It seems like only yesterday Apple was surprising us with its App Store rejection antics. You'll recall that just last Monday, Apple was seen flaunting its control over the App Store by rejecting a remote-control client for the BitTorrent desktop application "Transmission" called "Drivetrain." Of interesting note in that case is that there is a web version of this application that I have on my iPhone's home screen.

Today we received word of an application called Eucalyptus that provided access to free-for-all books from Project Gutenberg. John Gruber over at Daring Fireball writes,

"Eucalyptus has been rejected by Apple, for the absolutely outrageous reason that one of the books you can search for and download from Gutenberg is Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana. Not only can anyone load and read this exact same book on any iPhone using MobileSafari, but it's also available through other e-book readers already in the App Store."

In both the Drivetrain and Eucalyptus cases it seems that Apple is playing favorites in terms of who it will let violate its rules. The strange thing though, is that both of these applications' functionality can be accomplished from within MobileSafari. Clearly Apple wants MobileSafari to be your only access to any pornographic objectionable content.

Before you get out your pitchforks however, there's more. If you have an application that has been approved twice, then guess what, the third time's the charm for you because you can expect the rejection hammer to come a'knockin'. At least that's the case for Yaniv Solnik's application "IsraelParty." When Yaniv submitted his app to resolve some routine bug fixes apparently the App Store royal guards decided they didn't like his marketing description of the application. The phrase that was so offensive as to warrant a rejection of an already-existing app that had been approved twice before? Adult content ahead, "Blow your iPhone's microphone to whistle."

Perhaps someone at Apple is bothered by the fact that they are not able to whistle themselves or perhaps they simply do not like the idea of an application that celebrates Israel's independence day. In any event the rejection is simply ludicrous; it brings me back to the late 90s when the over-zealous language filters in chat rooms would filter the phrase "the wind blows."

The clause that Apple cites in these cases refers to Apple's "reasonable judgment" (full text here). However, in my opinion, they are taking on a more overbearing role than they should. Not to say that I disagree with a filter on the App Store, on the contrary, I think a well-defined filter is absolutely necessary.

Because of Apple's unwillingness to firmly define and enforce the rules, I believe Apple is opening itself up to a "bag of hurt" by being the police of App Store city. It will not be long before advocacy groups will want Apple to provide the same filtering for Apple's own applications. I do not believe Apple wants to be in the business of filtering the web or our email, but by filtering applications based on availability of "inappropriate" content they are quickly headed down that path.

Hat tip to Peachfuzzy and Yaniv for the scoop.

If it's Monday, there must be a few more stories of iPhone apps rejected for curious and spurious reasons. Today's contenders are up to the line... and away they go!

First, it's Maza's Drivetrain app, a remote control for the Transmission client for Bittorrent running on the user's computer. Rejected! In this case, the reason is that Bittorrent is sometimes used for the trading of third-party copyrighted material. Yeah, but... um... the iPhone app isn't a torrent client at all, it's just a UI for a client running elsewhere. How does that make any kind of sense? iLounge quotes the developer as saying the rejection is "ridiculous," and it's hard to disagree.

Second, if you've ever wanted to replace the face of Jesus with your own, well, you can't do it with an iPhone app. SAI reports that the developer of the previously-approved Animalyzer (which let you replace animal faces with your photos) has gotten a rejection notice for the Me So Holy app that extends the face-replacement to religious figures. Apple's justification for the rejection is the catch-all "objectionable content" clause 3.3.12 of the developer agreement, which states

"Applications must not contain any obscene, pornographic, offensive or defamatory content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, etc.), or other content or materials that in Apple's reasonable judgement may be found objectionable by iPhone or iPod touch users."

Could one reasonably judge that some iPhone or iPod touch users might object to an app that lets users replace a divine visage with a mugshot or LOLcat? Sure, they might... but when an app that lets you aim virtual urine at a toilet sails through to the store without a hiccup, 'reasonable judgement' doesn't seem to be a valid operating standard any longer. There are hundreds (if not thousands) of 'offensive' apps in the store already -- but offending religious sensibilities is clearly different than grading feces.

[via Engadget & Techmeme]

Building a native app that aggregates and spruces up the content of a single news organ's website is all the rage, although it seems like overkill in some cases -- personally, I enjoy curating my own reading list with good old Instapaper, which also offers the advantage of clearing out most of the graphical cruft and leaving nothing but yummy text. Still, if you like having all the news that's fit to print in the palm of your hand (yes, the 2.0 version of the NY Times app is quite nice), there are two new choices of single-site apps (SSA) for your reading pleasure.

