True to form, Apple has
rethought its strategy on an App Store
rejection, and has granted the "politically charged" iSinglePayer rights to terrorize potential buyers with its alarming messages. If you'll recall, the application tackles the hot-button healthcare issue in America by offering spending advice for consumers and a GPS lookup for local Congress members' and their healthcare-related donations. As we mentioned
in our original post, it's a pretty tame set of functionality, and certainly nothing that seems outwardly offensive (at least not any more offensive than
lots of apps you can purchase). Just as with our previous complaints about Apple's way of doing business, it's not so much the rejections that bother us, but the unclear set of circumstances by which the company arrives at those decisions. Regardless, some firebrand app reviewer has seen fit to allow this townhall-rattling piece of software into the Store, so now you can go see what all the fuss was about for yourself.
[Via
Daring Fireball]
posted Oct 5th 2009 8:03PM
I wonder if they get dizzy at Apple's app approval division with how many 180's they've been doing?
thank you for not saying 360s
You know why it's called the iPhone 3GS? Because you do a 3GS and walk away.
i'm replying up here to get this heard.
ENGADGET close the comments. that is all
Umm, Google Voice please? =\
PREPOSTEROUS!
/british accent
Politcally? wut
Of course we spend the most on health care.
The 5 biggest hospitals in Boston run more clinical trials than the rest of the world, combined.
The National Institutes of Health funds over $30 billion of research annually. What other country even comes close to that?
The vast majority of medical devices, drugs and treatments come from American companies.
How many Nobel prizes in medicine came from countries that have a single payer system? I'll give you a hint--most are American citizens using funds from the United States.
We do have a bogus health care system--WHO ranks us as #37. However, our treatments, technology and physicians are the best in the world. Lets trying fixing our system without compromising what we are the best at. Show me what single payer system has accomplished even a fraction of what we have to the advancement of the field--and I'll support whatever BO is going to throw at us.
"The National Institutes of Health funds over $30 billion of research annually. What other country even comes close to that?"
I find it pretty ironic that one of your arguments against government health care is how great government funded research is. By the way, it's complete bullshit to say that there isn't medical research in other countries. France, Germany, Switzerland, Japan, UK, they all have a tremendous amount of medical research going on. And believe it or not, France, Belgium, and Switzerland have some of the largest drug companies in the world! can you imagine that? And they even make profits too!
@Tony - The WHO ranks you at 37 which means you're 37th best for some pretty legitimate reasons. You have the 37th best doctors and treatments and hospitals and equipment. This is why you're 37th. Seriously, are you handicapped?
"find it pretty ironic that one of your arguments against government health care is how great government funded research is."
Because we know the government running an industry is the same as giving money to private institutions to do research.
Oh, and from what I heard today, the US swept the all the medical Nobel Prizes.
Not bad for a nation without socialized medicine.
@ Kamil, so i worked at nuclear power plants for 3 years. Working at Outages, and then having off when the plants were in full swing. When I wasn't working for 6 months, I did not get health insurance. So i contributed to society but recieved no health insurance. When I was working for a construction company, no health care. So i worked 50 hours a week but I don't contribute to society, your logic baffles me!
If USA is so #1 in healthcare, how come 40 million people simply don't have it here? Spending the most and having the best doesn't mean a thing if not everyone is covered. It's so great we spend so much and have such great care, except again it doesn't mean a thing if people can't afford it. #1 cause of bankruptcy: medical bills. USA #1!!! We swept the nobel prizes! 40 million without health care! People going bankrupt even with insurance! USA #1!!!
This to "Moron". 40 million people is a huge lie. For one, that includes illegals, who don't are breaking the law anyway, and don't really count. (Since its supposed to be US citizens) it also includes people who CHOOSE not to buy it it, as well as people waiting to switch from one plan to the next.
In reality 10mil or less are actually NOT covered by choice. 10mil, 3% or LESS. You're going to ruin 1/6th the economy for 3/100 of the population?
#1 cause of bankruptcy: poor money management.
