All Articles in App Store Apps

Following up on the story about Tweetie 1.3 being rejected because an Apple reviewer saw the word f**k in the Twitter Trends tab, developer Crowded Road contacted us with the story of their app, Human Weather, which was initially rejected by Apple for a similar reason: someone happened to have dropped the f-bomb in the Twitter-stream while it was being reviewed.

Crowded Road went to the trouble — and no doubt cost in man/hours — to implement a filter for said reject-worthy words, and is now available FREE in the App Store [iTunes link]. But so what? As the developers themselves rightly told us:

This kind of policy is doomed to fail simply because it is impossible to police. Apple is only check the app content through a random test as part of their approval process. Of course, looking for “offensive” content as part of an approval process is futile because user generated content is both limitless and unpredictable.

No doubt this is correct, as creative internet users already know. F**k getting filtered? Fug, fukc, fack, fock, f u c k, and limitless other combinations impenetrable to machines but easily parsed by human pattern-matching brains, will easily slip through to offend those easily offended and amuse those easily amused alike.

We’d typically finish up with a rant about how the App Store could be improved, made more transparent with clearly defined criteria, even establish a ratings system for apps as they have for iTunes media, but really, even they must know this by now, right?

Wow, alliteration much? Not sure if it was just a delay (as Apple seems mostly impervious to pressure from the web or customers, open letters included), or some bizarre equal and opposite reaction to Tweetie 1.3 being rejected, but AppleiPhoneApps.com is now reporting that Jonathan Zdziarski’s AMBER Alert app has (finally?) been approved and published to the iTunes App Store:

AMBER Alert [iTunes link] is now available at the [US] App Store for free, and gives users real-time information regarding missing children. Zdziarkski worked closely with the National Center of Missing and Exploited Children to make this the official AMBER Alert tool for the iPhone.

Another app, BargainBin, is still languishing in limbo, however, prompting an interesting question on the same site about whether or not the App Store uses “pocket rejections” at times.

Clearly the App Store process remains anything but clear…

So, who could it be running the approval process for the iTunes App Store at Apple? Hmm. Tough one. Let us put on our little thinking caps here for a moment…. SATAN?!

No, of course, not, nor the Church Lady from SNL, but it must be someone equally cartoonish, how else do we reconcile the App Store rejecting Tweetie 1.3 for containing “offensive language” in search results returned from the public Twitter “Trends” rankings? (via Twitter)

We can search for all manner of unholy pr0n in Mobile Safari, should Apple Reject their own core application because of what it may return as well? Are they expecting developers to become censors and str the fck out of words the way Apple.com does? (see below).

Of course, this could just be one rogue App Store review processor gone horribly wrong, but Apple still bears responsibility for a totally opaque, seemingly capricious review process that creates incidents just like this — over and over again.

They’re likely selling enough fart apps and games to make this a small problem from their end, but they’re losing badly when it comes to the good will of truly innovative developers and bleeding edge techies who form the core of any true next-generation platform.

Wake up, Apple. You’re better than this.

(And good luck to Tweetie developer Loren Brichter on getting Tweetie 1.3 approved — as it should be — and into all of our waiting iPhones quickly!)

Screen shots showing the rejected “language” in Tweetie and others for the sake of comparison after the break (NSFW-L)…

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Coffee Buzz is a fun little coffee app for $.99 from the App Store. If you like coffee, location services and twitter, this is a great tool for you!

Coffee Buzz works like this: you have a list of people everywhere and nearby that are drinking coffee. You can tap on their name and the app will tell you where they are and what they drank. One of a couple of the nice enhancements in the new version is that you can create your own coffee drink and edit a location name. You can also use the app to search for local coffee places. So, if you are stuck somewhere and need a coffee fix, this is a handy app! It links the phone number, address and Google Maps; very convenient.

Do you use twitter? You can enter your twitter username and password to post what your drinking and where you are at. In today’s world of tweets and status updates, this is a very welcome addition.

If you are looking for simple app to share your coffee lust, you can’t go wrong with Coffee Buzz.

TiPb’s Rating:

Longtime reader and tipster The Reptile wrote in to tell us about Fortune’s coverage of the iPhone Amber Alert app and its problem getting into the App Store:

Now Jonathan Zdziarski, one of the original iPhone hackers and the author of several O’Reilly books, has hit on something that might work. It’s an open letter to Steve Jobs pleading with Apple’s CEO to speed up approval of the Amber Alert iPhone app that’s been sitting in the queue since February 14. The application uses GPS location information to funnel sightings of missing children to the nearest law enforcement agency as quickly as possible.

