Apple rejects Drones+ thrice. App maker looks to Android
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Smartphones are not trivial consumer electronics devices: they are sophisticated computers, and increasingly are our primary portals to the wider world. Any central authority that governs what you are and are not allowed to do with your smartphone is thus an incredibly powerful political actor. It would be scary enough if such an actor were governed by the democratic state, which had at least some theoretical accountability to the general population. Apple, however, does not have even the pretence of that kind of accountability.
I'm somebody who has publicly castigated RMS for being an alarmist and a zealot, but here I have to agree with him 100%: this is an issue with profoundly negative implications for the development of a healthy and democratic civil society. If walled gardens like this are going to become increasingly dominant, then I honestly fear for the future.
Apple, like any for profit business, is certainly accountable to the market. I'm indifferent [1] to this app but maybe so many people are outraged that Apple reconsiders lest it's brand or market share suffer. Again I doubt that's going to happen. For one, this app works perfectly as a web app. If Apple were to start blocking the web I think I might join you and head for another platform but I don't see them doing that.
[1] I have a certain tolerance for crudeness and so I'm fine with this app but let's imagine there's a whole "morbid app tracking" section of the app store. Serial killers trackers, Rapes Near Me, etc. Is that something Apple wants to encourage? Probably not.
This is not a good argument. Public pressure for apps of this kind will always be relatively low, so other interests will almost always take precedence, which means that states can effectively use their leverage to block undesirable content with minimal consequences. It is effectively a form of soft censorship.
Let me tell you if Apple started featuring an App that let you dress up Obama in racist costumes there would be crowds and boycotts and stores would stop carrying their products and their stock would quickly approach the value of their cash on hand and property. Yes Apple is accountable to the public, full stop.
A few years ago I read a disgruntled guy complaining that he made a very basic clock App, but Apple rejected it with the explanation there are already hundreds basic clock Apps in the clock category. The other commenters were riled up, how dare you Apple! But in the end there are really enough ways to check the date and time.
> Whether it gets one complaint or a million is not relevant to the question.
I disagree. A million complains have enough weight to lead to a public discussion and the forming of public opinion and pressure. In the hn thread about this drone-topic, which was only 2 days ago, this link was posted:
http://mashable.com/2011/03/23/apple-removes-gay-cure/
Quote: "After more than 146,000 people signed a petition against a “gay cure” app, Apple has removed it from the App Store."
I am glad this junk was removed! But from your viewpoint of principle it should be allowed?
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That said, I think Apple could some day adopt Mountain Lions new Gatekeeper feature in iOS, if it proofs itself on OSX.
I'd guess more people (self included) think it will head in the opposite direction (OS X -> iOS).
Personally I don't care all that much, robust LTE networks are going to make native apps increasingly irrelevant.
I don't think this means what you think it means.
"exerts its influence on political grounds"
You're assuming Apple is exerting it's influence on political grounds as opposed to simply thinking the app has failed their taste guidelines. I've seen a number of comments suggesting the same thing or that they are buckling to government pressure but without evidence all of that amounts to little more then conspiracy theory mongering.
"Whether it gets one complaint of a million is not relevant to the question"
It's certainly relevant, the force of numbers is how pressure is exerted both in the market and in democracy. I'm sure there's a few people outraged that white power apps aren't in the app store. The key word is "few" as in generally, no one gives a fuck. Nearly every argument slamming Apple over Drones+ seems just as effective when restated for white power political party apps. IMHO that's a sign something's wrong with those arguments.
"if this was the case of ISPs blocking access to a website"
I've already talked about this above. I don't see these as remotely equivalent.
Now whether this stance exerts any meaningful influence on society and public opinion, largely depends on the public mindshare this entity has.
You are arguing the wrong way around and attacking straw men of "conspiracy theory mongering". Please go and reply to those actual comments that say these things, if they are there, you can probably find them all the way below on the page, downvoted by the Apple fanboi and electronic freedom proponent alike.
And not particularly as a reply to you, I thought I'd look up Freedom of Speech, see what it exactly means. I thought, for something to become a Freedom-of-Speech (Human Rights) issue, you need to have a political entity that enforces it (such as the imaginary claim made by your straw men). But it seems to be a bit broader than that:
Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948, states that:
"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."
I highlighted those two parts. "Through any media" means that, if this app would also get refused by the Android platform, the author is practically prevented from using the medium "smartphone app" to impart his message. Fortunately, Android is open (even if their app market would reject it). That does (IMVPO) not make it right for Apple, because they do nothing to preserve this freedom, it exists despite their actions, not unhindered because of it.
