Actually, that's only true of the packaged games. The downloadable titles are only available on each console store, similar to iTunes.
Uncontrolled choice isn't always good. When the noise level gets too high, it starts hurting everyone.
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Apple Cracking Down on "Cookie Cutter" App Store Applications?
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Actually, that's only true of the packaged games. The downloadable titles are only available on each console store, similar to iTunes.
Uncontrolled choice isn't always good. When the noise level gets too high, it starts hurting everyone.
I think consumers like choice. But when confronted with a number above a certain level, consumers will throw up their hands or demand a way to focus or hone in and reduce the number of choices to a manageable level. On a practical level, a person doesn't have infinite time to sift through infinite number of choices.
It's human usability, and people forgetting about it do so to their peril.
The issue is not the fact, the issue is the way in which it is used. First the apps were of benefit to Apple, now they deem them unfit. There is a contradiction there, inconsistency. Apple can't have things both ways.
Nice blanket statements. Everything is black and white, is it? So, do you believe that more choice is always better than less (but not the same as no) choice?
No need for you to apologize. It was your post from two pages ago that I was referencing. It was lilo777 that was rehashing things. My apologies if that was unclear from my post.
Actually the developers need to remember that Apple is the one making the money for them.
They delivering millions of customers and cutting a check with no other work, straight to the developer.
This seems to be the part some of the disgruntled and seemingly incapable developers are missing.
Yet that website states that it's #2 ranked (feb 2010) in the US app store! Not there!
I wonder if Apple is going to subtract the number of now dis-approved application downloads when they report the number of total downloads next time? I suspect that if they did, with all those girly apps now gone, the total number would fall by some 60%
My guess is that 10% of the apps get 90% of the downloads. If you knocked off the bottom 20% of the apps, you would not see much of a statistical blip.
LOL.
Yeah Wal-Mart is to blame for putting Rubbermade out of business.
Buying up all of a companies inventory is a horrible deed, indeed.
WTH
RubbermAID went out of business because they screwed up and were too reliant on one outlet for their goods and had no other outlet. They went out of business because they ran their business poorly. Not because Wal-Mart bought their product and then stopped buying it. What kind of business works like that? Especially one that has been around for a long time? A bad one, that is what kind.
So please... stop being brainwashed to think Wal-Mart put Rubbermaid or any other supplier out of business. Retailers are not responsible for keeping their suppliers in business. They are in business to make money themselves and to deliver the best deals to their customers. If you fail to meet the standards that the retailer requires, then you lose access to that outlet. It is not the retailers fault if that causes you to go out of business.
The best irony is rubber maid marketed via fair trade for a long time which means they forced retailers to sell at their price (sort of what apple does now.) Yet then they ran into a retailer who was not going to be forced by them to play their game and the fell apart. Boo Hoo.
i'm all for the developers, but i think this is a good move by apple. pushing developers to the limit
Rubbermaid went out of business because they were dumb enough to deal with Walmart.
Walmart has some very predatory contracts. They will require you to provide them with X amount of product before Y date. If you don't get it to them, they get it all for almost nothing. They will require everything you send them to be sold by W date. What they will not tell you is that they will not accept shipment before W date is up or they will intentionally place the products where they will not sell (Bug spray at N. Dakota in January stacked behind the swimsuits in a room labeled, "Danger, RADIOACTIVE TAX FORMS, Do not enter!).
Walmart asks for terms that no other company could get away with. People take these terms because they are Walmart. Then they go out of business and are replaced by a company in China. If you make stuff and you don't want to go out of business, do not deal with Walmart.
In that event the moderators would be "moderating." If they had the power to prevent me from posting pro-Apple comments in ANY public forum, then they would be "censoring" me.
If Arn deleted one of my posts, I could choose to post my comments on any one of the hundreds of tech boards, or start my own blog and rant away on it. MacRumors would have to make a decision as to whether or not reduced traffic to their site (and the corresponding drop in ad revenue from views and click-thrus) as a result of a heavy-handed moderation posture would be worth the removal of what they would consider objectionable material. Again, a business decision.
Censorship is censorship when a government or similarly powerful totalitarian entity eliminates or attempts to eliminate voices of descent or prevents its people from obtaining unmanaged and unfiltered information from unofficial sources.
Nope. That was a calculated business decision to prevent persons from using a communication forum Apple hosts and maintains for purposes contrary to the company's intentions. Apple did not call Al Gore (Inventor of the Internet) and say "Gee, Al, can you completely shutdown all worldwide dissenting posts regarding the iPhone price drop? Thanks, man."
The reversal of that decision was another business decision--that the bad PR from pulling the posts was potentially more damaging than the posts themselves.
Apple owns the servers hosting their forums and the software that runs them. They could moderate out every third guy named Phil if they wanted to. If whiners want to libel Apple, they have thousands of other options.
As far as media conglomerates and publishers doing the same thing, they, too, are for-profit entities in a free market. If Fox News won't run your story, CNN might, NPR might, and it could run night and day on MSNBC and still no one would see it! If your steamy new bodice-ripper paperback is too hot for Harlequin, I bet Larry Flint will get 'er published for you. Or just publish it yourself at Lulu.com. In both examples, the word you're looking for is "editing", not "censorship."
