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Apple Rejecting Applications Based on 'Limited Utility'

Can't agree with you

arn said:
Should Crazy Eye be removed then?
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=284827332&mt=8

or More Cowbell?
http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=285559215&mt=8

I think the line is less clear than you think

arn
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I think Apple made a mistake in pulling the App. It is not on the grounds of relevancy that the App is inappropriate, but that it is vulgar. (Offensive may be too subjective.)

Really, bodily noises? Apple is a serious company that doesn't want its technology promoting vulgarity.

I just wish Apple had of made the call how they saw it. Now everyone will be making comparisons to other Apps that are equally 'worthless'.
 
Pull the app, it's just not very well done

Someone has to make the decision about what's on the app store and what isn't. I think :apple: made a "sound" decision here.
 
I agree with Apple!

I have to agree with Apple. I think that there are beter apps that deserve a place in the App Store. There are a lot of unusefull apps out there and finaly Apple starts to rejecting some of them! :cool:
 
This is not right

barefootman said:
Why are you people even discussing this? The App got rejected; end of story.

It's between the developer and :apple:. Let him fight his own fight.

Al
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The point here is that if this guy gets rejected, who is next? Who says what is popular enough to sell? There is no other distribution method short of jailbreaking.

I laughed my ass of at his video. And I am sure it would have the same effect on most guys out for a beer at night. Is it an award winner? Not even close. Would I buy it for $0.99? Doubtful. If it was free, would I download it and keep it on my phone? Absolutely. Apple made a bad call.
 
arn said:
My "issue" with this isn't that they rejected a farting application. If that's a defined criteria, that's fine. My problem is rejecting an app due to "limited utility".

arn
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Well, I'm sure I remember that they said originally that one reason for the approval process was for quality control. I suppose one could argue over whether that would purely be technical (i.e. bugginess) or for conformance to the SDK guidelines/HIG etc. or would include the utility of the app. For my money theyve failed either way: there are a lot of buggy, ugly, useless apps on the store. One hopes that they'll die of natural causes (i.e. no-one buying them) soon.

dreadloquito said:
The only reason this rejection letter is the least bit surprising to me is that it means apple is actually doing some degree of screening of Apps submitted to the store. But to block that app when they've let through so many others with "limited utility" or in fact no utility. Not to mention their apparent lack of screening for blatant copyright infringements in Apps. I'm not a huge fan of strict app screening, but because the App store allows users to make one-click impulse purchases without knowing the actual content of Apps, I think Apple owes it to customers to a certain amount of quality control. But since the current offerings belie any real attempts at quality control so far, it's a fairly lame explanation to give for not accepting this app.
On a side note, the apps that seem to me to be most worth removing from the store are the dozens of repackaged public domain books for sale. They seem rather obviously aimed at tricking the ignorant into paying for things that they could have for free to make money for some lazy sod who doesn't want to actually create anything useful. But maybe that's just me griping.
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Yes. I can't for the life of me understand why hundreds of separate apps containing one book each are better than one book-reading app that stores a library inside it, but there we go. Hopefully these apps will die eventually as well.

PhilipOrr said:
Again, I think it shouldn't be Apple that decides on what content we want to put on our iPod or iPhone.
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That's not the real problem: the real issue is that the app store is currently pretty much impossible to browse because there's so much crap on there, it's difficult to find the things that are good. As already remarked, the reviews aren't any use either, nor is going by what is most popular as people have already downloaded an app (thus adding to its ranking) by the time they realise it's useless. Hopefully as more reviews come up online this problem will be solved eventually.
 
Ridiculous decision!

It looks a nicely made app. As long as silly / fun (some people like fun) stuff is kept in a special category, what's the problem??
 
They are just trying to be polite

The problem with this app is it's juvenile nature. Apple didn't want to say to the guy that "you're some babyish ****, f*** off and make a sensible app". I doubt it has anything to do really with limited usage and more of the unsophisticated nature of the product that apple doesn't want to have with their phone.

Is kind of a shame though - i quite liked it - very well implemented and i loved the page curl when going back to the choice screen. :(
 
jsep said:
maybe apple is just now starting to crack down on new useless apps? :confused:
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Exactly. Why does this need to be on the app store? It's trash, but if you're of the warped view that it's not trash, get it ad hoc. No need to waste Apple's bandwidth and add more and more useless apps to wade through on the store.
 
Completely pointless, not to mention incredibly childish.

I for one would install this app without delay.
 
looks to me that they aren't worried about limited appeal, they're worried about the exact opposite.

They know damn well a large a) a large portion of the userbase would find it funny and download it. b) it looks actually well done for what it is.. c) Joke and novelty apps do crazily well.

It'd probably climb the store (remember how many kids have ipods and iphones) and probably embarass Apple with media attention and people bitching that the app store is just full of farting and lightsabre apps.

They shouldn't reject on those grounds, it makes no sense if they've let the bouncing 3D cow in etc to turn around and say no to an app that's actually well done. However lame it is.

The fact I wouldn't download it doesn't mean a hell of a lot of other people wouldn't.
 
IMHO Apple should increase the number of people that can get the app adhoc and allow people to sell their app on their own terms. Getting an app or even an app update into the app store is like pulling teeth! And then you don't even get paid for all the downloads, only those for the regions that you'd get $250+ for... for me, thats half of my sales. Basically Apple is holding onto $500+ in my case.
 
I believe that Apple had little to no standards when they opened the app store to get it filled with apps asap. Now that they have a fair amount of apps they're starting to get picky about what they want in there.
 
I think people are reading way too much into this... I can almost picture a generic app screener(probably a girl) in a massive room full of operators/screeners on computers who thought the app was of bad taste and made a bad decision that will probably be reverted as soon as it reaches her manager... lol (All speculation of course, but at least here in the UK, staff on the lower levels do things like this ALL the time, normally to my displeasure)

Regarding quality control, I agree that there needs to be a better review system to make it easier to separate the crap from the useful. Regarding apple worried about their quality, well, both apple developed apps(remote and the pocker game) have received great reviews, so there's no issue there. I'm sure customers realize that the crap is not coming from apple, but from independent developers...
 
I'm fully with Apple on this one. They don't want an App Store crammed with rubbish which could create a bad impression with customers, and I as a customer don't want to have to wade through it to find the quality apps.

Is there a (brick, or online) store in the world that doesn't select what products it offers (bar maybe bargain basement pound/euro stores)?
 
EricNau said:
If left unmanaged, the app store could easily become overrun with useless apps,
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Then Apple needs to refine the app store so that the user has more control of what they see. Should the internet be controlled because it contains too much useless crap? Entire businesses sprang up to filter through that crap. Why should Apple be any different. Sure it is juvenile, but it shouldn't be prevented from being distributed. On the flip side, I can see it as being similar to a physical store choosing the product it distributes. However, in this case, it limits consumer choice since there is no other App store.
 
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