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Apple’s been doing some early spring cleaning in the iTunes App Store when it comes to sexual content, but new developer parameters hint at a future where “explicit” applications could find their way back into the store.

Apple recently removed upwards of 5,000 apps with sexually “objectionable” content from the App Store. Per Phil Schiller’s statements to The New York Times, the move served to pander to parents and prep for the iPad.

Still, there may be more to the story, as developers have uncovered a new category dubbed “explicit” in iTunes Connect. As Recombu reports, now when developers submit their applications to Apple via iTunes Connect they have a new option to select “Explicit” as the primary category, which did not exist before. The back-end only category could be a placeholder for a future iTunes App Store front-end that may serve as a more restricted corner of the market for those of us who are 18 and over and want our apps on the naughty side.

If Apple has felt the weight of the blogosphere’s disapproval in recent days, it has yet to show visible signs of sweat. Bloggers are taking the company to task for further restricting and removing App Store content based on its own subjective criteria. The maneuver, as others have also suggested, could be part of a very calculated strategy to make the app store more parent and child-friendly in light of the iPad’s pending release date.

Should Apple soften its restrictions and support an explicit category in the App Store, we doubt it will be as simple as just another App Store category. Accessing and downloading apps with sexual content will likely involve additional measures as Apple moves to maintain the store’s overall ambiance and aesthetic. Of course we’ll continue to monitor the story as it develops and report when we know more on the matter.

Update: New reports indicate the explicit category has already disappeared. Gizmodo writes that a developer “just got off the telephone with Apple, who confirmed the removal.”

[img credit: recombu]

Tags: apple, itunes, iTunes Store, porn, sex

Filed under: Apple Corporate, iPhone, App Store, iPod touch

Late last week, Apple removed some 5,000 apps from the App Store for what it called “objectionable content.” The story broke when Jon Atherton of Chillifresh, developer of the app Wobble iBoobs, sent an email to Techcrunch detailing his app’s removal. Since then, Jon posted what is allegedly Apple’s definition of “objectionable content”* to his site, which includes:

• No images of women in bikinis
• No images of men in bikinis
• No skin
• No silhouettes that indicate that Wobble can be used for wobbling boobs
• No sexual connotations or innuendo: boobs, babes, booty, sex – all banned
• Nothing that can be sexually arousing
• No apps will be approved that in any way imply sexual content

Of course, that immediately raises the question about the Playboy app and Sports Illustrated (SI) Swimsuit app, which are both in the store as of this writing. Apple’s head of worldwide product marketing Phil Schiller addressed this question and others in a New York Times article published today.

“It came to the point where we were getting customer complaints from women who found the content getting too degrading and objectionable, as well as parents who were upset with what their kids were able to see,” Mr. Schiller said.

When asked why the SI and Playboy apps are still available, Mr. Schiller replied, “The difference is this is a well-known company with previously published material available broadly in a well-accepted format.”

Now that Apple has put its foot down, they’ve got stick with it. In the meantime, developers who have been making decent money off of consenting adults who enjoy their apps cry foul. At the same time, developers like Wally Chang, founder of Donoma Games, welcome the change. “There just seems to be too many of these really simple applications that do nothing but show pictures of girls in bikinis or in suggestive, adult poses,” he said. Some parents would agree.

Some have suggested that Apple could create a “red light district” area of the App Store that’s disabled by default, while others suggest that parents simply monitor what their kids are downloading.

*This list has not been confirmed by Apple.

TUAWPhil Schiller responds to sex app purge originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 23 Feb 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple’s website for its new iPad tablet device just went live. I haven’t explored the whole thing yet, but the centerpiece seems to be a 7-minute video offering super-slick demonstrations of the iPad in action.

During the video, Apple Chief Marketing Officer Phil Schiller talks about how the device is meant to take the iPhone’s breakthroughs and apply them to “a whole new device category.” Then he offers a two-sentence summation of Apple’s goals, making it clear the device is meant to be much more than just a glorified e-reader or phone:

The iPad is the best web surfing experience, the best email experience, the best photo and movie-watching experience. It’s going to change the way we do the things we do every day.

I was also tickled by this quote from Jony Ive, senior vice president of industrial design, at the beginning of the video:

You know, it’s true, when something exceeds your ability to understand how it works, it sort of becomes magical. And that’s exactly what the iPad is.

