If it was based on complaints, they would have only removed apps people complained about.
Intellectual dishonesty makes me indignant. Like I said - if Apple told the truth about its reasons and thus gave us all an understandable rule for how to know if something is acceptable in the appstore, I'd have no problem with it.
And if whole categories are being complained about, you review the whole category. And if you're getting conflicting complaints from concerned parents and rabid free-expressionists, you try to find a middle ground.
I really don't see anything intellectually dishonest here. I see a company trying to maintain a business. Developers know there's an approval process. The uproar over iFart was early demonstration that Apple intends to monitor content. They continue to look for a workable arrangement. Rapidly evolving markets are messy. If you're developing an App that may be subject to complaint, account for it in your business plan.
"Garbage" developers are developers nonetheless. They have a right to have their approved material sold just like everyone else.
Yeah, see? This is the root of the problem. Developers don't have a right to have their applications sold by Apple.
If the concern is someone not being able to purchase an app because there are too many juvenile apps confusing them, that problem is easily solvable by better sorting the apps.
I'm sure that approach was considered, and they came to different conclusion. Making that assertion with such limited insight into the business is kind of a stretch.
Apple's approach has always been to limit options with an eye towards reducing complexity. Anyone who's spent time on OS X vs Windows has seen that. They look at the available options, decide what has value, and prune the rest.
The question is not whether this decision does them more harm than good. It probably won't affect their profits at all, really.
Another assertion without grounds, but one that has a lot of case studies suggesting otherwise. Why do you think businesses are so concerned about their "brand"?
The REAL question is: If the apps are being removed because they are offending people, then why hasn't other 'offensive' material in the iTunes store been removed?
The issue is hypocrisy, plain and simple. Justifications can be attempted, but the issue remains.
Wow, how people love the word hypocrisy... Is every middle ground hypocritical? If I make the decision that I'm going to cull the proliferation of crappy pseudo-porn as a concession to the complaining parents, but keep a small number of more broadly acceptable but still suggestive applications to please the free-expression activists, am I compromising or being a hypocrite?
People keep making this simple-minded assumption that multi-dimensional issues can be laid out nicely on a line where we can pick a point such that everything falls neatly on one side or the other. It just doesn't work that way. Nor is it true that we all have identically values such that what passes a selection criteria for one of us will pass that criteria for all of us.
I suggest saving the term "hypocrisy" for situations that are much more starkly delineated.
You should stop making up quotes. It only weakens your arguments.
Sorry, I assumed people could tell what was paraphrased as opposed to a direct quotation. But you're right, most people don't bother to read the original source and could be confused by that. I corrected the original post.
