Well in that sense, try to figure out what percentage of HN gets invalidated by the following 'news items':

"PG Still writes articles, nothing's changed"

"Big Companies still acquire Startups, nothings changed"

"VCs still fund startups, nothings changed

"Startups still want feedback for their apps, nothings changed"

Sometimes details matter.

The news is not that they censor but what they censor and the reactions to it. I want to be kept up to date as to how various platforms evolve in terms of taking away my freedoms. Platforms like appstore and their approach to restricting content are still very much evolving.

If you apply your standard of news to other stories on HN or elsewhere there would be very little left as most content is not original but sourced from somewhere. 20 very similar reviews of Wolfram Alpha or Google Wave isn't exactly news either.

But obviously it's all a matter of balance and I do understand the point you're making.

I think we can all agree that people generally have short attention spans. I think we can also agree that quite a few HN readers are iphone developers and users. The developers among us develop on the iphone platform because the users like it. It isn't wrong to remind users about the hardships developers face in bringing quality apps to them. And I'm sure that most rejection still go unannounced ;). Hopefully this will lead to a) Apple being more reasonable or b) Users moving onto a platform that is more developer friendly.