That’s right, Apple just paraphrased science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke to describe its latest product.

1. Phil Schiller keynote live from WWDC 2009
2. Live from Apple’s ‘It’s only rock and roll’ event
3. Live from Apple’s iPhone OS 3.0 preview event
4. Live from the Macworld 2009 keynote
5. iPhone 3GS review
6. Motorola Droid review
7. Palm Pre: everything you ever wanted to know
8. Exclusive: first Google Phone / Nexus One photos, Android 2.1 on-board
9. HTC Hero review
10. Windows 7 review
11. Palm Pre review
12. Microsoft sucks at Photoshop
13. Microsoft announces availability of Windows 7 Beta and Windows Live
14. Steve Jobs is taking a leave of absence from Apple due to health reasons
15. Video: Sony’s PSP Go leaks out before E3, is obviously a go
16. Motorola Droid first hands-on
17. Windows 7 Beta goes public
18. Modern Warfare 2’s Prestige Edition includes fully functioning night vision goggles
19. Snow Leopard review
20. Live from Palm’s CES press conference

And a few other statistics for 2009 (all related to Engadget Classic):

$38,204.57 – Retail value of stuff we gave away to readers
12,681 – total number of posts for 2009
1,821 – Number of galleries on Engadget for 2009
454 – Number of hands-on posts
99 – Number of Engadget reviews
66 – number of podcasts
4 – number of Engadget shows

Engadget’s top posts, 2009 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 31 Dec 2009 23:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Apple Corporate, Software, Odds and ends, App Store

The App Store approval process has been criticized, in part, for being too slow with approval decisions. Apple’s senior vice-president of worldwide product marketing Phil Schiller recently defended the process, saying, “You and your family and friends can download applications from the store, and for the most part they do what you’d expect, and they get onto your phone, and you get billed appropriately, and it all just works.” That’s all well and good, but most developers just want to get their app out. To that end, a group in Sweden is trying something unique.

Dearstevejobs.com was built to win Steve’s attention and ultimately approval for an app called SVT Play. SVT is a public television broadcaster, and SVT Play is their shows’ home on the web (think Hulu). The iPhone app works as you’d imagine: With a few clicks, users can watch popular shows right on their iPhones.

The promotional site is cute with live streaming video of eager developers, Facebook and Twitter integration plus an opportunity for Steve to use his Mac’s built-in iSight to record a quick video of himself saying, “Ja!” Good luck, SVT!

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

TUAWSwedish developers vie for Steve Jobs’s attention originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 16 Dec 2009 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: App Store

We first heard from iPhoneography and SCW last week about their two-man campaign to have skeevy developer Molinker pulled from the App Store (I included a link to their post, possibly a bit too subtly, in Sunday’s post about the NYT story). Molinker was allegedly using the underhanded (and unfortunately under-caught) trick of distributing promo codes to ‘puppet’ reviewers who gave the company’s photography apps five stars… and noticeably fail to review anything else on the store.

Since the independent reviewers of the same apps were uniformly one-star, this resulted in star distribution graphs for the apps that looked like sideways versions of the devil’s horns. Satanic mischief, indeed. After the site delivered its investigation results via email to App Store top cop Phil Schiller, the offending applications were summarily yanked from the store.

While it’s good news for the App Store ecosystem that this kind of behavior is being monitored and corrected, and the iPhoneography team are to be commended for their diligence (although I doubt they’ll be getting the requested “investigations reward for unearthing this blatant attempt at misleading and stealing from the public”), review manipulation schemes are seldom this blatant or easily identified — and sometimes we start seeing them even when they may not really be there…

Continue reading App Store review shenanigans, real and imagined

TUAWApp Store review shenanigans, real and imagined originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 08 Dec 2009 15:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Hardware, Rumors, iPhone

Mac Rumors has received word from Pandav, creator of iPhone application iBart [iTunes Link], that they’ve spotted usage records for the next-generation iPhone.

PinchMedia, the firm that provides analytics for the iBart app, allows Pandav to see what devices its apps are running on. Pandav noticed an identifier for “iPhone3,1″ in their logs. The iPhone 3GS hardware identifier is “iPhone2,1″, which means the next-generation iPhone is already being tested.

iBart is a guide for San Francisco’s train system, which lends further credence to the rumor. The iPhone 3GS was spotted in October of 2008, again by PinchMedia statistics, and was also being used in the San Francisco area.