The "regardless of frontiers" part, not entirely serious, I know that it refers to geopolitical frontiers, but it could be easily extended to the walls of Apple's "walled garden": what it means to say is that you should be able to freely impart your information from Nation X to Nation Y. This blockage of the Drone news aggegrator means that he cannot in fact reach the people of "Nation iPhone-user".
(The fact that perhaps most people of Nation iPhone do not want to know, funnily enough is shared by a lot of Chinese people as well)
Shopping malls get to reject tenants. Store owners get to reject products. Store owners also get to make loud religious and political statements (Forever 21 anyone?). Nobody owes you disinterested businesses or general purpose computing.
I agree that its erosion is dangerous, which is why my last smartphone was a Motorola Droid 3. It had superior specs and more freedom, but after a couple of months, revealed itself to be absolute crap. At the end of the day I took the tightly integrated and polished walled garden over what was at that point bloated, buggy abandonware, and it's one of the best electronics purchasing decisions I've ever made. I consider it wrong that people believe this option shouldn't even be available to consumers.
Same goes for software freedom. I would move from OSX to Ubuntu, from Creative Suite to GIMP, and from Office to Libre/Neo/OpenOffice in a heartbeat if either of those products served my needs effectively. I have tried them all, and they don't.
It's great that the anti-Apple crowd continues to make noise. Consumers should know what they're getting into, and I hope the Android ecosystem develops a high-quality, mature, stable, non-gimmicky product. But handset manufacturers are not last-mile infrastructure. Consumers have a choice. Popularity != absolute control.
Ask Microsoft how that reasoning worked out for them.
I believe they've only recently been released from the original Netscape antitrust sanctions.
It is an argument against democracy, and it is a very good argument against democracy.
Apple is also using the government to enforce a monopoly on some extremely basic ideas.
Thanks to the patent system the market around smartphones is not even remotely free, it requires billions of dollars and armies of lawyers to even have a chance of competing, and even then you might lose.
Of course the "web app is sufficient" point is irrelevant though, it's fundamentally weird that someone is making arbitrary decisions on which apps are allowed and which ones are not.
Apple certainly can run their store any way they want to. At the same time it's worth noting that compared, say, to standards set by bookstores and libraries which often contain material that many people would find offensive, Apple is acting, well, rather gutlessly.
One might have thought that the brand that they wanted to protect would have been that of a company that is not afraid to "think different" and that worked to ensure that "1984 is not like 1984". Evidently they'd rather throw away that brand equity and become as inoffensive as the local Walmart. Fine, noted.
Sure they do. You're going off to buy an Android phone, so Apple lost your money and you got the phone you wanted better. That's even better than a democratic state, where you're stuck with the same one until you can get half the population to agree with you.
And that's when it happens.
A push notification from Drones+: Another drone strike in Pakistan kills 17 suspected militants.
You turn to your friend, but he's already looking at you (he also has a white iPhone 4S). "They've done it again", you say. "I know, it's absolutely terrible isn't it? We live in such a terrible oppressive country", he says.
You take another sip of your grande non-fat double shot mocha latte and nod in solemn agreement with your friend. Having completed the ritual, mutually acknowledging each others enlightened sense of worldliness, you return to reading the Huffington Post and checking Twitter.
"Thanks Drones+!", you say silently to yourself." -- Someones comment before deletion. To great for deletion.
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ongoing_military_confli...
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_2003-2010
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents,_Ja...
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Drone_Strikes_in_Pakist...
- (if this is really only about deaths, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rate)
On the other hand, I think this comment and Apple's rejection have both made the app creator's point very well. Not only do people want to ignore drone strikes, they actually resent the idea that other people would want to know about them. In Apple's case they state that customers would find it "objectionable." In this comment's case, the only conceivable reason anyone would want to know about drone strikes is so they could feign interest in order to feel enlightened or worldly.
This is fascinating to me. If we'd had a referendum at some point about whether to grant the U.S. military the power to kill anyone, anytime, anywhere with no checks & balances, no oversight, and no due process, according to it's judgement about what best serves the interest of national security, who do you think would've voted for it? I can't think of any significant political coalition that would've thought that was a good idea. Yet now that it is a reality, you're crazy or a traitor or insincere if you want to make it an issue.
I feel that it's related to peoples' perceived inability to do anything about it. If somebody powerful does something bad, blame the messenger for troubling your mind with it, since there is nothing you can do about somebody powerful.
Thats deep. And true.
[/sarcasm]
Incredible. They'd better ban all newspapers as well.
