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Seen at SXSW: rejected app Holopic

by Victor Agreda, Jr. Mar 22nd 2010 at 5:00PM


There's nothing offensive about Holopic. It's a rather ingenious app that (according to the developer) uses just a couple of pictures to create a sort of lenticular lens pseudo-3D effect. That is, when you tilt the image you can see other angles in the image, like 3D, but it isn't true 3D. Unfortunately the developer spent a bunch of money getting attractive models into bikinis and then into the app right before Apple put the kibosh on nearly every app with so much as a bare ankle exposed (let alone cleavage). The fact that the app was rejected doesn't really surprise me, given Apple's new stance, but you could tell months of planning had been thrown off track by the decision. The developer was less than pleased about the situation.

Apologies for the fuzzy video, the Kodak Zi8 has no macro capability.

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There's nothing offensive about Holopic. It's a rather ingenious app that (according to the developer) uses just a couple of pictures to...
 

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John Hamilton Farr

Yes, the Zi8 does have macro capability. :-)

March 23 2010 at 2:09 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Rego

The video didn't show me anything spectacular or even good.

March 22 2010 at 7:39 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Bob

This app is awesome. Maybe Apple will reconsider in a few months

March 22 2010 at 6:53 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Jerry Brace

It's similar to our HoloSnaps app (which is in the app store):
http://embraceware.com/holosnaps/

March 22 2010 at 6:06 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Tom Gregson

These rejection stories are getting more than a little old. So some get rejected... that's life. Things get rejected. Do we need a TUAW story every time?

March 22 2010 at 5:44 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
1 reply to Tom Gregson's comment
TIm

Yes we need stories like that to keep Apple on their heels.

If Apple wants to keep the app store a closed system as it is now the need to get busy finding a coherent and consistent set of policies. These developers invest money, their money, to develop possibly great applications that the get shot down for a random reason that didn't exist yesterday.
The consequence will be that the quality of the apps in the store will go down as people will not risk to spend tons of money if their investment is that risky. We will see more of these stupid autogenerated rss reader apps that are cheap to punch together and more boring mainstream stuff.

Apple seriously needs to change things in the app store if they want to continue to stay on top of the game, especially if they want to continue to place the ipod as serious gaming device.

enough ranting ..

T.

March 23 2010 at 4:11 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
CHRiS

I agree, but on the other hand, I'd like to see boobs on broadcast TV too. I mean they have ratings already for TV shows, but I still cannot see a boob on broadcast tv (I can see all kinds of violence and blood and death on CNN from wars, but not a boob).

March 22 2010 at 5:40 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
krye

They should have rejected this app based on "limited utility". Nice way to clutter that app store with apps that don't really do anything.

March 22 2010 at 5:33 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
2 replies to krye's comment
Thomas

TUAW should have rejected this comment based on "limited utility."

Or is it not so pleasant when it's done to you?

March 22 2010 at 6:01 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
pax copia

please note that how you define something as doing something is entirely subjective

March 22 2010 at 7:45 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Sparks

From what everyone says, to judge from current app submission forms, there /is/ a new 'adult' switch you can flip. Many devs right now suspect Apple's nuking all the adult content from the store in preparation for having them resubmit to a separate 'adult content' section of the store. So this might not be as lastingly nanny-state as it seems.

Really, though, they just need to allow people to sideload stuff anyway. Give it all kinds of warning labels about installing unverified content, make you turn on a developer mode or something to do it, but better to create a legitimate method for non-app-store stuff which doesn't require jailbreaking or violating the iPhone's security model.

Sure, sideloading onto Android can be a little bit of a pain (updating stuff outside of the market can be a headache and a half, given the number of apps that demand you uninstall before updating via a sideload, and thus force you to recreate your configuration entirely -- Real, I'm looking at you here with the Rhapsody beta in particular), but is also so many orders of magnitude better for beta testing than the limited-to-100-devices method of the App Store...

March 22 2010 at 5:29 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
jake

What does it do? Seems like a great proof of concept, but it wasn't developed all the way into an app (content wise).

March 22 2010 at 5:27 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
brett

> Kodak Zi8 has no macro capability.

Yes it does.. the little flower switch on top? That's what you want.

March 22 2010 at 5:14 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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