Based on the past three years of releases and comments by Apple’s senior VP of marketing, Phil Schiller, the most likely launch date for the next-generation iPhone (iPhone 3GSS? iPhone 3GX? iPhone 4G?) is either June or July of 2010.

TUAWNext generation iPhone now in testing phase originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Sun, 29 Nov 2009 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Software, Developer, iPhone, App Store, SDK

Well here we go. Up until now, we’ve heard a lot from developers about how much of a mess the App Store’s approval process is, from people who’ve been rejected outright to people who’ve been forced to resubmit to people who’ve just given up completely. But we haven’t heard much from Apple, and now Phil Schiller has spoken with Business Week about what it is about the App Store’s approval process that has devs pulling their hair out.

The verdict? Schiller says the process is in place for a reason. About 90% of the apps submitted merely have bugs or technical issues, and he says for the most part that devs are happy to get that feedback (though TechCrunch doesn’t buy that for one second). But the other 10% of the apps Apple denies are simply what they deem “inappropriate,” which could be anything from problematic coding (code that steals passwords or other private information), or app content that doesn’t belong on the store, from porn to apps that help break the law or steal in some way. Apple is also vicious about trademark defense — Schiller says that “if you don’t defend your trademarks, in the end you end up not owning them.”

That all sounds fine and dandy (ok, well, the “inappropriate” label is a little unclear — that’s broad enough that Apple could fit almost anything under that umbrella, which is a bit troubling), but what about all of those angry devs? Unfortunately, Schiller doesn’t address at all the idea that Apple might someday allow devs to release apps that haven’t been through their approval process, on the App Store or anywhere else. As far as Apple is concerned, it seems like they’re keeping their grip on what gets released, and anyone who doesn’t like it is welcome to go elsewhere.

[via TheAppleBlog]

Continue reading Schiller defends App Store approval process

TUAWSchiller defends App Store approval process originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 24 Nov 2009 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple’s App Store review process was contentious even before it officially launched. From the moment the SDK was announced in March of 2008, developers and tech pundits have questioned, opined, and tried to figure out the process to what gets in and what gets rejected.

Still, the Google Voice flareup notwithstanding, the issue of app rejections and the lack of a clear policy has been largely relegated to tech sites and developer communities. That’s why, as John Gruber pointed out, it is interesting that Apple’s senior vice-president, Phil Schiller, took the time to discuss the App Store approval process with BusinessWeek.

App Store rejection stories, ranging from the incredulous to the downright ridiculous have existed almost as long as the store has, but the developer’s have largely stayed put, despite the inconsistencies. However, in the last few weeks, there have been some cases of high profile developers (like Joe Hewitt from Facebook and longtime Mac software company Rogue Amoeba) vowing to leave the store all together.

Couple that with the big momentum surrounding Google’s Android platform, and it makes sense that Apple — a company that has pretty much refused to talk about App Store politics in the past — would sit down and try to clarify some things.

Defining “Inappropriate” Apps and Trademark Protection

Apple says that 90% of the time when an app is rejected, it’s rejected because of a technical problem. Having spoken to many, many developers over the life of the App Store, I would say this seems largely true. The other 10% are cases where Apple has to try to figure out whether or not the apps are appropriate or whether they violate any laws.

For instance, Schiller comments on a submitted app that helped users cheat casinos:

“We had to go study state and international laws about what’s legal and what isn’t, and what legal exposure that creates for Apple or the customer.”

Furthermore, there’s the issue of trademark protection. Apple is vigilant about its own trademark being used in other applications and also has to investigate trademark claims from other companies.

Schiller says:

“If you don’t defend your trademarks, in the end you end up not owning them.”

The Role of Gatekeeper

One of the biggest developer arguments against the iPhone is the need for an approval process at all. Rather than drawing parallels to video game consoles, the smartphone is often compared directly to a PC (or a Mac), where the rules governing what can be developed and sold to end users is much more broad and without restrictions.

Schiller isn’t quoted as remarking on iPhone security in defending the role of a review process, but I’ll go ahead and interject that it is a valid claim. The latest worm that targets jailbroken iPhones and takes advantage of users who have not changed their default SSH password makes it clear that the precautions we have become accustomed to taking on our desktops and laptops have not become common parlance for mobile phones.

