proper noun, because it indicates a specific branding. Whereas "free software" is generic, and in standard material parlance, means "no charge".
You're kidding, aren't you? There are far more RMS-haters on Slashdot than RMS fans, at least overt ones.
When he wrote "free to do as RMS approves.", he was counting himself in (at least for humorous effect, if not in earnest) the group of "RMS-haters". As is/are the people who modded him up, as well as those that modded you down.
Currently using it is free, but that will run out in the near future.
Web use is freely licensed until 2016. I wouldn't exactly call that the "near future".
You know who else loves it? People who, because of Blu-ray, get to watch high bitrate 1080p movies on their large TVs.
You forget, Apple has:
A) Banned any advertising network other then it's own from doing any analytics of any kind. This drastically lowers the effectiveness (and thus the value) of any ads google can deliver. If google can't target an ad based on any information coming from the phone, they have lost all of their vast analytical value.
I think you mean, Apple has banned using geolocation for ads.
B) Google most certainly did not implement their turn by turn in Objective C. Since apple has banned implementing any app in any non apple language and then cross compiling, Google would have to reimplement the entire thing from scratch.
C and C++ are perfectly acceptable.
apple would probably deny it anyway.
Why? Apple approves plenty of turn-by-turn nav apps. They actually would have denied them before iPhone OS 3. The terms for iPhone OS 2 disallowed turn-by-turn apps. But now, Google should be fine with this one.
The problem here is arbitrary application of rules. If Google's app was indeed approved as GP says, and Apple reversed their decision based solely on the fact that Google is now competing with them, then it just goes to show that no-one can truly trust Apple review process in any way whatsoever, and all rules they have are just rubbish.
Except that's not what happened, so it doesn't show any of the things you said it did.
It's even worse that than. Even if what was said is what happened (it's not), the thing about "no one can trust the process in any way, all rules are rubbish" is patently false. Thousands of developers have successfully trusted Apple's review process, and many of the rules have kept buggy, crappy software out of the App Store (people like to point out the Fart app as a counter-example to this, but consider that the Fart app is the bottom of the barrel. That barrel would have been far deeper without the approval process.
As a final point, there is no pre-approval for apps. I don't know where you heard that but you were mislead.
Is Apple a good enough source for you?
Um, you're misreading what DJRumpy wrote. He's not saying that Apple doesn't approve apps, he's saying they don't pre-approve apps. In other words, they don't tell developers, ahead of time, "sure, write that app, you are pre-approved and we absolutely will not block it". Each and every third-party app is submitted and reviewed, after it's developed, not before.
Good job on getting "+5 Informative" while being 100% wrong. Slashdot should have an Achievement for that!