I think that this was clearly their issue but they tried to dissuade him with bogus technical reasons first to give him the runaround. After he "fixed" whatever technical issues were there not once, but twice, they finally told him the real reason they wouldn't accept it. I think that's what really frustrates me the most about this story.
While newspapers may report on drone strikes, that's not their primary function. The primary function of this app is obviously to make a bold statement about the atrocities of war.
Apple doesn't want to publish an app that is designed to provoke the audience. Apple can't let just anyone post apps to the App Store, because the whole idea behind that store is to provide products that meet minimum quality requirements, so users don't have to search through all the crap to find the good stuff.
Letting everyone publish would drown out many good apps in favor of shit. Letting everyone publish often gives you problems with system stability from poorly witten code, something I've encountered on several Android phones.
The iDevices are NOT computers. They're digital appliances. How often do you hear people complain that they can't modify the source code of their microwave or their car. Hardly ever, because expectations are different.
Apple's policies make perfect sense if you view it their products same way you view a TV. They're not designed for nerds!
In contrast to 'dumbphones' or some so-called 'feature phones', the current generation of smartphones are general-purpose computing devices.
I don't think we actually disagree - it's just a matter of definition; please note that I intentionally didn't say (personal) computer, but (general-purpose) computing device.
If you use permission in your definition then it becomes impossible, by definition, to restrict the use of a computer. If Dell's next cheap desktop was locked down like Apple locks their devices down, would you buy "Well it's not a computer you know, since you are not allowed to run what you want on it."? No, of course you wouldn't.
I just wanted to extract this out into its own post. I don't believe it requires any additional commentary.
The current primary function of most major newspapers however, seems to be to not make any statement either way, bold or not, and to ignore what's happening. People are being killed with the blood on the hands of the US, but because your soldiers are not directly involved, it's not being reported on, as if it's a minor thing.
It's not newspapers, it's information channels that tow the party line.
> Apple doesn't want to publish an app that is designed to provoke the audience.
Unless it's political cartoons. But only if you win a Pulitzer first and Steve jumps in ( http://www.niemanlab.org/2010/04/apple-approves-pulitzer-win... ).
> Letting everyone publish would drown out many good apps in favor of shit.
Everybody thinks their own shit don't smell. Personally I think a large chunk of the bland useless turds found on the Apple Appstore is a lot of shit[1], and a DroneTracker app is in fact pretty damn cool, original and fresh.
[1] I wouldn't normally do this on HN but since you've started it, I can enjoy slinging projectile poop as much as the next monkey.
> “That was the point; I don’t think people want to know when a drone strikes.”
So, what was the point, then... to waste a bunch of peoples' time?
(edit: To the people downvoting me: mind explaining what the point was? I run Cydia, the alternative to the App Store that people are saying should host this instead, and honestly if someone came to me with something like this that didn't work the first two times and in the end resulted in tons of questions regarding what kind of response it would have, leading to some massive discussion, and then I found out that the developer didn't even expect anyone at all to download it ever and that was the point I'd be really pissed that he had wasted a ton of peoples' time in the review pipeline working on a project that was designed with nothing more than the intent to troll the system.)
In a perfect world (where Apple did not have sole control), you could download it from this artist's website or even from a random alternative marketplace, but in that world this project doesn't work as it doesn't get the attention (at which point, he may as well not distribute it at all and still claim it was interesting, as it would be a nearly equivalent result); instead, this is just an artist attempting to troll Apple in a way that will cause some press, make even more people feel bad about themselves and, in addition, have some subset get angry at Apple for not letting them feel bad about themselves (which brings me back to asking after the point).
Stories like this, then, simply give the people who are trying to get these devices to be more open a bad name in the larger community, as we end up associated with all of these projects that large numbers of people find distasteful. Now, it would be one thing if the majority of the problem with Apple were things large numbers of people find objectionable or sketchy, but in fact the jailbroken ecosystem is mostly built out of entirely inoffensive things like "better multitasking", "improved address books", "download files in your browser", or even simply "replacement icons that look different".
Looking at it a different way, it's the perfect free app. Just by seeing it in the list of applications to download, and the person thinking about whether they want to install it or not, it's achieved it's purpose.
If the app simply occasionally popped up a notification telling the user to remember that drone attacks were continuing to happen, or if it simply displayed a single page when launched reminding the user of drone attacks, and the developer DID expect it to be downloaded, would that make a difference? If not, what about something similar that reminded the user to be a good person or presented a biblical proverb?
The developer seems to want to transfer SOMETHING to the user, even if in this case user is moved from "those who have downloaded and launched the app" to "those who are viewing it in the app store".