Does everyone "deserve" a house? Isn't a roof over your head more important than access to a doctor? How about college education - everyone deserve that as well? Food? Should every single person be eligible for a gov't paid meal?
If you haven't checked lately we have this thing called a deficit. It is now running in the TRILLIONS per year. That's before we provide food to every person, or a personal doctor to all that are sick or a college education to everyone who applies. That's just brilliant. The Arabs/Chinese/Russians and Japanese are already in deep discussions over dropping the dollar as the currency of choice for the oil industry. Why don't we make the problem WORSE by going deeper into debt or alternatively taxing like crazy the people that actually work.
We need to right the economy before worrying about this other stuff. A strong dollar, a strong economy will go a long way towards alleviating the pressure around healthcare. Get more people employed first, then you will see the housing market rebound, the deficit shrink and the dollar get stronger. Then we can talk about ways to make the healthcare industry more effective and efficient.
@Moron
There is a difference between health care and health insurance. Everyone has health care. Not everyone has health insurance. There is a growing momentum to avoid insurance all together by some clinics even because of the increased cost to the clinic to use your insurance to pay for anything.
Insurance != Care.
Americans win the nobel eh, let;s see:
Blackburn, 60, who holds U.S. and Australian citizenship, is a professor of biology and physiology at the University of California, San Francisco
London-born Szostak, 56, is a professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School and a researcher with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute.
(not sure if that's london canada or london england.)
So yeah those 'americans' win nobels and do expensive research because they go over bodies and people's lives and ruin them to draw every last penny from them leaving them sleeping in boxes on the street, so that non-americans can come to the US and win prizes for making up another 10cents pill that will be sold for $1000 until people are destitute and dead.
That's the working sytem, now go protect it, not because you care for it but because you must halt obama from doing anything until the republicans can get a deranged new monkey in the white house to wreck more havoc in the world and US and see if he can't beat bush's record and finally kill the US and its constitution once and for all.
Fine with me.
Silly liberals. Where is the graph for quality of care? Pretty sure they will look the same.
Beat me to it. I bet Libya spends a lot less per capita than the US too.
yeah....right, tell that to the millions without healthcare, im sure they will be thrilled for you.
ohh... that 47 million bullcrap?
10M of those are illegals
another 10M CHOOSE not to get it...
so your real number is 27 million.
now, I'm not even counting people in prison...
so are you saying that we should sacrifice quality and choice,
so 27 million, who don't contribute anything to society anyways,
can get free healthcare?
Kamil, if the richest country in the world has only one person without healthcare, it means something is wrong. I dont agree with your view that 27 million people (almost 10% of the country) means nothing, honestly its a whole bunch of people. So because someone is poor, and in your view doesnt contribute anything to society (in the completely monetary, superficial and utterly ignorant way you say) you should just let them die? sounds a lot like hitler to me, and for that matter we should kill off the old and the sick too, they dont contribute anything either, heck lets kill the children, its just a waste of money. If you think 27 million is nothing, well i suppose we will never get to any consensus on this.
My point, is that we should not just simply "give them" the free stuff.
Seriously, most Americans are dependent of the government...
thats not the way it should be.
redistributed wealth is no way of helping people. in the end, its going to bite everyones butt.
@oliveros: Believe it or not, people actually can live without health insurance (well, until they're in their late '50s, then it starts becoming economically viable for them to have some).
Water on the other hand...
@Backlin true, they can live without health care, good point, but as the population gets older and older things are going to get worse. You're right, theres two sides to everything.
@Kamil that is right, giving stuff away all the time doesnt help, but I have always thought that if you give good healthcare and education to poor people, they will eventually end up making progress. Taking those worries out of their minds gives them time and money to invest in more productive activities.
@oliveros
Godwin Law invoked. You loose. Sorry.
list of industrialized nations that do not have public health care that aren't the united states:
-
@ D haha damn it! I fell to fast for it.
@oliveros123
Unless man someone how becomes perfect, no crime, no hate....
thats not gonna happen.
