Apple stupidly rejects Tweetie 1.3 for foul language in Twitter trends
By Nilay Patel 
posted March 10th 2009 3:22PM
posted March 10th 2009 3:22PM
Look, Apple -- this is a nadir. Rejecting a Twitter client for Twitter's content is simply indefensible, and it's a sign that the App Store approval "process" is broken beyond repair. It's time to drop the seemingly-random black-box approach -- which has earned nothing but well-deserved scorn -- open up, establish consistent, easy-to-understand rules with a well-defined appeals process, and actually work with innovative developers like Tweetie's Loren Brichter to push your platform forward in the face of newly-stiff competition. The massive popularity of the iPhone and the App Store may prevent a mass exodus, but the best devs are going to leave if they feel jerked around, and we doubt a store full of fart apps and misogynistic jiggle apps is really the vision you had for your platform. Think about it.
[via The iPhone Blog]
We just had the exact same "dirty word" rejection by Apple for our Twitter-powered social weather app called "Human Weather".
Check out the offensive screenshot - http://www.twitpic.com/1zfrm
We then added a "bad word" filter to the app and we got approved within a few days.
Our app is currently FREE:
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewSoftware?id=306620676&mt=8
Yes! Exactly what I would have done..
Just put in an option to filter out bad words if they are going to give you crap. If new features are going to bring in revenue from new users don't let something like this stop you.
Although I completely agree that apple shouldn't try to police the internet you have to kind of work with them since they provide the exposure that otherwise you couldn't get.
This looks like one of those all-too-frequent jackass decisions that get made by people who don't understand technology ... but this is Apple. Do they have people like that? And if they do, why did they put them in charge of the App Store approval process?
Wait! I know! They outsourced the process to India.
Frustrating since I just bought the tweetie app yesterday and fell in love with it. I guess I'll just have to go back to entertaining myself with m.youporn.com. Thank you Safari.
mobile.youporn.com
a ham sandwich @ 40+ are one of the fastest age group joining Facebook. They (we) don't get MySpace, because it's design/noise causes headaches for oldsters.
Twitter on the other hand is not something you "get", it is something you use. No one "gets" Twitter. Ask 30 Twitter users what it is and you will get 10 different answers. Some use it like it was originally designed and a simple status updater, some think it is a new marketing and self promotion wunderkind, some use it because it interfaces so well with so many different sites, readers, and tools. Personally use it to update Facebook, Youtube, and a few blogs from a myriad of different sites that are twitter enabled. I am also working with a group to use Twitter to give automated emergency system updates to plumbers. If you tell me that most people "get" how varied Twitters uses can be, you are kidding yourself.
Twitter is multi-purpose and the user defines what it means to them.
It's not just old people who "don't get" myspace. Anyone who remembers the myriad of terrible Geocities sites back in the day looks at myspace with abject horror. At least Facebook is readable.
another reason to support JAILBREAKING - apple's ego is way to high ! Support the cydia store !
WTF Apple?! I really like the products, but what they are doing to DEVs is simply ridiculous. Especially now with this example of how stupid the whole process is.
I mean - hey please remove Safari next then. After all I could surf to a porn site, or look at a dictionary in OSX - just wow - all those dirty words in there. REMOVE IT NOW APPLE!
This is just so stupid. But so are US Laws. Yeah you can’t look at a naked breast (oh no!) but at 9 a.m. you can watch heads get cut off on TV on saturdays.
@ phanbuoy:
You either need help: 1) with the Engadget comment system or 2) from your doctor. And fast.
Oh snap!
Kinda makes me glad to own an android-based phone, even at its infancy.
Kinda makes me glad to own an android-based phone, even at its infancy.
iShare - SharePoint for iPhone (http://www.spyk.com/products/ishare/) got rejected the first time because it had a sample SharePoint contact list with Steve Job's name in the sample data.
Apple said it was defaming a public figure.
Fucktards. Stick that up your iTunes pipe Apple! Luckily I don't invest in closed IT platforms and allow the corporate suits to decide what I do with a product I've bought.
As a developer myself, I'm going to throw caution to the wind here and state that it's not only the approval process that is broken, but it's the whole way the store is run.
It's very difficult to make even a high quality app get traction amongst the mud that is thousands of fart and burp apps. The whole thing needs a rethink, from the approval process to quality control standards. It's becoming less attractive for developers to spend time perfecting and polishing apps when it's just as easy (and profitable) to quickly release a sub-par app and join the legions of unscrupulous developers jumping on the bandwagon hoping to make a fast buck.
I've got tons of suggestions for improvement (as I'm sure hundreds of other worthy developers do too), but using the developer email contact has so far had no notable response and there seems to be very few other ways of initiating contact for change.
At this rate, it's going to end up like a poor clone of handango, busy, poorly regulated, full of crap with no care or concern for the people who ultimately make the money for Apple in sales in the long run.
As for this particular rejection, surely there are grounds to remove Safari from the standard iPhone apps as I'm sure there is the odd swear word here and there on the internet.
F*ck Ap*le. W*o th* he*l d* th*y th*nk th*y *re etc etc
What a load of fucking bollocks, mmm wonders if my Safari browser will let me type this :)
As an iPhone developer myself, my guess is that this will get fixed.
