
Banned in Cupertino - ajbatac
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10127333-37.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20
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sh1mmer
I'm surprised apple haven't found a better way of dealing with the plethora of
content/apps people want to add to the store in a better way.

The "mature" rating seems like something they would have had from the start,
ala iTunes. It seems like there are plenty of violent or not-quite pornography
materials that would make Apple and the developers plenty of money from
consenting adults.

Think of the filth that springs from the mouths of rappers. I can't think of
much literature I've read that tops that for sexual content, violence and
misogyny.

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rthomas6
So any book that contains the word "fuck" is banned? There goes pretty much
every Michael Crichton book.

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tdoggette
Well, fiddlesticks.

Seriously, though: I understand that the App Store is Apple's garden to wall,
but what do they gain by doing things like this? If they ban every book with
swearing in it, then they're left with damn few books. People that want to
sell books to read on an iPhone will do it somewhere else, like with an ebook
reader app and separate book sales that Apple doesn't get a cut of. What's
their game here?

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iigs
As best I can tell:

Point 1) Normal people (people you and I know but aren't) buy iPhones because
they're "cool", or they look neat, or they are known to be easy to use.

Point 2) There is essentially no competition on all three of the attributes in
#1 -- every competitor falls down in at least one major way: The Series 60
brand is in too many devices for any one of them to have substantial
mindshare, Windows mobile is a kludgy UI mess, the Blackberry browser is
atrocious, Android is still too boutique, etc. Apple has a clear story anyone
can understand: "Buy our [one] phone. You can use [all of] the features it
has." Nobody else can really say that.

Point 3) As neat as the App Store is, it's a geek/gee whiz feature. The iPhone
sold incredibly well with 1.0 software, and the app store seemed almost like a
grudging concession to geeks (remember "the browser is great! you should just
use web apps!"? ). People that buy iPhones go "oh, that's cool too" and buy
$0.99 applications that show glasses of beer that tip when the phone is
rotated -- things that are not reasons to buy or not buy a phone. The app
store isn't key to the iPhone story.

Point 4) Apple would get a lot of bad (general) press for certain categories
of application, but will only get a negligible amount of bad technical press
for swatting applications, even arbitrarily. Of that bad technical press, half
of the people will write it off as Apple haters having their way, regardless
of the merits.

Point 5) Sometimes it's hard to see the world-changing effects of an
application. It's easy to imagine how an application might jeapordize #1 or
#2.

Point 4 authorizes heavy moderating. Points 1 and 2 serve to protect Apple's
top line revenue from same. Point 5 supports capricious moderating. Point 3
isn't enough to prevent them from doing so.

Until there's real, compelling competition (meaning at the OS level, point 1,
and at the device level, point 2), I would expect this to continue.

