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 October 5th 2009 8:03PM
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.