@Uncontrol
so just cuz every country does something, we should too?
hmm... reminds me of a childhood saying... something with bridges
God damnit, engdaget. Why did you bring politics onto my favorite technology site. I hate you I hate you I hate you.
@Conceyted
Amen brother. Hey all you Europeans and Canadians the "quality" of your health care (even though it covers more people and cost much, much less) sux ass!
I urge all of us young repubs and future "Billionaires" to join the movement:
http://www.billionairesforwealthcare.com/
list of industrialized nations, other than the US that put a man on the moon:
Yeah, didnt find any either. And we didnt have socialized medicine back then either. how did we manage???
"list of industrialized nations, other than the US that put a man on the moon:
Yeah, didnt find any either. And we didnt have socialized medicine back then either. how did we manage???"
What the hell does this even mean?
Keep on flooding Conceyted's inbox :)
"What the hell does this even mean?"
rough translation to simpleton.
Just because you are an industrialized nation, does not mean you have to copy every frigging thing every other industrialized nation does. If you want, I can list a lot of things those nations do I guarantee you dont want copied here.
Engadget: Conservative Views Will Be Seen in Light Grey.
Hell, that could be said about the internet in general.
Thank you for not taking an immediate stance yourself, Joshua.
Now excuse me while I laugh at your time wasted internet arguing. LAUGH AT YOU. HAHAHAHAH.
Screw society, every person fend for himself.
Quality of care? How about life expectancy. Canada and France both have better, England about same.
Silly conservatives. It's like watching clownschool on the helm of a ship. Entertaining, but you wouldn't like to be onboard, or even on the same ocean.
@ Kamil "10M of those are illegals
another 10M CHOOSE not to get it"
First, where is your authority that 10 M illegals are out there getting health care without insurance? Or the 10M who choose not to get insurance? If you find the 47M number to be dubious without proof, I can find either of your 10M to be equally dubious.
Second, assuming your numbers are correct:
(1) Illegals don't get insurance under the proposed plan (no matter what Joe Wilson says... read the bill before you spout other lies)
(2) It is the 10 M that choose not to get insurance that are part of the problem. When one of them gets seriously ill or injured and they go to the hospital where they are (and should be) treated, who do you think pays for it? Either we all do, or the hospital has to eat the cost... neither of which is good for an industry that is 1/6 of the economy.
I can appreciate your opposition to health care reform (I can't understand it... but I can appreciate it), so long as it is opposition that results from rational thought. Are you sure you've done that? Or are you too busy being scared of the boogeyman of "socialism" just because it sounds like the Soviet Union?
Liberals don't feel the need to use logic. Don't ya know?
glen beck uses so much logic, doesnt he?
Glen Beck? He's a raving lunatic. I hate him. He's probably the only person who has less logic then most liberals.
@Kamil
FYI Glenn agrees with your stated opinion on health care.
I guess you are calling yourself dumb....
liberals and apple fanatics = the same group of people.
They are both willing to pay high taxes:
The apple tax is only about 200 dollars per device but the tax that will be required for universal healthcare is going to be far greater
i guess you could say that, but unfortunately, the people that use apples also have the propensity to be right more often. Hence, we are not conservatives.
The difference is that I choose to buy Apple products of my own free will, when I choose to do so. After I purchase said product, I am usually happy with the quality. If not, it can be returned.
I'm not sure any of these things apply to my income taxes :)
Isn't Rush Limbaugh a Mac user?
http://www.switched.com/2008/03/17/rush-limbaugh-gets-his-mac-fixed/
I guess this make him a LIBERAL. Cue to the scary music!
right...
and republicans and anti-apple zealots are also the same group of people...
crybabies who act on faith, without logic or reasoning, and think that if they believe something strongly enough it makes it true... just keep saying the lies and half truths ad-nauseum and in the end it becomes reality
My favorite group of health care protesters is: Billionaires for Wealthcare!
Slogan: "If we ain't broke, don't fix it"
http://www.billionairesforwealthcare.com/signs/
http://www.billionairesforwealthcare.com/
i am a big fan of that video
The top 1% of wealthy people in america pay 40% of the taxes.
