Rejection: Apple hates (certain) books and whistling

Personally, I think people here should stop shooting the messengers.

Here is a personal story about an app rejection...one that took 6 months to finally get :)

I had an idea for an app. It took music, created in an ancient format, that is and has been created to be given away freely over the web, for everyone and to anyone, and put it in a UI that made it work like a radio app. Most of the music is instrumental and various genres of electronica.

Note this isn't some "seeqpod" or "sadsteve" type thing. You can't even play the stuff in say, iTunes. The music is and was made by the artists and given away, license free, over the web and has been for oh, nearly 16 years...but the younger generation knows little about it.

But unlike say, pandora or other limited radio apps, you could skip songs you didn't like over and over again. Any songs you did like, one touch and it adds them to your library on the phone so you can listen whenever you want...even without an internet connection. In fact, if your connection dropped, it would seamlessly switch to the internal library.

You could also listen to most of the music you marked and saved on your computer via the built-in player and webserver...and you could download the songs from your phone if you wished and convert them on your computer to something that would work in itunes.

And it was very pretty...used CoreAnimation, etc.

Initially, Apple didn't reject outright. They simply didn't comment.

Many, many, MANY calls to speak to nice people with foreign accents were made...who nicely told me it would be "escalated". Months passed with no comment..so I eventually rejected it myself and moved on.

About 3 weeks ago, I resubmitted the app on a "what the hell, why not?" sort of thing.

This time, Apple rejected it because "this type of application is often used to infringe on 3rd party rights"...when clearly, it doesn't.

So really...when people, developers, show up in these places telling you, the End User, something is very wrong, when bloggers talk about it, etc...

Consider that *they* may actually be right...and not Apple :)

As much as we all are at minimum proponents of Apple technology, this doesn't excuse Apple in any way from being extremely stupid and as others have pointed out, hypocritical.

Or just plain wrong.

-K

Obviously, there will always be human error involved in a process like this, however, it becomes clear that the guidelines for the reviewers are pretty shaky at best.

Please don't tell Apple that if you search for "objectionable content" in the maps application, you can find all sorts of things & places.

It would be a pity to see the app rejected in the next iteration of the iPhone as I have come accustomed to being a very useful tool for a million uses.

To me, the few cases of app rejection that have surfaced seem all very overzealous and it would be interesting to know if they are incentivized in the right way or work according to their own moral agendas

Just my 2 cent..

What happened to "Think Different"... maybe that got rejected by the new system too.

...Forbes article about Apple's app approval - http://www.forbes.com/2009/05/20/apple-iphone-yakapp-technology-wireless-apple.html

I think we should lobby Apple to remove the other apps (including Safari) providing access to the same content that are already accepted based on the same criteria that Eucalyptus was rejected and that we should do this with any ridiculously rejected apps.

It really infuriates me to hear about ridiculous things like this. I'd like to do some iPhone development but if this is the sort of crap I'm going to run into then why bother?

I have said it time and time again, all they are serving to do with these asinine rejections if make more people jailbreak their phone. There are so many useful and great applications available through Cydia, that they could be making money off of if they weren't so stupid.

apple, this is a new low. seriously, now. c'mon.

If Big Brother, I mean Apple, doesn't think you should be reading those books then I guess you shouldn't be reading them.

I read somewhere that the new iPhone will start applying their app filtering techniques to voice calls. No more phone sex -- those calls will be rejected.

That's why people start jailbreaking their phones and getting ripped applications - why do they have to have such stupid terms?

Apple blows... (I guess I'd be censored if this was the official apple)...it seems like Apple belongs more in China than in the US!

Wow, people get really worked up about these app rejections.

If I were a developer and my app was rejected, I'd take my fight to the blogs and refuse to make anymore iPhone/iPod Apps. Then I would solely develop for BB, WM, Android, and Symbian.

Then I'd realize that I'm not selling any apps, put my tail between my legs, and resubmit my app with modifications to Apple.