In the right corner, weighing in at four sections, it's the Wall Street Journal! Yes, the official newspaper of American business (whatever's left of it) has an iPhone app, and according to Silicon Alley Insider it's pretty good; the app lets you cache content for offline reading (similar to the NYT app), and offers audio and video content from the paper, along with stories and rich media from sister sites like Uncle Walt's hangout AllThingsD.

Most notably, using the iPhone version of the WSJ -- which is free -- you can read most or all the content from the daily paper... which, via the WSJ.com website, is not free (most full stories require a subscription). There's no way to know how long this workaround will be in place, but for now it's a great way to get access to the paper's stories.

And, in the opposite corner, weighing in at one home page and sporting a killer left hook, it's the Huffington Post! The HuffPo iPhone app has been in soft-launch mode for the past month and was just updated to version 1.1, quashing bugs and improving performance. It's not as polished as some of the other SSAs yet, but it gets the job done. The app is free.

If you have a preferred single-site app for news, let us know below.

In a QuickTime screencast, Adobe's Russell Brown demonstrates content-aware scaling, a feature of Photoshop CS4, due to be released this month.

A lower-resolution YouTube demo from Lynda.com is available here, if you don't want to download a huge QuickTime movie. The content is different, but you'll get the idea.

Adobe licensed an algorithm that senses "dead" areas in photos, and resizes the image to avoid squashing or stretching every object.

In the video, Brown demonstrates resizing an image of four golfers, interactively removing space between and around the golfers, but leaving the golfers' proportions correct. He also demonstrates resizing a Volkswagen bus, making it a more "economical" size, but automatically keeping the wheels round.

For those looking for a compelling reason to upgrade to Photoshop CS4, this might be it. If not, what is? Let us know by leaving a comment.

[Via Swissmiss and Michael Sippey.]

Danny Gorog at APC Magazine has written a really nice analysis of something that's rather strange when you think about it -- why aren't there any high definition DVD drives on Macs yet? It has been asked for by a few folks, but by and large, Apple has pretty much ignored the whole high definition debate. And even now, when we supposedly have a winner in Blu-ray, Apple hasn't pulled the trigger, and consumers, as Gorog notes, haven't even really cared much.

In fact, across the entire PC market there's not a lot of wholehearted support for Blu-ray or any major high definition formats. It's not that DVDs are "good enough" -- HDTVs are selling by the truckloads -- it's more that consumers, apparently, just don't want to settle on another format. And that may be the key to this whole thing -- Apple has a vested interest in selling content, and implementing some other content producer's format into their machines will take away from their best HD content channel yet: iTunes.

And customers, happy to not have to buy yet another permanent format of their favorite movies, may be satisfied with having no next-generation disc format. I, like many users, have already watched tons of HD video without ever having bought a Blu-ray disc. If Apple doesn't need the drives to deliver the same quality content, why should they bother?

Steve Jobs just announced at the "Let's Rock" event in San Francisco that not only was NBC content returning to the iTunes store, but that Apple would start selling HD content on the store, playable both through the new iTunes 8, as well as AppleTV. Shows like Battlestar Galactica and The Office will be available in HD to watch anywhere you'd like.

HD shows will cost $2.99 each, while SD television shows will keep their price of $1.99. Stay tuned to TUAW for more from the event, and you can see news up-to-date in our ongoing liveblog.

Users of iTunes U, the free educational content channel inside iTunes, will have a lot more elementary education material to choose from -- the states of Arizona, Florida, Maine, Michigan, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Utah have all added some of their K-12 material to the mix, and a number of school districts and museums from those states have also contributed videos and audio recordings.

The content is being uploaded by the SETDA, or the State Educational Technology Directors Association, which has been working with educators in member states to make more use of educational technology. This is definitely a great idea -- not only does it make this material much more accessible to educators and students alike, but anyone on iTunes can view and check out these resources through Apple's program.

Plus, it's a great way to distribute student work to a much larger audience. You can find most of the new content under the "K-12" tab on the iTunes U homepage within iTunes.

[via Macworld]

Time is running out for Toshiba and friends; the high definition format wars are almost over now officially over. HD DVD hasn't found the footing it needed to earn the support of retailers and studios alike, and it seems that Sony's champion, Blu-Ray, is going to win the day.

So what does that mean for Apple users? Several years ago, Apple latched onto Blu-Ray as a format, but aside from an MCE Blu-Ray drive, we still haven't seen HD media used in any of Apple's products. There have been plenty of rumors (aren't there always?), but whether it's because they want to sell HD content in iTunes or for some other reason, a Blu-Ray drive to replace the SuperDrive hasn't happened yet.

