
Apple now censoring dictionaries in the App Store - ajg1977
http://daringfireball.net/2009/08/ninjawords
======
philc
I'm one of the developers for Ninjawords. Thanks everyone for sharing in our
frustration. I thought this was a bit ridiculous as we were going back and
forth with Apple, but I didn't know it would cause such public outrage. I
guess Apple is really striking a nerve recently in exercising their
totalitarian App Store powers. I hope they're interested in rectifying the
developer experience, because it really is a great device to build software
for. It's just that months of rejection over an innocuous educational utility
tends to crush any excitement, you know?

~~~
tghw
I bought Ninjawords after reading the description and I just wanted to say
that shit is fucking awesome!

Those pussies at Apple don't realize how badly they've screwed this up. Those
cocksuckers need pull their motherfucking heads out of their motherfucking
asses, unbunch the panties in their snatch, and start treating their users and
developers with the respect they deserve.

Fucking shit pisses me off.

~~~
gamache
This does not bode well for Hacker News.ipa...

------
jseifer
I'm waiting for them to reject a paint/drawing app of some sort for "illicit
content" after an app store reviewer draws an inappropriate picture.

~~~
mquander
I guess it goes without saying what rating the "black screen that makes your
phone like a mirror" app should get.

------
blhack
Not to be the bearer of bad news here, guys, but I very much doubt that this
is going to do much to slow apple down.

Their core user base for the iPhone seems to be not geeks, but teenage girls.
Even if it WAS just geeks, we make up a minuscule percentage of the
population. Chances are that if I told one of my sisters, or my mother (who
all have iPhones) about this, they would roll their eyes a bit, add an entry
or two to the "brother is a conspiracy nut" column, and point me to the latest
"omg cute!" app that they downloaded.

The iPhone and the appstore are not going anywhere. If developers like us stop
building things for it, people who value cash more than they value principles
will take our place.

As much as it sucks, this is the world that we live in.

~~~
dejb
What are you talking about? Just 6 months ago this place was so thick with
iPhone devotees you couldn't swing a metaphorical light sabre app without
hitting one. I don't think think there are too many 'cutesy type' teenage
girls on HN (although it would explain some things).

Unfortunately geekdom was just as taken in as everybody else - perhaps more so
and they were disproportionately responsible for it's rapid growth. Geeks are
more likely to

\- be early apoptors

\- blog, tweet, talk about gadgets

\- be believed by non geeks when it comes to technical areas and products

Most importantly they are the ones who develop the software that makes the
platform actually useful. Without geeks there's no 'App for that'.

This gives them (us) substantial influence. How to you think Firefox gain it's
market share. Of course now that the iPhone has momentum they aren't so
dependant on the approval of geeks. But over time if they don't attract
developers and if they keep removing software then the platform will stagnate.
Combine that with geeks putting their weight behind another platform and
change could be effected fairly quickly.

~~~
blhack
During the initial phases of adoption, yes, you are absolutely correct. Geeks
provide a sort of "buffer" for the rest of the public; we test things and
report on what is the best.

The iPhone has reached a point where it isn't going to _matter_ what we say
anymore. Look at windows, how long have we all been screaming from the
rooftops that it is garbage? How much affect has it had? Some, maybe,
sure...but people look at their computers, realize that they can more-or-less
get what they need done done, and then they forget about it and go on with
their lives.

People are NOT going to give up the iPhone on some silly ideological ground.
Yes, this pisses me off, no I won't be buying an iPhone, yes apple is moving
further and further away from something that I want, but NONE of this matters
to my mom.

~~~
blub
Look at windows, how long have we all been screaming from the rooftops that it
is garbage? \---

For so long, that Windows actually became good, and that made the screaming
irrelevant. I think that's what's going to happen to the iPhone too.

Version 1.0 was pathetic compared to other modern smartphones, but they
released early and with each iteration made it better. Even though it is worse
to develop for, the phone is getting better and better.

~~~
_pi
Windows still doesn't have a coherent way of managing installed applications
of various versions, and various degrees of conflict, ie, a package manager
and they probably never will... Just saying...

~~~
likpok
It does. .msi installers act as atomic packages like other systems. Windows
doesn't have a _centralized_ system, nor does it enforce the use of msis. But
they exist and provide a very nice way of managing resources.

The issue with a centralized system, of course, is licensing. Microsoft can't
really have such a system because every developer wants to do their own thing.

~~~
_pi
The difference is that .msi doesn't handle dependencies, multiple versions or
conflicts in a coherant centralized and useful way.

The current structure of the msi installers leaves them much like their exe
counterparts. If this is package management then I'm going back to LFS and
using make files.

------
yan
This reminds me of a twitter update Wil Shipley[1] sent recently:

    
    
      "I feel like Apple should rate their new iDisk-access app 
       for iPhone "17+," since my iDisk is full of porn. It's 
       only fair."
    

<http://twitter.com/wilshipley/status/2921713963>

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wil_Shipley>

------
ajg1977
I love the fact that Apple required it be censored because if they typed in an
obscene word, they saw an obscene word...

Priceless.

