Why I’m Never Buying Another Apple Product: Part 2

Sorry this took so long to get out. I recently got Pokemon HeartGold and I've been obsessed with that. But here is part two of my three part series, "Why I'm Never Buying Another Apple Product Again." If you haven't read part 1, you can do that here.

So in part one, I talked about the rise in cloud computing and the growing obsolescence (is that a word?) of the desktop operating system, and it's not really something that Apple itself has done. In part 2 (and 3), that is a different story and really the biggest reasons. Read on to read more.

Apple's commitment to closed systems and obsession with control

Apple's App Store exists and makes Apple a lot of money. In order to get an app onto the app store, the app must first be approved by Apple. Apple says that this is all in order to maintain a standard of quality on the app store and to make it the best experience possible. And that sounds great. Keep the crap out, and have only the best stuff. Only the criteria that Apple uses seems to be completely arbitrary at best. Lets get to the evidence.

WWCD App

This summer, an app was submitted called "WWCD - What Would Chuck Do." Apple's response was this:

Thank you for submitting WWCD - What Would Chuck Do to the App Store. We've reviewed the Application and, consistent with the criteria considered in our approval process, we have chosen not to publish this application. As you know, Apple reserves the right, in its sole discretion, to reject an application for any reason.

Regards,

iPhone Developer Program

Translation: We rejected this app because we said so.

QuackPhone

QuackPhone was an app that made your phone quack like a duck, like the phone from Jersey Shore. Apple's response?

Dear Atlantia Software LLC,

We’ve reviewed your application DuckPhone and we have determined that this application contains minimal user functionality and will not be appropriate for the App Store.

If you would like to share it with friends and family, we recommend you review the Ad Hoc method on the Distribution tab of the iPhone Developer Portal for details on distributing this application among a small group of people of your choosing or if you believeDuckPhone we encourage you to do so and resubmit it for review. that you can add additional user functionality to

Sincerely,

iPhone App Review Team

Translation: We rejected this app because it doesn't really do much.

Ninjawords

Ninjawords is a simple dictionary app. What could go wrong?  Apple responded by rejecting the app, because the dictionary contained curse words. The developers responded with:

We were rejected for objectionable content. They provided screenshots of the words ‘sh*t’ and ‘f**k’ showing up in our dictionary’s search results. What’s interesting is that we spent a good deal of time making it so that you must type vulgar words in their entirety, and only then will we show you suggestions in the search results. For instance, if you type ‘fuc’, you will not see ‘f**k’ as a suggestion. This is in contrast to all other dictionaries we’re aware of on the App Store (including Dictionary.com’s application), which will show you ‘f**k’ in the search results for ‘fuc’, ‘motherf**ker’ for ‘mother’, etc.

Tweetie

A harmless twitter app. Theres a billion of them. "This one must have been particularly evil," you say. "It must have beamed child porn into your precious iPhone," you say. How did it offend? It displayed tweets that contained curse words. That's right, Apple rejected this twitter app because there were tweets (completely outside of the developer's controls) that contained something objectionable to Apple.

Just reading these stories gives me a pretty clear picture of what the approval process for the app store really is. Whatever the person reviewing the app at the time feels like. Theres a million stories like this. Just do a google search for app store rejection. What's more, Apple has come out and said that apps that duplicate functionality that already comes default with the iPhone will be blanket rejected. Hate iTunes on your iPhone? Tough. Hate the Mail app? Tough. Hate the browser? Tough.

And Apple keeps apps locked away from most of the lower level functions of the phone. It may not seem like a big deal if you don't know what you're missing. Android, Google's phone operating system, has no such limitations and no approval process. You can install any app you want, when you want, and these apps can do basically anything. An example: There is an app on android called "Power Manager" which changes your phone settings based on the status of your battery. For example, if you have less than 50% battery left, you can set it to automatically turn off wifi, turn off gps, and dim the screen. You don't have to worry about it. And Steve Jobs would rip out his liver before he let an app like that even think of existing on the iPhone.

And with the announcement of the iPad and its inclusion of the app store, it's obvious that the app store is here to stay, and thats exactly how Apple wants it. Apple takes 30% on the sale of every iPhone app, researchers estmate that Apple makes $240 million to $440 million a year. And believe me there is no doubt in my mind, if Apple could get away with it they would control everything on their computers too.

Part 3 will be up shortly, and I promise that it will be less time between posts. If you think I'm taking too long, feel free to bother me about it.