

IPhone developers angry as Apple purges adult apps - RiderOfGiraffes
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8530124.stm

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technomancy
> And worst of all it is not a secure source of income. It can drop to close
> to zero if they decide to change the rules

That's what single-vendor reliance _means_, genius. Should have thought about
this up front before deciding to base your livelihood on someone else's
caprice.

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huhtenberg
A more interesting question if it made iPhone _users_ angry, and I really
doubt it did.

Having these apps in the App Store is like having porn and adult toys section
in a department store. Technically, there is nothing wrong with, but
practically it does leave a bad impression and ultimately reflects poorly on a
brand.

~~~
jrockway
Maybe in farm towns in the US. In the rest of the world, people actually
appear to like sex.

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huhtenberg
OK. Then name a US department store chain that carries sex toys. Bonus points
for an upscale department store, which is what Apple wants App Store to be.

For all practical intents and purposes the US (and not say liberally minded
Sweden) is _the_ App Store market. And point being is that in the US there is
an expectation of porn and adult stuff not to be mixed with the "general
purpose" goods at the retail outlets.

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jonknee
Walmart sells vibrators and they are a company that requires CDs to be
censored and covers up many magazines.

~~~
huhtenberg
Perhaps they do in some stores, but searching for a "vibrator" on their
website yields 3 items - two with the Honda engine :) and one that's not
what's normally meant by a _vibrator_ , more of a novelty condom from Durex.

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javery
I don't know why they don't just move these off to their own section, like
NC-17 rated section and make it so they don't show up in the charts. The room
at the back of the movie store has worked for decades and seems like a perfect
strategy here.

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c1sc0
They don't do that because they can barely keep up with the AppStore
popularity. Everything is knee-jerk in the AppStore right now. If you check
out the forums you'll notice that not _all_ devs are unhappy about this: there
was a massive problem with auto-generated apps polluting the AppStore & Apple
responded to this in this way.

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watmough
I think Apple's mistake was to permit adult content in the first place.

My wife was looking through apps the other night, and she was appalled to see
the number of sex apps showing up in searches.

Apple needs to maintain a reasonable tone in the app store, and banning
objectionable material is a pretty good start.

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CamperBob
If only there were an abstraction of some sort that could be applied to
resolve the dilemma. Perhaps we could look to the works of Russell and earlier
philosophers and arrive at a solution. We could call it a _type_ \- or, hmm,
maybe a _category_ -based system... one which could organize apps with
different attributes that appeal to different cross-sections of the user base.

Yes, _categories_ sound like the best shot at making everyone happy. Someone
should bring that up with Steve Jobs. Who knows, there could be a patent in it
for him.

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charlesju
Regardless of whether or not this is a decision I agree with, I understand the
business decision from Apple.

The incremental value of having these questionable apps does not make up for
the brand value damage received by having these apps so prevalent on the app
store.

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credo
imo it makes sense for Apple to ban what they describe as "degarding and
objectionable" content. If they don't want to provide a platform for the
objectification of women, good for them.

imo, the one thing Apple should do is provide more clarity and transparency
about the rules for the app store - i.e. what is allowed, what is not allowed,
why an app was rejected etc. That will help developers decide whether or not
to build any specific app for the app store.

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pmichaud
Of course Apple is free to do whatever with it's platform, but it's a little
suicidal to change the rules out from under the people who make your platform
worthwhile by creating its content. A couple more shifts like that might cause
a big migration away from the app store by companies who don't think it's such
a great investment when the rug might be pulled out arbitrarily and without
warning.

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swannodette
You mean a big migration away from the app store of companies that make boob
jiggling apps.

~~~
pmichaud
Not at all. What I mean is that if I invest in a platform, I expect the rules
to stay roughly the same so I can hope to make a fairly predictable return on
my investment.

If Apple creates a track record for itself of saying things like: Even though
there are X,XXX companies developing porn apps (which we approved), we're
going to stop allowing those arbitrarily, right now. Or what about: gee, we'd
really like to get in on retail banking, so money related apps, those are out.
Or how about, we want to partner with acme social media company, so any apps
that interact with facebook, those are out.

My point is that they can do this once to the porn guys and just piss the porn
guys off. If they do it again, to another group, that will and should scare
the shit out of the entire developer population, because who's next?

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DanielBMarkham
This sound sensationalist, and I apologize for the tone, but it's almost like
we've entered a new era of white-collar serfdom. The big conglomerates create
the walled gardens, tell us where to till, decide what's acceptable conduct or
not, treat certain serfs with favoritism, and get the best cut off the top.

Sure you're free to go anywhere, but if the future really is app stores, what
does that freedom amount to?

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jsz0
There are some good reasons users flock to App Stores. Security,
compatibility, ease-of-use, eas-of-installation, etc. Free markets should
focus on solving these problems while maintaining their free market if they
want to compete.

~~~
c1sc0
There are some good reasons developers flock to App Stores. App Stores take
care of all kinds of annoying stuff developers don't really care about like
distribution, payment, a little marketing. What is wrong is greedy developers
of trivial apps mistaking a lucky strike for a stable source of income.