There may still be other reasons to reject it from your store as well (I can think of a few, such as guerrilla advertising. The concept IS the message), but wasting people's time may not be the best of them.
The only reason I see that makes the app store the best place for this is that app store users like to throw money at silly things they don't need, and the primary reason this is true is because apple has fostered an environment that makes it true. If apple feels that the presence of a drone strike app will make people less inclined to spend money in their store, that is exactly the sort of decision that this app developer is trying to capitalize on. It just went the wronG way for him this time.
iOS app approval isn't some new policy Apple is springing on people out of the blue.
Let's not pretend that the people who want free as in Stallman apps signed up with Apple and are now shocked at this new development.
Let's also not pretend that Apple security will show up at your house if you jailbreak your phone.
Let's also not pretend that Apple is the only company that has a policy against certain types of apps in their store.
These people don't own their local Walmart. They do on the other hand own their smartphones.
And if these people wanted to buy a phone that had lots of app stores available I think we're all in agreement that they fucked up if they bought the iphone.
Because we're really explicitly NOT arguing about a store policy. If it was just a store policy there would not be this argument.
For instance, say Virgin does not want to sell some CD with deeply offensive lyrics. They probably make those decisions every day. Nobody complains.
However, it would stop being just a store policy, if a large part of the public would only have a CD Player that can exclusively play CDs that Virgin approves of. Get the difference? And that part of the argument doesn't even involve general purpose computing.
Last Apple product I bought was a gen2 iPod.
If you, as a customer or a developer, don't agree with apple's well documented policy here, there are alternatives you can choose. Consumers and developers have overwhelmingly said they either don't care or like the censorship though.
Apple could keep this curated marketplace and at the same time allow sideloading of applications, like many Android phones do. By taking that simple step, concerns about censorship would be ameliorated.
There sure is a lot outrage over their policies for a marketplace that "offends nobody".
Impossible. Through careful thinking and reading up on philosophies of human rights and ethics, many people (myself included) have carefully cultivated values that take a deep offence to very public things deliberately crafted to offend nobody.
I mean, really, how long until the only way to offend someone with an iPhone is to chuck it in their face? ("Be glad that wasn't an unmanned drone you just got hit by!")
Or just write "for the prettiest one" on it, leave it at a wedding party and joyously partake of a hotdog (no bun).
It doesn't sound like it was a very complex app so hopefully he can port it to Android or the Web easily and make it available. It sounds useful.
Apple rejecting certain apps and people on HN flipping out about it isn't new. It's been happening for years. The iOS App Store is still killing it despite a lower installed base then Android.
I agree Android will eventually win on market share but the reasons will be because Apple insists on a high margin and few form factors. Long term that cedes a large part of the market.
Most certainly not Apple’s App Store policies.
Software should be protected by free speech guarantees.
It looks like the developers just use open news data for this - nothing wrong with the doing this.
Pardon the self-plug here but I blogged today about why I hope not to buy anymore Apple products: http://blog.markwatson.com/2012/09/can-we-agree-to-stop-buyi...
In any case I find it highly ironic that one commenter on your blog post brings up Samsung as an alternative. Not quite a flying drone, but still... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_SGR-A1
Forgive my crudeness, but you're absolutely clueless about what "free speech guarantees" mean.
Writing software that interprets public data and disseminates it seems like a form of "speech" to me.
I agree the real app store would be better for many reasons.
(of course, the strike was not really that instant, but that at least is the suggestion of it, by linking it to the instantaneous feeling push notifications).
Bitdefender says that Apple removed the application, which previously was a paid product, from the iOS App Store in June, but hasn't given it a reason for doing so. A potential cause could have been that Clueful tried to auto-detect a user's installed iOS apps so it could then display information about them.
But you save that feature for when it gets into the store -- it will properly piss of people anyway.
Last I checked it seemed like if you wanted ActionBar and such you'd end up writing quite a bit of native stuff anyway, so at that point it didn't seem worth using PhoneGap.
Who honestly finds that insightful?
Depending on the individual case (drones+ vs celebrity arses) the discussion might be a little different "at the core" arguments are equally valid regardless of the case.
consider:
"At least when governments have this power they are theoretically accountable to publics, constitutions and ule of law"
"Apple is accountable to consumers and the market"
"If Apple started featuring an App that let you dress up Obama in racist costumes there would be crowds and boycotts and stores would stop"
"company that has absolute control on a market exerts its influence on political grounds that effectively stifle freedom of the press"
* * *
You could copy paste this in 50% of threads about app store rejections. Maybe we are done talking about app store policies. Maybe there is a benefit to repeating the exercise even if we don't get anywhere new.