Just sayin
@Kamil
Hey, hey, I'm on your side ;^/
http://www.billionairesforwealthcare.com/Images/death.pdf
Woah.... i don't know what side YOUR on....
but stay away from politics please... death is NO way to solve problems....
also, that website is satire (I KNOW, RIGHT >.
So that top 1% should be allowed to profiteer and deny claims because someone didn't put down they had mild acne as a teen. Yeah, totally appropriate.
Grayson had it right - we should apologize to the dead, the 44,000 per year that die because of the lack of health care affordability (according to the Stanford study).
I just spent the last 10 min looking for the study,
care to provide a link before we go on?
@Kamil
Satire? Nothing funny about their very real message. Now lets get it going (CIGNA/PALIN 2012!)
http://www.billionairesforwealthcare.com/Images/profit.pdf
@ Kamil
And nearly 40% of the total net worth in the U.S. is distributed among only the top 1%. They damn well be paying at least 40% of the taxes.
Just sayin.
For people actually involved in healthcare reform and knowledgable about it, this app is far from lame. Probably, though, to folks who know very little about the issues and stakeholders and facts, anything other than games or little rock music gadgets seem "useful" or 'non' lame.
Thanks for sharing and in the future, you may wish to learn more about separating your political opinion from actual useful review info.
There is a lot more to this story than meets the eye. Word on the street is that in the original application, the developer purposely included a link to pornographic material to ensure that the app would be rejected and that they could say that Apple rejected the app. Of course, this is just evolution of stupidity of Apple's approval process. The developers played them for publicity, gambled that they wouldn't get called for it, and get the politically charged app approved in the end.
Wow, word on "the street"? That's a reliable source.
What do you mean, true to form? Apple barely ever does this- just shows how much of a fanboy of apple Josh is. Tell me, Josh, what's keeping you with the iPhone? There are much better mobile platforms out there, and you should not have to hack to be able to multitask.
Maybe they should have done a life expectancy chart. I sure with all the money being spent on healthcare in the US it will be way up there!!?
It is.
there i summed up the comments for you
Spending more money does not make your healthcare service better.
Silly Americans. If you spent as much on health as you did on your pointless wars then you'd be a lot better off.
See guys, this is why Apple didn't want to approve this app. Politics usually bring the stupid out of everyone :P
Can we have an app which shows us how much money the iPhone population spends on fart apps and stuff like this political twit identifier vs. productivity software or other useful software? Or perhaps a graph which shows the number of iPhone users who are willing to pay hundreds of dollars for the device and then hundreds of dollars per annum for iPhone data service, yet claim that they can't afford health insurance? Open the floodgates, Apple.
LOL!
See? This is what I am talking about.
Honestly the only reason we pay so much more for health care is because of the government funded medicare, if they could figure out a better way to do medicare none of this would matter.
Can we please keep politics out of gadgets? It's like potatoes and icecream. they doesn't mix!
I don't like the healthcare reform plan in its' current form, myself. That's all i need to say. Unfortunately, the few conservatives like myself on this site are mindless, young idiots who feel the need to flame the liberals about their beliefs. Believe it or not, arguing on the internet about an issue in which you have no real choice in will not gain anything.
Now, if somebody wanted to have a debate on whether this app should be accepted or not, WITHOUT yelling on about how THIS INFORMATION NEEDS TO BE BROUGHT TO THE PEOPLE, or THIS IS MINDLESS POLITICAL ADVERTISING, then go ahead.
And please remember, this debate has been going on since Kennedy pushed an almost identical bill, and I have a feeling it will continue to be put off until the next democratic president puts it up for vote.
you seem to forget that the "internets is a series of tubes, with system buses moving to and fro."
Whoo! Countries with substandard care and less R&D pay less! Holy shit I want to go there!
Please die.
????
I guess this means you don't care about that iphone app.
That's OK, I prefer that lightsaber app myself.
Oh, thanks. I was about to read them all.