Editing content and moderating discussions--performed by private parties (individuals and/or corporations) is NOT censorship. It may be a dumb idea and counterproductive when taken too far, I'll grant you, and I'm sure if it's YOUR app that gets the boot, YOUR post that gets deleted, or YOUR article that hits the editing room floor, it sure "feels" like censorship.
But at Wordpress you can devise your own nasty blog in five minutes and shout your message to the world. Hooray! No censorship for you. Sorry.
Now you are inventing a "there must be no alternative means of free expression" requirement for censorship. No such requirement exists. The fact that censorship is unsuccessful because people have adequate alternative means of free expression does not change the fact that when a media conglomerate stifles communications based on content that it is censoring.
You continue to insist, as well, that private entities cannot commit censorship. This is simply incorrect - you continue to confuse the First Amendment with the definition of censorship.
You continue to insist, as well, that private entities cannot commit censorship. This is simply incorrect - you continue to confuse the First Amendment with the definition of censorship.
How naive can you be, very it appears. Walmart has really done a job on both American companies and American towns. But, who am I to point out that you are a fool. You'll never realize it anyhow.
I get death threats from time to time. It is not that big of a deal. Some people do not like my company. Some if not all of these people are more than a bit crazy. One of these loons asked for equal time on my companies website to talk about how we are an evil corporation and should all burn in Hell. Was I committing censorship by not giving this person an open platform for talking about how bad I am? (Using my own money)
I suppose it depends upon who you ask:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/cultureshock/whodecides/definitions.html
About half of those definitions either demand or infer government oppression while the others do not.
I just get annoyed by those who get a post moderated and than wrap themselves in the victimhood inherent in so severe a label. Heck, by the loosest definition, if someone blocks posts from a certain poster on a BBS or blog, that person is "censoring" the posts of the blocked party.
It all sounds like indignant self-righteous whining and an appeal to victimhood. Edited. Moderated. Blocked. Ignored. But "censored?" Oh, the humanity!
It's stunning that you have to even ask that. Too bad some here would assert that moderating your own forum, hosted at your expense, is "censorship." The entitlement mindset is alive and well.
Go Apple. Ditch lousy apps. Cull your discussion boards of perennial whiners. Sounds good to me. I moderate my blog--I'd be a hypocrite if I criticized anyone else, person or business, for doing the same.
Of course not, because your website is not a platform for third party expression. Neither is my front lawn. You don't have to allow someone into your house to yell at you. But the sidewalk in front of your house is a place for free expression. The Supreme Court has said a shopping mall can be. (Though they've since wavered on that).
Note that my beef is with the idea that Apple is definitionally incapable of censorship. I haven't taken a firm position one way or the other. But I think an argument can be made that Apple's app store is as much a public forum as is a shopping mall.
I agree with this 100%.
I think by taking steps like this, though, they can clean things up a bit.
Developers and Apple are both losing money for app sales because a lot of people don't even bother. The last dozen apps I put on my phone all came from notice from the developers themselves. IE TV channel apps, online banking apps, business relationship apps etc.
So I am not being exposed at all to the rest of the apps out there, although I might find some of them useful and want to buy them.
I think this is a small step in a path of many steps they need to take to improve the app store experience and get more people to using it.
Early on I used to just browse through the app store a couple times a week. I have done that maybe one time in the last 12 months and it was a horrible waste of time.
I am naive because you think it is possible for a retailer to put a well run company out of business.
That is okay... I only spent 15 years of my life managing and owning retail stores. So I know nothing about it. I am sure you are qualified to call me naive about how the retailer/supplier relationship works.
You need to learn to educate yourself beyond half baked websites and quarter baked documentaries.
There is no contradiction. They changed their mind. Happens all the time. Have you ever gone in to a store and found that they discontinued an item that they used to carry? Do you think they have an obligation to go back and remove any sales of that item from their previously reported revenue?
Yes, exactly. I tentatively support this apparent policy formation, and would be very glad to see more than half of the apps in my searches come up as truly designed and customized apps, even if they are similar. I did complain some time ago about overly similar apps, but IMO that takes a back burner compared to apps that don't even have more than one page or even an options menu.
Yes they changed their minds, that is the point. One minute the apps were good, now they are bad. The apps didn't change, only Apple's mind changed. As and when it suits them they change the rules.
This is not the same as discontinuing a book or a physical item because those cannot be replicated ad infinitum. A shop only has so much space to store its goods and show them to the public. I doubt the app store is close to being full in storage space, and there categories and search to find apps. In any case it is usually due to poor sales that goods are discontinued. That means that it is customer interest deciding what is being discontinued, at least to a certain extent. It isn't usually because someone at the shop changed their minds and decided such and such a product is now a bad product.
If a company made such a big deal of the number of goods it had sold to promote itself, then took a number of goods off the shelf for no other reason than their own whim I wouldn't expect them to adjust their figures, but I would point out the hypocrisy and irony.