Apple's Not Fond of Brunettes | Hacker News Reader

Apple's Not Fond of Brunettes

ikamasutra.com

154 pointspgrote30 comments

I'm fed up with this nanny state app store model. As a hacker I feel like I have an obligation to fight this trend. I'm committed to a couple of iOS projects right now but when they wrap I'm going to take a very hard look at getting back on the open web.

> nanny state app store

It's not the state.

Not yet.

Damn straight. My macbook sits unused in another state because I made the same decision a year or so ago. I don't miss it, in fact I _prefer_ my GNU/Linux netbook.

What does your laptop brand have to do with your choice of mobile development? MacBooks are quite good linux machines if you want to go that road.

The Mac App store is troubling these days too - locking non-MAS apps out of iCloud, for instance.

I picked up the macbook and an ipod touch to get into ios development. Then things got even worse with the app store policies and I said "screw that".

"The item you've requested is not currently available in the U.S. store."

This article was originally posted on June 6th. It's now June 29th. After 23 days, this issue is still not resolved.

I'm not a user of the app or a fan, but I find this incredibly curious and sadly opaque.

It's a lot longer than 23 days; the core issue dates back to February. I'm actually not sure what has changed about their situation since February; most of the stuff on the OP was not new.

this issue is still not resolved

Not exactly. Apple's guidelines state that they do not want more "apps such as fart, burp, flashlight and Kama Sutra apps". So, this issue is resolved in the sense that Apple has successfully booted this app out of the App Store. Game over.

Apple still prevent users from choosing what software to run on the devices they own.

Obviously there are some people that want Kama Sutra apps, and there's nothing wrong with that.

http://hackerne.ws/item?id=3852003 IKamasutra: Apple Hates Brunettes (ikamasutra.com) 350 points by varl 73 days ago

I don't understand how Apple, with all its money, doesn't have better facilities for dealing with this sort of thing - especially when they care so much about developer retainment.

I'm not trying to be snarky, but apparently they don't care that much if they can't handle working with developers about an issue as simple as this. Even just telling them "We have decided not to reinstate your app, sorry" would be better than what they are doing.

Until people start making more money in the other app stores Apple can be as abusive as they like.

The unpublicized truth is that Apple barely breaks even on the app store as it is.

source?

Here's a source from 2011: http://articles.marketwatch.com/2011-02-23/industries/307024...

> Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s chief financial officer, added that the company runs its App Store and iTunes store “just a little over break-even,” to counter claims that the company is trying to use apps to drive up its profits.

saurik has also written a few comments about this - see here: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4155998

> ...despite their massive volume, Apple's App Store makes sufficiently little profit that they don't even break it out as a separate line item on their 10-Q (instead lumping it under "music related products and services", the same category that handles both iTunes and iBooks)

http://articles.businessinsider.com/2011-07-11/tech/29964545...

http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/article/apple_app_store_runs_...

Don't misread me. I think Apple is way out of line here. But the best way to put pressure on them is to improve the alternatives.

I'm not sure why you think Apple cares so much about developers. Is it the warm glow they engineer for you at WWDC?

Your question is perfectly natural, of course, given the way they flatter us developers in their keynotes. Just don't get caught in the reality distortion field. I've spent a lot of time working with Apple during good times and bad (for them), and even during bad times, the attitude toward third-party developers was that, if they weren't loyal followers, Apple didn't want them around anyway.

I was astonished to hear this kind of thing repeatedly at Apple HQ back when I thought they should have been desperately trying to woo developers to save their platform from extinction. Now that they are on top of the world, imagine what their (real) attitude must be toward third-party developers.

It's like the old Saturday Night Live parody of the phone company, when AT&T was still a monopoly: "We're the phone company. We don't care. We don't have to."

How about some context? Namely, the numbers of apps accepeted, downloaded and money paid to developers?

Are Apple employee's forbidden to release their own apps?

How easy would it be for some person in the loop to just rip off an app and have their competition kickbanned? There's probably no law against insider-"apping"

> Are Apple employee's forbidden to release their own apps?

Yeah, we're forbidden from it. Conflict of interest.

So it's a conflict of interest for employees to rip-off other people's apps and have them rejected, but not when Apple do it?

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/06/08/apple_copies_rejecte...

Why does apple take 5x as long to reject apps in situations like this?

Have they tried making the people have a hair color that is between the accepted and rejected ones? Bisect the acceptance/rejection continuum.

That assumes that the hair color thing was their real reason. I doubt it.

Is there a chance this was an accident?

Perhaps they meant to block Kama Sutra App™, Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana, Kama Sutra! - Manual of Sex, Kama Sutra: Manual of Sex, Kamasutra™, Kamasutra 3D, Kamasutra by Vatsyayana, Kamasutra for iPad, Kamasutra fun, Kamasutra Museum 3D, Kamasutra Museum 3D HD, KamaSutra Posiciones, Kamasutra The Game, Kamazootra, Kamazootra Lite, 101 Positions of KamaSutra, Kamasutra (Deutsch), Kamasutra - Sex Positions Guide and Kama Sutra, KamaSwami, or KamaSwami for iPad.

Perhaps it was only through confusion that they blocked iKamasutra.

Someone needs to be fired over this.

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