True to form, the blogosphere has again gone crazy about an App Store rejection non-story, and has slammed Apple for a pretty minor hiccup. If you'll recall, Engadget in particular has demonised every single rejection-first-acceptance-later instance as representative of evil conduct by Apple Inc. As many mentioned each time this type of story arose, the fact that some reviewers occasionally make errors (like, a dozen or so) when assessing *tens of thousands* of submissions does not really indicate any evil conduct, and certainly does not represent an error rate that is excessive or too high. Just as with previous stories, Engadget has tried to present their position as one of being concerned with unclear circumstances, cleverly omitting the possibility that random human error, rather than institutional rule ambiguity, is the root cause of these instances. Regardless, tens of thousands of apps somehow make it through this apparently fatally ambiguous process without problem, and of course, the 99% of successes are not reported by Engadget who continue to present the less-than-one-percent instances as being representative of the process.
Look, you publish thousands of blog posts. Apple reviews thousands of app submissions.
Sometimes, you make mistakes. Sometimes, Apple's reviewers make mistakes.
Let me ask you this: do you think it would be fair if each time (each and every time) you made a slight error in a blogpost, another blog trumpeted that fact and ran articles about how flawed your process was, and how random the error was, and how stupid it was, and also continued to suggest when possible a conspiracy theory that the errors were not random but deliberate interference and censoring by Weblogs Inc?
Would it also be fair if, each time you corrected a mistake, that blog ran another story basically saying, "yeah, great Engadget - you finally fixed the mistake you should never had made and that you wouldn't have made if your process was not so fundamentally flawed."
I think it is time you took stock of your editorial stance regarding App Store rejection stories. You should first ask if you want to be held to the standard of absolute and total perfection that you are holding Apple to. You should then ask if the continued suggestion that the rejection rules are unworkably ambiguous has any basis in fact and especially, any basis in evidence that you have before you. Not inferred from rejection stories and what the dev thought of it all; no, real evidence.
Finally you will want to re-check the basic journalism principle that reporting is done fairly and without bias, and the importance of presenting the cases of *both* sides rather than reporting only one side, as you have done. Your continual failure to contextualise these individual instances against the successes is nothing more than bad reporting. After all, it raises the question, if the submission process is so fundamentally flawed, then why are there only a dozen or so problems reported amongst tens of thousands of successes? That's a fair question, and it is one that an Engadget reader would never ask because your articles never mention any opposing views, or even bother to acknowledge that they exist.
Please don't use reason, logic, or decency on this blog. They have no place here!
/sarcasm (just in case)
No really, please, die.
LOL @ your comeback too.
SO how are we in a recession if we spend the most on Health Care?
Apparently the creator of this app forgot that we pay a tiny fraction of taxes (right now) as compared to the EU countries. We actually have money in our pockets to spend as we so choose (Americans (minus Obama) call that freedom).
I keep forgetting that money is everything. Maybe I'll remember this time.
what a terrible freakin APP, don't even bother
Saying the US spends more on research and its current system is therefore right misses two points, compared to the Europen countries you are "competing" against you need to work out that research value per capita, more people means more money not an over all better system.... but if these companies spend more they also charge more, and because of the insurance lead system in the US they can charge what they like and its illegal for the goverment to try to force a discount. Its a self fufilling spiral in the health industrys favour not the populations.
There must be a point when the best is too expensive, where is that point? that is the main question as as good as the US health care system is on a technology / drug stand point even with the best cover it could be improved but would cost more, where do you draw this line, and you have to think more on a population level, start with I want everyone to get X, and then work from there, both state and private can work well together its getting the balance, and that is something that I dont think anyone has really got yet. The US has a change to really sort that out and it could be a wonderful thing, but atm its too many ultra rich companies trying to keep their stranglehold.
Why are so many Americans against the idea of making health care available to more Americans? It is a sort of selfish, bitterness. The big debt was incurred by Bush and Cheney in their ridiculous war and their lying about WMDs in Iraq. Billion were spent and American lives lost in a war that raelly did not help the US at all. If that money had been spent on healthcare and education, we would be in better shape now.