~~~
Mintz
Then it sounds like Apple should review some of their own apps, like text
messaging.

------
yason
I first thought Android wouldn't be more than a concept platform at least for
a next few years but I must say, I'm stunned.

Apple is working really, really hard to crank up the market pressure and to
make Android a very lucrative, unrestricted cross-device choice of platform
for all those totally pissed off by iPhone's AppStore.

I wonder what it's like having a day NOT seeing anyone blog a rant about Apple
and AppStore.

~~~
Derrek
Yeah, it's almost like Apple is trying to advertise FOR the Android market.

I've toyed with the idea of developing iPhone apps. But after these last few
weeks, I'd be much more inclined to learn the Android API. Sure, the iPhone
has a larger user-base right now, but there are dozens of Android handsets
scheduled to be released in 2010.

~~~
lallysingh
Eric: Don't worry Steve, I'll take care of the app-store review process for
you. We'll make sure it's a clean, safe place for every kind of customer.
(muahahahahah)

------
BjornW
I understand the frustration of the developers of Ninja Words, but I do not
understand why we keep having these Apple Store rejected app stories on HN.

If Apple is behaving like a jerk, why invest any energy in them? AFAIK there
are other interesting developing platforms with interesting hardware. The
iPhone might have a nice userbase, but I presume this will not matter in the
end since most phones seem to head into the direction of being complete pc's
anyway, why bother with a mobile 'desktop' application as new mobile browsers
are going to be supporting more and more of the common desktop pc browsers
features?

I mean - excuse my ignorance - , but why would a developer voluntarily deal
with the ongoing Apple App store dictatorship? Without a healthy ecosystem of
applications the iPhone is dead in the water. As is the current silo approach
embraced by Apple. Why would a developer invest any energy into their doomed
silo scheme?

IMHO let Apple reject applications as much as they want, history has learned
us that the most open system will prevail (Video2000 Vs VHS for example) and
my bet is on the Web and open OSses like Android, Linux and perhaps Symbian
(if the ever get serious about going FLOSS).

~~~
durin42
The point as I see it is to get developers moving away from the platform, and
buying other phones _because_ there is no app-store-draconianism and _saying_
that when they get the phone. Voting with dollars and making it painfully
clear why the decision was made is hugely important.

    
    
      history has learned us that the most open system will prevail
    

Really? So Linux on the desktop is _destroying_ Mac OS X and Windows?
Honestly, I know of 2 developers (yes, _developers_ ) that actually seriously
are Linux full-time. The rest are on OS X, because it's a better _system_ as a
whole. They don't care about the openness of the underlying platform as long
as it isn't managed like a POW camp.

The truth is that the iPhone would be a dream to develop for were it not for
the draconian app store processes. I love Cocoa, and UIKit (aka Cocoa Touch)
is equally clean to work with.

Also, there's no real solid indication as yet that Android is going to be
worlds better, ditto for the Pre. We're all hopeful, especially given the
heavy OSS roots of those platforms, but in the end they could have similar
dumb restrictions on the hardware from the carriers and we'd end up equally
screwed.

------
po
This is really getting ridiculous.

I think the hardest part to understand is that we all know that Jobs will come
down on people who make mistakes with furious anger. He will protect those he
agrees with even in the face of public outrage. We can also assume that Jobs
is aware of what the App store reviewers are doing. Knowing all of this, we
can only assume that they are doing what they do with his blessing.

That's the thing I can't reconcile. I keep waiting for an explanation, but I'm
thinking its going to be a while.

~~~
arfrank
This is something that I too keep on thinking about every time another
incident happens. The best I have come up with is that SJ is not in control of
this. It may have become bigger than he could totally control while he was
away from the company. Who is to say he is not fuming each time one of these
stories comes around and that they are working on a change(Apple has screwed
up on the iPhone before and took their time fixing that).

Also I also think he nailed it with the last line in the story-telling sense.

"Apple requires you to be 17 years or older to purchase a censored dictionary
that omits half the words Steve Jobs uses every day."

~~~
po
I can't picture Steve fuming about it. I can see him kicking doors in and
fixing it. But he's (aparently) not. That's the thing: either Steve lost
control of his baby or he lost his sense of morals. Both are disturbing to me.

~~~
durin42
I'm not so sure - I think having 3rd party apps at _all_ is a concession from
Jobs. ISTR (but don't have any references, so this could be an urban legend)
that his original vision for the Mac included buying all software from Apple,
and making the entire widget from the hardware on up. The iPhone pre-SDk was
that kind of vision realized.