It's not unusual to find that the person who has reviewed your app has, how shall I put it, "not been following the plot". This wouldn't really matter much, except that every single bit of interaction takes a week. (Typical scenario: I submit a new app at the weekend; they try it on Tuesday [I can tell from my server logs], I get an email rejecting it on Friday, I reply saying "please engage your brain and try again it's not that complicated even my mom can understand it", they try again the following Wednesday and get a tiny bit futher etc. etc.). As a developer, I need to get "v 1.0" (a.k.a. version 0.01") out ASAP to judge how much interest there is. If no-one buys it in the first day, OK, work on something else. I don't want to spend a month working on version 1.1 while I wait for version 1.0 to come out.
What can they do about it? I'm not sure. I do know that they already have people working weekends [server logs again]. Presumably this is because they have more work than they can handle Monday to Friday. Of course they can hire more people, and it may be that the problems we are seeing are due to new reviewers. Or they could relax the standards; well, to be honest I don't think that will make much difference as the time taken is pretty much the same (you have to press all the buttons) whether you say "yes" or "no" at the end of it. Or, they could remove the review process entirely. But then you need a way to give people refunds when apps don't work at all.
What can developers do about it? Well I think that what a lot of people are doing is making their apps so incredibly SIMPLE that they can't possibly find anything to complain about. I've tried this and it does help, but then you're stuck with stupid 99 cents pieces of proverbial. Worthwhile apps are often (though not always) inherently more complex, with more potential for the reviewer to, as I said, "lose the plot" - as seems to have happened in this case.
Well, I'll see what Windows Mobile 7 will bring. Apple has good software but bad attitude.
@tinu
finally, someone said it. Youre exactly right. Apple thinks of the iphone as a toy. This toy is not suitable for adults, so any crude reference related to anything sexual is auto banned so the kiddies dont learn something their great christian sheltering upbringing didnt already teach them.
And i cant wait for there version of app store either. Dot Net developers get ready!
better reject and delete SMS cause i swear like a sailor on there 25/8.
There is an error in the title.
It's redundant.
This is the beginning of the end. You know Apple is becoming just another company after SJ's inevitable dead.
From @tweetie on twitter about 30 seconds ago: Great news! 1.3 has now been approved! Alright Apple! (via @atebits)
thus the endgadget poster can redact this thread? awesome.
This might be the last straw for Apple and I. I have been a long time user but this Iron Fist has to go...
"The massive popularity of the iPhone and the App Store may prevent a mass exodus, but the best devs are going to leave if they feel jerked around, "
Understatement of the Century. Developers are not LEAVING the "OS iPhone" platform, they're jumping on the bandwagon in droves.
You work on a freaking blog, selling Palm Pre ads (as far as we know Vaporware). Pipe down.
Well this comment is going to go mostly unnoticed on page 5 or 6, but anyway, I just wanted to say that while this is one occasion when the approval process has failed, you have unfortunately destroyed any credibility you had on the issue with all your previous, and unjustified, attacks on the approval process.
Every time some developer thinks they have been hard done by, the go crying to the blogs, and the blogs faithfully repeated their whining without bothering to check whether said whine was appropriate. You (Engadget) in particular took great delight in slamming decisions that were clearly the right ones, or were decisions that were at least understandable. I think you were trying (unsuccessfully, as you should have predicted) to silence the "Engadget loves Apple" trolls.
What is happening is this - thousands and thousands of apps are being sent to Apple for approval. In one or two cases (at most, that I have heard about, anyway) a wrong decision has been made by one app reviewer. You have never, NEVER mentioned that this is actually a *fantastic* success rate - two mistakes per thousand alone would be amazing but we are talking about two mistakes in thousands and thousands and thousands of apps.
So a wrong decision was reached here by one reviewer and I am sure that that could easily be corrected. Instead, the developer whines and you grab hold of it and never once think, geez, maybe we could cut them a break seeing as they've made the right decision in so many (thousands of) other cases.
This is what makes a mockery of Nilay's claim that the process is "broken beyond repair" - what rubbish! No system in the world that generates such a low error rate has ever been thought of as "broken", let alone "beyond repair". Why do you only look at the few mistakes and not appreciate that figure within the context of the number of correct decisions? It is very bad reporting, and this constant need by Engadget to attempt to prove they are not Apple fans is leading you down a very bad journalistic path.
You never were biased towards Apple so no matter what the comment trolls say you should not become biased against Apple, and misreport situations like this one.
How to report this situation? "Bad decision, and it needs to be changed (and it can be, it is not hard), but understandable given the enormous amount of app approvals that are undertaken."
How to misreport this situation? "OMG this whole process is broken beyond repair because a couple of mistakes have been made (that only represent a tiny fraction of one percent of cases)."
Well said!
No wonder they want non-disclosure agreements for these.
Beautifully written, Nilay.
fuck you apple and fuck your reviewing process. Also fuck your app store
and fuck your mobile device.
There did my part. Now safari should be banned it can get pretty dirty out here on the wild wild net.
And also while you at it ban text messages too you wont believe the shit I get from fuck buddies.
Looks like our riot worked, as I can update my tweetie app via itunes and over the air on my iphone.
This is really odd as I have just downloaded Tweetie v1.3 to my iPhone. Couldn't get it using iTunes, even though it was showing as an update there.
I was quite shocked when I saw that Skype talks dirty. Quite often I see a message here saying:
"SoAndSo came online".
I don't understand how people cannot object to that ;-)
Yay! Good! Apple's making a move to kill the fad.
DOWN WITH TWITTER!
Boo hoo, twits. Go cry in the corner. Nobody wants to read about your bowel movements or what you're having for lunch.