Apple Reverses Rejection of Ulysses Comic 422
gyrogeerloose writes "In yet another of what's become an almost predictable cycle of events, Apple today reversed its rejection of the 'Ulysses Seen' web comic, admitting, 'We made a mistake.' The comic is now available in the App Store — just in time for Bloomsday, June 16. The comic's author, Robert Berry, is pleased, and adds that Apple 'never acted as a censor, never told us what we could or could not say. ... We didn't believe these were good guidelines for art, but respected their rights to sell content that met their guidelines at their own store. Apple is not a museum or a library for new content then, so much as they are a grocer.'"
-sigh- (Score:5, Informative)
They review on the order of 10,000 apps a week. This kind of thing is inevitable when you have a limited number of people with that kind of workload. People are making judgment calls all day, so some edge cases are going to get miscalled. Humans are making the decisions, and humans make mistakes.
They say that 95% of apps get approved within one week. That means that about 500 apps a week are rejected for various reasons. Here on /. we see these rejection stories about once every two weeks. That means for every 999 apps that are rejected, 1 is controversial. Almost all of those controversial decisions get reversed.
I wish my record of decision making was 1/1000 blown calls.
Re:It's easy to feel good about Apple's policies.. (Score:2, Informative)
Yes. Jailbreak your iPhone and download it from someone else. Neither act is illegal.
Re:It's easy to feel good about Apple's policies.. (Score:5, Informative)
Apple considers jailbreaking highly illegal.
Every day (Score:4, Informative)
I wonder if they ever review and reverse rejections that are not widely publicized. If anyone had a story like that, it would be interesting to hear.
Yes.
In some cases of course, rejections are because an app crashed or the UI was bad. In each and every case, Apple tells you what you need to fix to be accepted.
In cases where you violate policy, you can state your case and say why you think your application does not violate the things they think it does.
Re:It's easy to feel good about Apple's policies.. (Score:5, Informative)
Stop changing the subject. The point is, you linked to an "alternate" app store that requires someone to hack their phone, thereby voiding their warranty...and presented the option as if it were a feature, as if it was something anyone could do without any consequences.
That's the parent's point.
As I've said multiple times in this thread, stop treating a mod like it's a feature.
Re:It's easy to feel good about Apple's policies.. (Score:5, Informative)
Then don't buy their phone if you disagree with the terms of use. Did Apple force you or anyone else to buy an iPhone and agree to their terms?
Not at all. In addition to being free to not buy their phone, I'm also free to explain why it's a bad idea for others to do so. And you're free to explain why those reasons are invalid.
You're also free to say "Then don't buy their phones" in response. There's no rule against non sequiturs. You should no, however, that you haven't said anything relevant on the topic.
Re:It's easy to feel good about Apple's policies.. (Score:2, Informative)
If Apple had a bad product that nobody wanted and the apps were trash and nobody wanted THOSE, people wouldn't buy them. People buy iPhones and iPads and iApps because they fulfill some sort of criteria. Apple's control is only on the manufacturing end. They may restrict the specifications of an application (e.g., no porn), but that's hardly control over the consumer.
It is control over the consumer. It's telling them what they are allowed and not allowed to buy for their phone.
Yes, the consumer has control over whether or not to 'buy' the phone in the first place. Though after they do they still don't really own it. After they think they've bought the phone they are then hit with hidden costs, the cost of a lack of certain kinds of choices.
Those hidden costs are a control on the consumers behavior. Apple controls the consumer's behavior post-sale through their app-store policies.
If Apple just sold a phone pre-loaded with apps and you didn't get to change which apps there were, I wouldn't care. If they sold the phone and had nothing to do with the app store, or it was easy to use a non-Apple app-store with a stock phone, I wouldn't care. But the fact Apple's phones are set up so you have to do something that seems shady and dangerous (yet more hidden costs) in order to escape their app-store means they have post-sale control over consumer behavior.
And, unlike a government, they can't even vote to change what the controls are. Yes, if people raise a big enough hue-and-cry Apple might change their policies. But Apple may choose not to, and people who bought an Apple iProduct are locked in by the price they've paid for the device and the investment they've made in learning how it works.
Re:It's easy to feel good about Apple's policies.. (Score:1, Informative)
That's an interesting perspective.
I'm a geek. Most of my friends are geeks. And most of them hate the iPad. I thought it looked like a neat toy, so I picked one up (note that I'm posting as an AC.) Most of my friends don't know that I have one.
I picked one up despite the peer pressure to avoid them like the plague. You know why? It's a great eBook reader. It is color, so it handles comics better than any other device out there. The Kindle (and now nook) apps means that it reads eBooks from all of the major vendors. I don't have to worry about nook failing as a product and me being stuck with a useless device or unreadable books--I can buy eBooks from Barnes and Noble or Amazon without fear.
It also plays video well. Better than my laptop, at least. I watched all of Dexter Season 3 on about half a charge on the device (47% remaining by the end.) What other devices can claim that? Not many.
I've found that I carry it around and continue browsing the web at times when I would have otherwise set my laptop aside. I laughed when I read reports of people taking their iPads to the kitchen, but I found myself doing this and realize that I'd been doing it before I'd even read those stories. This could be considered good or bad.
The iPad is a good little device. It serves more purposes than a Kindle or nook, and fills most purposes of a netbook. My purchase was based upon utility, not peer pressure.
Re:A mod IS a feature (Score:3, Informative)
"Just like with the iPhone. I am able to install whatever I want. That is a fact."
nly if you MODIFY it beyonsd Apples design.
I can drive a car off a pier, but that doesn't mkae it a feature.
Hear is a clue dip wad: Go to the ieee spec and look up the definition of feature. There are actual definition of this, and you are provable wrong.
It's like arguing over the definition of 'chair' when there is a dictionary in the room.
You fucking twad.
Re:My own private app store... (Score:3, Informative)
Something else to throw in: the ad hoc deployment profiles expire after 90 days. So yes, you can install whatever you want, but 90 days later it will stop working. You can then rebuild and sign the package and install it again. Of course, you will also need to keep in mind that Apple's developer terms apply to you whether you put apps on the app store or not. So you are breaking the agreement if you, for example, code in the wrong language or do any of the other things, even if you just deploy to your own phone.