------
jexe
I've got a language translation dictionary in the app store. When I tried to
get an important 3.0 bugfix through, I was rejected by the same logic, until I
changed the rating to 17+. Crazy thing is, you can set your app rating to
"Frequent/intense profanity or crude humor", and it'll just bump the rating to
12+. Still unacceptable to Apple (presumably, at least. I asked the review
team if this would be suitable, but of course heard nothing back).

So my dictionary now appears to have "Frequent/intense sexual content or
nudity" because the review team tried to translate bad words.

In a moment of frustration, sent a sarcastic quip to Apple's review team about
not allowing dictionaries to minors, and I'm left wondering if that knocked me
into the slow queue - because it took well over a month to finally get the
update approved.

~~~
smokey_the_bear
No kidding. My app also features "Frequent/intense sexual content or nudity"
because it displays information from wikipedia about parks nearby. And any
third party content is 17+

~~~
jexe
All that this really doing is diluting their own censorship rules until
they're meaningless. It's as if every movie featuring actors showing their
legs above the knees was rated R.

~~~
smokey_the_bear
It's more like if every movie that had a woman wearing a long skirt, that
could possibly be pulled up, but isn't actually pulled up, was rated R.

------
dpapathanasiou
I went through the same thing with my Japanese dictionary app
(<http://banrai.com/nihongo.html>).

For the initial rating, I said it had no bad language, sex, or violence.

It got rejected for language (apparently, the first the reviewers do is try to
use four-letter words).

So I changed the rating to "mild/infrequent" and it got rejected again.

Here's part of what I wrote to them after the second rejection:

" _I'm not sure how to respond to your comment that the rating is
inappropriate.

"Nihongo" is a Japanese dictionary.

As such, it contains some profanity, sexual content, etc. but the bulk of the
content is not in that category._"

That got no reply from Apple, so I went back, used the strongest possible
rating (like Ninja Words, it's now rated 17+).

More than a month after it was first posted, it was approved for sale.

------
Titanous
What's interesting is that the Dictionary.com app (free) contains every single
word mentioned as "objectionable content" and it's rated 4+. Gotta love the
consistency.

~~~
derefr
I think the best possible change to the App Store (aside from complete
transparency) would be a button in the submission queue labelled "resubmit
under different reviewer." Every time it was pressed, the reviewer who had
rejected the app would be banned from reviewing it again; thus, we'd be able
to get over humps like thirty dictionary apps being accepted and one rejected,
or the same app being accepted and then rejected later in an update for things
it has contained since the original version. The number of bannings a reviewer
collected would be a very helpful metric for Apple come review-time. Of
course, if you ended up banning the entire review staff from looking at your
app, it's not going anywhere (thus avoiding people bullying the "market" for
reviewers into only ever accepting apps. If you're unilaterally rejected, all
the reviewer-bannings on your app are lifted—and thus no longer count in the
HR process—and _you're_ the one who gets banned instead.)

~~~
elai
That defeats the point, since the guys who accept all apps will get a score of
zero, while not doing their main job description.

------
KC8ZKF
To any of you who are parents, how fined grained are the parental controls on
iPhone? If I want my child to have Project Gutenberg and a dictionary in his
pocket, do I then allow him to install any NC-17 application?

~~~
paulbaumgart
You can set a maximum "level of naughtiness":

    
    
      Don't Allow Apps
      4+
      9+
      12+
      17+
      Allow All Apps
    

So, the short answer to your second question is "yes". Pretty stupid, huh?

------
spoondan
Repeat after me: 2009 has been a complete disaster for the iPhone.

Nothing has gone right. Even the new hardware and OS launches, which should
have been all good news, were marred by bad PR. So far, all of these missteps
haven't seriously hurt the bottom line. But, if Apple stays on this
trajectory, isn't it only a matter of time?

~~~
jsz0
They've sold more iPhones in 2009 than the previous 2 years combined and the
year isn't even over yet. Something has gone very right.

------
pmorici
The more I read about the app store the more it looks like a classic
bureaucracy. I mean what kind of people do you expect Apple has hired to
"approve" all of these apps? I'll give you a hit it isn't some ace computer
scientist with a degree from an Ivy league school. I have a hard time
believing this is some conspiracy on the part of Apple the company so much as
it is a few low level employees playing the CYA game.

------
gojomo
Can Jobs apologize like Bezos did?

~~~
pchristensen
"A-po-lo-gi-ze? Here, have an apple you little ape" - Steve Jobs using his
mental dictionary

------
paulbaumgart
What's the point of the rating system if even dictionaries have to be rated
17+?