Which leaves us wondering: now that we've seemingly got a winner, will Apple step up with the Blu gear? Of course, the MacBook Air doesn't even have a drive, and we're sure Apple would love to have content distributed only through iTunes and Apple TV. But surely consumers still have a need for physical media -- will Apple now take advantage of its early-advocacy position on Blu-Ray and update the hardware?

Wil Shipley (he of Delicious Monster) has a big piece up about Apple, the iPhone, and the iPod that's making the rounds of online Mac onlookers. He calls out Apple (as they've been called out before) for leaving the iPhone a closed platform, and he answers a lot of questions that were asked by Erica's article the other day.

Shipley says that Jobs made a number of mistakes, the first of which was combining forces with other companies, including the record companies and AT&T. In the early days of all this, Jobs was seen as a hero, convincing the record companies to change their minds, and bringing AT&T into the realm of a really great phone. But, Shipley says, Apple plus another company doesn't equal Apple anymore. As much as Apple seemed to have brought record companies around to its point of view, it turns out that the record companies have brought Apple over to their side as well.

Case in point: ringtones, in which Apple is asking us to pay three times for the same song just so we can play it when people call us. And then combine that with Jobs' harsh requirements for locking down the Apple aesthetic, and suddenly, instead of finding ourselves locked inside a closed system we like (iPod + iTunes), we're trapped inside a closed system that charges us for no reason (iPhone + ringTones).

How to fix things? Shipley says an SDK for iPods and iPhones, which is a big duh. Apple should have done that long ago, and developers have been saying so ever since. They've trusted developers to make beautiful programs for the Mac, and they should trust them on the iPhone as well. And he says Apple needs to open up-- either let their music out, or let others' in. Clearly, people prefer having control over their content rather than, say, what NBC is planning, so if Apple makes a serious effort to free their content (music, movies, and ringtones alike), they won't need the companies-- they'll have all the audience.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

Rumors have been bouncing around all weekend about Steve Jobs' next big project-- no, it's not the iPhone Nano, or the long awaited iTablet. According to Moli.com (yeah, we've never heard of them either), it's a record company. Supposedly Jay-Z and Beyonce are going to Apple to start a recording division. Just imagine HOVA in this picture wearing blue jeans with his black shirt tucked in.

Frankly, farfetched is too nice of a word to describe this rumor, but the idea of an iRecords isn't that new or ludicrous. Obviously, SJ's got issues with the folks standing between him and musicians, and putting musicians under his own wing would allow him to digitally distribute their music DRM-free, and collect all the profits for himself. There's blood in the water around the recording industry, and the time is ripe for someone to jump in and take over.

Of course, this is Apple, so there's more to the story than that-- their first battle would be convincing Apple Records to come to some kind of agreement. Then there's the actual music management function of it-- Apple's great at serving consumers, but would they be able to serve the function of a record company in terms of promotion and booking? Digital distribution is super (and it definitely cuts down on costs), but no one's buying your music if no one's heard of it.

Then again, SJ managed the content producers at Pixar just fine, and if he has a little help (the Moli report says Apple has hired a publicist from Capitol Records), things might just turn out OK after all. I doubt Jay-Z and Beyonce are really involved, but if His Steveness decides to form a record company, he might just put the last nail in the traditional recording industry's coffin.

Thanks, Pat!

Of all the products Apple has been rolling out in the past few years, the Apple TV is easily one of the most debated. While I haven't seen any specific figures from Apple on how well or poorly the device is selling, Apple's first foray into the living room seems to be getting off to at least a decent start. Jobs made another uncharacteristic move in revealing upcoming plans to support YouTube next month. But could the Apple TV be a dud? CNN Money's Brent Schlender sure thinks so. In fact, Mr. Schlender goes so far as to take a jab at the Apple TV's development: "Apple TV is so Zune-like, you'd think Jobs was so busy with the iPhone that he outsourced the Apple TV project to the folks up in Redmond." He then follows with a list of the largest complaints against the device, which includes:

• No DVD drive
• The perceived requirement of an HDTV (though we know that to be not-quite-true) even though you can't buy full HD content from the iTunes Store
• The fact that you can't shop the iTS right from the Apple TV despite its internet connection
• The annoying conundrum with only being able to use images from one computer's photo library, even though most people's pictures are probably the one batch of HD-ready media that isn't rights-managed in any way and completely sharable over a network and amongst friends or even strangers

Schlender is quick to point out, however, that the one other device everyone expected to be able to shop online via its wireless connection - Microsoft's Zune - can't do that either.