Why? read the book described here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_Shrugged
It's how they are, it's the people who re-elected bush, why ask why?
IT MOST CERTAINLY IS OFFENSIVE AND SHOULD BE REMOVED!!!!
ALL DEMOCRAT SPENDING BILLS ARE OFFENSIVE!! ESPECIALLY DURING THE CURRENT RECESSION!!
GOVERNMENT CONTROL OF HEALTH-CARE IS OFFENSIVE BECAUSE OF THE GREED AND CORRUPTION THAT IT BRINGS WITH IT!!!!
JUST WATCH WHAT THE CURRENT ADMINISTRATION AND CONGRESS ARE DOING, VOTING, ETC. AND YOU CAN EASILY SEE THE GREED AND CORRUPTION OF THEM AND THE PARTIES THEY BELONG TO!!!!
IMPEACH ALL DEMOCRATS!!!!
DEPORT ILLEGAL ALIENS!!
REMOVE THE CZARS!!
NO GOVERNMENT RUN HEALTH CARE!!
REDUCE THE SALARIES OF CONGRESS, WHITEHOUSE, CZARS, AND OTHER ADMINISTRATION OFFICIALS TO 1/3RD AND USE THE MONEY TO PAY DOWN THE DEFICIT!!!
THE ARABS ARE IN TALKS NOW TO DEVELOP A REGIONAL CURRENCY TO REPLACE THIER RELIANCE ONTHE U.S. DOLLAR!!! PAY DOWN THE DEFICIT AND PAY OFF THE DEBT TO THE COMMUNIST CHINESE!!!!
LESS GOVERNMENT!!!!
LOWER TAXES!!!!
NO SECOND BILL OF RIGHTS!! HEALTH CARE IS NOT A RIGHT!!!
MOVE THE GOVERNMENT BACK TO TO THE CONSTITUTION!!!
I don't know if stating something in a bad light about Israel gets you banned... but I'm pretty sure calling everyone "kids or neanderthals" or "a little kid with a one inch penis" does. It also doesn't give much credibility to anything else you say.
P.S. Neither does responding "please die."
I suppose most people's problem with health care is paying for it. Some call the USA a "Christian nation." I certainly don't. But from what I have seen and read, many conservatives do think of the USA as a Christian nation. I don't see how that can be true because that would require us to collectively love our neighbors as we love for ourselves. Obviously, that isn't a good enough reason for some to provide BASIC health insurance to our neighbors (I'm Atheist so that reasoning does't matter to me). Yet, strangely, we are apparently OK with providing the best health care to the relatively wealthy members of Congress for free ("free" as in we taxpayers pay for it). If anyone can afford health insurance on their own it would be members of Congress.
I guess we'd rather have the uninsured continue to go to emergency rooms for basic health care where it costs several times more for the same treatments. Could that potentially solve our money quandary?
Anyways, as it turns out, the solution is easy. Set the income tax for the wealthiest Americans at 80% or 90%. We did it after World War II. In fact, between 1932 and 1981, the top tax bracket fluctuated between 63% and 94%. The lowest tax bracket during this time period fluctuated up to a high of 22%. Use this money to pay for health care. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Providing broadband internet access to every person in America. Fixing our schools. Food safety (anyone read the beef article in the NYT?). Homeland security. Fixing levies, roads, and bridges. Etc...
I find it odd that people talk about socialism when they really mean socialist policies. We do not have a socialist government. That would be unconstitutional (for those of you that know how to read and have read the US Constitution). However, if we really want to abandon socialist policies, first you would have to realize that we have had socialist policies for over 100 years. Second, you must give up Social Security. Anyone who is getting Social Security payments and at the same time is crying out against "socialism" is a hypocrite. The same goes for anyone getting unemployment benefits. "Lost your job? Too bad. We don't want socialism. Pull yourself up by your own boot straps."
Is BASIC preventative health care and BASIC medical treatment a right or a privilege. That is really the question. I go with the former. I don't need religion to tell me the right answer.