Wasn't the idea to allow finer-grained control over the content allowed on a
given iPod/iPhone than was possible previously?

Why can't they allow filtering over the sub-categories rather than just the
broad labels? There's a world of difference between "obscene" words and
graphic pornography.

------
Oompa
This sucks, but the application is fantastic. If anyone has been waiting for a
good dictionary app for the iPhone, this one is fantastic.

------
ujjwalg
wow!! This is just plain simple ridiculous. I have been using a dictionary
since I was 10. I dont even know that one can buy censored dictionaries.

Apple needs to do something really quick before things go out of their hand.

------
danbmil99
This whole nonsense bodes ill for Apple after Steve. In fact, I suspect it's a
foreshadowing of how fucked up Apple will be if he ever leaves the company.
Apple+Jobs is a bit like North Korea (though more successful) -- it's whole
structure is built around a single personality. There seems to be no cultural
ability to properly delegate authority.

If Steve had been full throttle over the last year, he would have personally
vetted the first 500 apps, and carefully trained a couple lackeys to predict
his innate reaction so well that they could proxy for him for 90% of the
submissions (those from unknowns). Steve would have personally handled the 5
or 10% from developers deemed important enough to not completely piss off.
This is how he's run the company since his return (and probably how he ran it
in the first place).

In my experience negotiating with Apple, it was like talking to the staff of a
very famous and influential person, rather than talking to people at a company
with a normal distribution of responsibility. Everyone could give you an
opinion or best guess about what might transpire, but absolutely nothing could
be decided one way or another without the direct involvement of Steve.

I think they're in for a very rough period if/when Steve leaves. Obviously the
app store has fallen off his radar or we wouldn't be seeing this kind of
bullshit. It's all a factor of his personal bandwidth, which has obviously
been impacted by his health.

------
anigbrowl
Reminds me of the old 'if your car was designed by a computer company' entry
for Apple: You get in your car to drive to the store, but it takes you to
church instead.

------
pchristensen
"Apple requires you to be 17 years or older to purchase a censored dictionary
that omits half the words Steve Jobs uses every day."

------
awolf
This is [REDACTED].

~~~
alexitosrv
ha ha ha xD

At least HN is (and hopefully it will remain) free of stupid Apple censorship.

------
oliverkofoed
I'm not a lawyer... But, isn't it a legal issue?

My guess would be that the reason they're acting like they are, is that they
have to strictly enforce the rules as they are written.

If they make exceptions or even approve an app that doesn't conform 100%;
could that not later be used as a prior art opening up all sorts of
discussions/legal-nastyness?

If they rephrased the rules such that they could use their own best judgement
on a case-by-case basis, the discussions would just be bigger when one app
gets approved and another one doesn't.

At least this way, it should be fairly clear as an app developer whether your
app will get approved or not: If they can find _anything_ "bad" in it, it
won't.

~~~
danbmil99
"I'm not a lawyer... "

Please, let's keep it that way. Their process is random, it conforms 100% to
rapid cycling between capricious fascism and complete lack of attention. What
they are doing seems almost designed to piss off the maximum number of
developers, thus vastly increasing the probability of lawsuits and bad press.

Face it people, Apple is just completely screwing up. Get over it, they're
human like everyone else.

------
adamc
This is a great story. Just reading it made me think of "Lucky Jim", not for
the details but for the general level of absurdity. Somehow Apple has gotten
out of touch with this particular market.

------
Mintz
I knew if I read this article, my blood would boil like it does with every
other App Store article that's been coming out lately. Yet I read it anyway,
and I can only ask:

How long will Apple get away with this?

------
heycarsten
Strip employees of all decision making and reasoning because that stuff is
expensive. Create a protocol that they must follow, how could it possibly
fail?

------
BigZaphod
Apple is dammed if they do, dammed if they don't at this point. Do they even
have a way out? If they open it up entirely, people will bitch about how it
should have been that way from the start and now we can't trust them to not
close it down again later, etc. If they close it down more, we get more of the
same bitching which has been building for months now. If they finally settle
on a solid list of rules and restrictions and actually abide by them, people
will tear those rules apart for all manner of reason, too. :-/

~~~
RyanMcGreal
Sorry, but Apple made their bed. They don't get my sympathy just because
they've painted themselves into a corner.

In any case, there's a lot to be said for, "You know, our App Store approval
model just doesn't work, so we're abandoning it. From now on, it's open and
transparent all the way."

~~~
idlewords
So from this we can deduce that their bed is in the corner?

~~~
RyanMcGreal
Well played, sir.

------
dabeeeenster
I like the way they missed the word "Cunt" when developing the app. Doh!

~~~
Quarrelsome
I guess the devs were just too pure of mind to consider such words. :D

------
luckyland
"The app store sucks. Look it up!"