It seems that I'm not the only one being inflicted with a new wave of image spam, as Bill Benson, a MacInTouch reader, has posted his rule solution for this junk that seems to so easily elude Mail.app's filters. Tim Gaden at Hawk Wings, also a victim, elaborates on how to set up this rule, as a trick is involved. To summarize:

• for the first condition, select 'Edit Header List...'
• in its accompanying option, chose 'Content-Type' (or create it if you have to)
  
• The Content-Type option will then take first place in the rule (or you might have to select it from the criteria list), allowing you to finish building the rule as pictured

The rule is based off of Bill's observation that these spam emails always come from a different address, and the content type header (as you might now assume) begins with multipart/related'.

Since I have been receiving around a dozen of these messages on a daily basis, I think I can say that, so far, this rule has been a success. Three cheers for the power of community -based spam filtering. If you aren't using Mail.app, however, I would imagine this trick can be adapted for other email apps. Anyone else try it outside of Mail.app?

Opera, the little browser that could (and did - go free, that is), has finished its beta and reached version 9, going Universal in the process. New features include:

• a built-in BitTorrent client
• adding your favorite search engines to Opera's search bar simply by right-clicking them
• site-specific preferences for cookies, pop-ups, etc.
• thumbnail previews of tabs when hovering over them
• widgets (hey, at least they didn't call 'em 'gadgets')
• customizable content blocker
• and more

This version definitely seems snappier now that it's Universal, and (say what you have to) these new enhancements like a built-in BitTorrent client show that Opera is blazing a trail faster than its competition. Give this version a whirl if you haven't touched Opera in a while but are still curious about it. If you need help with a browser transition, why not check out some of the del.icio.us tools (like my personal favorite: Delibar) we've blogged that take the 'bookmarks bar' out of the browser and into Mac OS X's menubar, removing the need for worrying about which browser you're using.

Seth Scoen, an EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) staff technologist, has an interesting blog post in which he analyzes some of the arguments surrounding DRM, Apple's role and how DRM affects the market in more ways than simply locking down content. He also hopes to remind those who have gone astray from the meat of the topic that getting caught up in the Mac vs. PC (and Apple vs. Microsoft) debates in the DRM world only serves to muddy the issue, much like many political debates get too caught up in 'Democrat vs. Republican' rivalry.

One of the more important arguments that Seth examines in terms of DRM as a whole and how it affects market competition is that of 'it's the record labels, not Apple who are to blame for the use of DRM'. Seth cites an EFF post from May, 2004 in which their own Fred von Lohmann wrote about his chance to ask the iTMS head lawyer as to whether Apple would stop using DRM if the record labels got really drunk one night lifted their requirement of it. The lawyer reportedly answered "no", which prompted Seth to remind us that DRM clearly isn't just about protecting content - it's also about protecting profitable and closed products like iTunes + iPod, and, perhaps even more importantly, Apple isn't the only one trying to do this.

Seth's post offers some interesting perspective on these DRM arguments, and it refreshingly delves deeper than the "Apple's solution is terrible which means you should use Microsoft's" banter. Check it out.

[via BoingBoing]

There is a lot of buzz and speculation floating around as to what we'll see in the Mac OS X 10.5 update that will be previewed (and I suspect released) at this August's World Wide Developer's Conference. One exciting 'fundamental feature' John Gruber hinted at last November has been mentioned again by a developer named Dustin MacDonald: resolution independence.

Gruber broke this concept down in a November '05 post titled Full Metal Jacket (under the Display heading), but to summarize: most of the dimensions of elements in Mac OS X (and other OSes to my knowledge) are defined in pixels - the menu bar is 22 px high, for example. This explains why things 'seem to look a little smaller' when you move from the 1024 x 768 dimensions of a 12" display to the 1440 x 900 resolution of the latest 15" PowerBook G4 or MacBook Pro displays. Conversely, if you decrease the resolution on the machine you're working on now, things will look a bit bigger; you have smaller resolution and fewer ppi (or dpi) on screen, so some elements change size. This can become a problem in the context of notebook displays and their resolutions - if you take the 15" MacBook Pro's resolution higher than 1440 x 900, things could become smaller than what many might consider usable (these same rules apply to Windows and I believe Linux as well). Further, you can't just keep increasing notebook display sizes like you can with desktop displays; I've heard of the 19" notebooks Engadget has come across, and I personally don't consider a 16 lb computer worthy of the 'portable' adjective.