As consumers, we treat our handheld devices differently than we treat our desktop devices and I don’t think it is unreasonable to have different norms about software development for those different scenarios.

Communicating More

One area I wish Schiller had responded to was the lack of communication that is often perceived between developers and Apple. I’ve spoken with a number of developers who have had apps rejected for arbitrary reasons and the lack of any sort of clarity and the inability to get a straight answer is what has often been most bothersome.

Some developers might be leaving or considering leaving the App Store because of ideological reasons, but for most, I think it’s the lack of communication. Although it’s understandable that with 10,000 apps getting submitted every week that Apple has a hard time keeping an open relationship with developers, there needs to be more communication.

As a consumer, do the App Store review processes affect your decision to buy or not buy an iPhone? What role do you think Apple should have in governing the App Store? Let us know!

Tags: app store, app store review process, apple, iphone, phil schiller

Filed under: Humor, Cult of Mac, TUAW Interview

We got a chance to sit down (virtually) with the unofficial version of everyone’s favorite iCEO, via his alter ego & consigliere Dan Lyons. Fake Steve’s perspective is always unique and sometimes astonishing; read on.

TUAW: Fake Steve, thanks for taking time out of your busy schedule to speak with me. Before we begin this, I’d like to start off by saying that, on behalf of everyone, it is wonderful to see you in good health and back at the helm of Apple. Phil Schiller did a fine job in your absence, but the man has no stage presence. And Tim Cook’s droning voice could put even sugar-fed hyperactive children to sleep — what a snoozer.

First question: Let’s talk about Microsoft. The company recently released its newest operating system, Windows 7, and with it an experimental chain of branded retail stores that largely copy Apple’s own concept, right down to the inclusion of in-store support centers, called Guru bars. Your thoughts?

FSJ: Microsoft still hasn’t realized that its copycat business model (also known as a “close follower” strategy) doesn’t work anymore. For 20 or 25 years this company just waited for others to innovate, then copied the innovation and sold it for less – and this worked great for them. But this stopped working right around 2000 or so. The rest of the world just moves too fast now. Look, they’re still trying to catch Google in search, and they’ve got what — one percent market share? Same thing for Zune, right?

Well, keep fighting the good fight on that one, you morons. As for the stores, well, they look nice enough, since they copied ours. But in terms of how well they’ll do? Come on. Their stores are a joke and they’ve arrived too late. The whole point of being a close follower is you have to follow closely. We opened our first store in 2001 and we’ve got something like four thousand of them in the United States alone. I know you’re going to tell me I’m a bit off on that number, and, well, maybe so. But I still say we’ve got four thousand stores and if I say it enough times, people will believe me. Anyway, the other thing Microsoft seems not to understand is that it’s not enough just to open a store — you need to have something cool to put in that store. That might be a problem for them.

TUAW: Their mobile strategy has fallen flat on its face. Windows Mobile, now renamed Windows Phone, is clearly way behind OSX iPhone. Windows Mobile 6.5 is a stopgap measure at best. Windows Mobile 7 is another year away from shipping on devices. And with the recent Danger debacle, the future looks bleak for Microsoft. Do they stand a snowball’s chance in hell of ever competing with you? Do you even care?

FSJ: Wait a minute. Microsoft makes mobile phone software? I didn’t know that. Are you serious?

TUAW: Speaking of companies that are universally despised. Your contract with AT&T, as the exclusive carrier for the iPhone, is due to expire soon. Tell me you don’t plan to continue shackling iPhone to this single carrier?

FSJ: If it is the last thing I do, I will get us off AT&T. By Grabthar’s hammer, by the sons of Worvan, this shall be done. Look for news on this early next year.

TUAW: Moving on to Google. With the introduction of Android 2.0 and increasing product introductions like the recent Verizon Droid, Google is slowly gaining traction in the market. How badly do you want to drive hat pins into Eric Schmidt’s testicles?

FSJ: Well, very badly, except that Eric Schmidt does not have testicles. Lot of people don’t know that. But if he did have them, yes, I would want to harm them. A lot. The guy sat here in our board meetings and listened to all of our product plans and then just stole all of our ideas. I mean he sat here — right here — talking to me, asking me questions. I’m sorry. This just gets me really upset. Sniff. Can we move on?

Continue reading TUAW Interview: Fake Steve Jobs

TUAWTUAW Interview: Fake Steve Jobs originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 17 Nov 2009 07:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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