

Apple’s App Store Director Sells His Own Fart Apps - bjonathan
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/08/apple-fart-apps/

======
wallflower
When I was at WWDC, there was an Apple engineer named Eliza Block. She and her
partner gave a really good (best of WWDC) presentation on Designing Scroll
View UIs. Her name seemed familiar so I googled it and it turns out she was
the author of a very successful iPhone app. Apparently, she probably got
recruited or asked to become an iPhone Applications Engineer at Apple. A
testament to her software development ability (the googled articles said she
was a graduate Philosophy student).

~~~
arn
Eliza was actually the first App Store success story, inspiring many to
follow:

[http://www.macrumors.com/2008/08/01/iphone-app-store-
numbers...](http://www.macrumors.com/2008/08/01/iphone-app-store-numbers-
reveal-large-revenue-opportunities/)

------
mxavier
I really could have gone the whole day without seeing a cartoon panda's anus.

~~~
mkramlich
Thankfully Apple's curated walled garden approach to ensuring quality (keeping
out Flash, Python, Java, Ruby, anything "obscene", competitive functionality,
etc.) still managed to allow cartoon panda anus farting!

------
rryyan
As an aside: I thought this quote from an Apple spokesperson was interesting,
given Microsoft's plan to encourage employees to develop Windows Phone apps
"in their spare time" [1]:

 _"Apple’s policy allows for employees to have apps on the App Store if
they’re developed and published prior to their start at Apple."_

[1] [http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/microsoft-wants-
employees...](http://www.engadget.com/2010/07/23/microsoft-wants-employees-to-
code-windows-phone-7-apps-in-their/)

------
mdonahoe
And now they drag him through the mud:
[http://valleywag.gawker.com/5615971/apples-freedom-from-
porn...](http://valleywag.gawker.com/5615971/apples-freedom-from-porn-
enforcer-drawn-to-porn-stars-and-escorts-on-twitter)

the danger of using auto-follow services on twitter.

~~~
NonIdentifiable
Except they pretty much disproved the auto-follow stuff ...

~~~
jonhendry
Uh, right. I'm sure he intentionally followed an escort service in Hyderabad.
(Or, more likely, a spammy website that claims to be a Hyderabad escort
service.) And one in New Delhi.

I might believe it if the escorts were from San Francisco, LA, Vegas. But
India? It seems unlikely that he's a frequent visitor to India in a context
where he'd want to link escort services in two cities there.

Please. Web savvy fail. Most likely somebody with a 'circle jerk' ring of
bogus escort sites spammed twitter accounts and hit this guy's, and he didn't
pay attention to it.

------
msbarnett
I'm really struggling to be offended that this guy is making money on a side
business selling things that people buy, even if I wouldn't personally buy
them and think they are kind of puerile.

~~~
chc
How about the fact that the same guy institutes policies that ban huge swaths
of apps (including anything not written in Objective-C)?

~~~
msbarnett
Unless there's some kind of assertion here that Python-based fart apps would
eat his lunch if only he would allow them, I'm not seeing the problem.

~~~
chc
I don't know if you're pretending or if you really missed the point, but it
isn't that Python would kill his apps. It's that his apps get special
protection.

Fart apps are essentially the poster child for "crapware" in the App Store.
Anytime someone wants to criticize the App Store, they will probably point to
apps like the ones he's making. But while Apple constantly expands its list of
unacceptable things (the programming language ban is merely the most
ridiculous, not the only the thing on the list), fart apps remain the one
genre that seems untouchable. It's a messed up state of affairs.

~~~
msbarnett
It's a pretty far leap (down right silly, really) from "man sells some silly
apps prior to getting job curating App Store at Apple" to "fart apps would be
banned if only he weren't giving them special protection!"

There is literally no evidence to support the latter interpretation.

~~~
chc
No, but it's an example of horribly screwed up priorities either way.

------
mikeryan
BTW, in case you don't make it the last page - it looks like most of these
apps were already in the Apple review process before he got hired.

~~~
jackolas
I don't know who that makes look worse, apple for hiring a fart developer or
the fart developer for you know making ifart apps.

~~~
ugh
I’m not really sure why developers of fart apps are automatically off limits
or embarrassing.

~~~
megablast
Really? Is this the best Apple could do?

~~~
metachor
If Apple blocked fart apps of third-party developers for the sake of... I
don't know what, quality or decency, then people would complain Apple are
being censors.

Regarding Shoemaker, maybe Apple hired him to direct the App Store because he
can run a massive online marketplace, and not because he's a talented or
creative app developer.

~~~
ugh
(A little semantic aside: Apple cannot censor. Governments can, companies
cannot. If we broaden the definition of censorship to include companies Apple
already censors. Their system is a picture perfect example of censorship, you
could use it as an example to explain censorship to school kids – but so are
newspapers. This all doesn’t really matter because the word censorship doesn’t
have some sort of magic properties. Something can be just as despicable as
some activities described by the word censorship even if the usual definition
of censorship doesn’t include it. Something can also be a perfectly reasonable
activity even if the usual definition of censorship does include it.)

------
mtholking
As an iPhone developer, I don't want to compete with a developer that also
happens to oversee the entire App Store approval process.

~~~
chc
You already do. It's called Apple. If they want, they can just ban your app
and make their own version. You just have to trust that they won't.

~~~
mtholking
Apple gets 30% of all revenue developers generate, so they aren't really
competition.

Name one app that has existed on the App Store that Apple banned because they
released their own version of it, and charged for it.

I trust that they want me to succeed to they get 30% of a much larger number.

~~~
megablast
The banned an app called facetime, just for the name.

They banned rss viewers for a while.

They have not allowed in alternate browsers.

What difference does it make if they charge for it or not?

~~~
refulgentis
Erm, there's tons of alternate browsers. There just can't be one with it's own
JavaScript parser baked in because of the ban on interpreters, and even then
they said you can ask to include one in the latest round of SDK revisions.

~~~
megablast
Is there an alternative browser that does not use WebView, which handles all
the html for you?? Apart from Opera of course, which is more an image viewer.

I don't think there is. There is a lot of stuff you can do with UIWebView,
which is what all those other apps are doing, like blocking ads, adding tabs,
storing stuff offline.

------
GBond
Does a Panda's anus warrant a "Mature 17+" label? Or is that only for animated
boobs?

~~~
danh
I would hesitate to call it "mature".

------
Hexstream
"Still, it comes off as hypocritical that a director of the App Store sells
apps that some might call inappropriate, said Ben Kahle, developer of Me So
Holy, a satiric religious app that Apple rejected in mid-2009 for containing
“objectionable material.” Kahle said after he re-submitted the app to the
store, an Apple employee called him and said Me So Holy would “never” be
approved."

Obvious stuff. Never underestimate the power of well-established special
interest groups. There's no powerful interest group against farts so of course
it's not considered "objectionable", unlike religion.

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mkramlich
This story has strangely made me think of the "eat your own dogfood"
principle.

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blizkreeg
The title made my day.