Has Apple dropped the ball? There doesn’t seem to be a duplicates functionality, or official Amber Alert app that could explain the problems this time (see PodCaster and StarPlayr), does there? Is Apple that understaffed and ill-prepared in the face of 25,000 apps, or are the $99 novelty apps and iPod touch-highlighted games making so much money, no one really cares about the rest?

Full text of the letter after the break…

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Almost a year ago, Apple held their iPhone SDK Roadmap Event and unleashed the App Store concept on the world. Developers signed up for iTunes Connect contracts, and now their first year is almost up and they need to renew.

One problem: Apple doesn’t yet have a renewal process in place.

Wha-wha-wha-what? Erica Sadun over at Ars Technica (following an article in Apple Insider) looked into it and found the right side of the Apple didn’t seem to know from the left:

When we explained that we were looking both to renew ADC memberships and to update iTunes Connect contracts, the representative instructed us to send a query to devcontracts@apple.com. [...] We did in fact contact the iTunes Connect e-mail address, who wrote back to us saying, “Please refer to the Contact Us links at the bottom of iTunes Connect. devprograms should be able to assist you.” Apparently 1 Infinite Loop does not just refer to a corporate street address.

Yikes! Hopefully — for the sake of developers and those of us who want to continue seeing apps in the App Store — Apple will sort this right quick.

Any developers manage to get a better answer from Apple?

Well, Baseball season is fast approaching and you all know what the means: Major League Baseball is taking full advantage and is releasing two new MLB At Bat apps.

The first is available right now in the iTunes store, MLB At Bat Lite. Good thing is, that app is completely free. It’s essentially the same app as last years paid app minus in-game video highlights.

The paid version of MLB At Bat 2009 will be available on April 3rd in the App Store with a price as yet-to-be determined. What this version offers in comparison to the lite version is actual in-game live audio and in-game video highlights (not to be confused with actual live video feeds). With the live in-game audio you will have some options. You have the choice to listen to the home or away teams’ own broadcasters, which is a really nice feature.

The big question here is the price for this app. MLB.com mobile has the same in-game audio feature currently and that alone costs $4.99 a month. So what does that mean, if anything, for this iPhone app? Are we looking at a subscription fee on top of the price of the app? If so, why not simply update the app we purchased last year for $5.00. Seems to us like MLB is double dipping here…

So all of you Baseball fans out there, what is your take on this?

[Via Macworld]

Jennifer, from our sibling site PreCentral.net is a recent Kindle 2 adopter and so eager is she to get her geek on the Pre and it’s potential Kindle App, she decided to take the iPhone version for a test drive. What were her thoughts? Looks great! More:

I was just starting Chapter 11 in my eBook “Terminal Freeze” on the Kindle, but when the iPhone version of the book opened, it was on a different page. I noticed that I had the wireless on my Kindle 2 turned off, so I turned it on. As soon as I did that and rebooted my iPhone, a message popped up asking if I wanted to sync to the furthest page read, and of course I clicked “Yes”. And sure enough, the page went to the beginning of Chapter 11. So it looks like the Whispersync works pretty good.

Head on over to read the rest of her hands on, and maybe encourage her to keep that iPhone groove going…

As many of us eagerly wait for Twitterrific 2.0 to hit the iTunes App Store, developer Craig Hockenberry has provided an interesting insight into the mind — and strategy — behind one of the most high-profile development houses in Apple-dom. Says Hockenberry on being Trendy:

As software developers we often fall into the “just one more feature” trap. We want a 1.0 release to be awesome, and that one more thing will only take a day or two, and people will love it, so why not?

Because that awesome feature could be a very good thing to generate buzz and sales for a 1.1 or a 1.2 release. And by not “doing it all” in the first release, you get your product to market faster. You’ll be making money while you implement that cool new feature.

And holding back can have another advantage: you might find that your users want something different than what you had planned. Their input can often change your idea, so don’t waste time doing something without feedback.

The rest of the article is a worthy read, as is his blog Furbo.org in general.

Yes, folks, I was one of the suckers eager buyers of the 2nd edition of the Kindle. My pain is your pleasure, though, as you can get some early screenshots of the app already loaded up with books via Whispersync.

As you may have just read in our previous post, Amazon has just released Kindle for iPhone for free in the App Store (iTunes link), you cannot buy Kindle books directly from the app. Instead you can purchase inside Mobile Safari, from your desktop, or from a Kindle

The text is nice and readable (and you can resize as well). The app keeps a “page metaphor,” meaning that instead of being able to scroll up and down, you swipe left and right to switch pages. A single tap on the screen bring up a menu to give you back, bookmark, text-size, and a sync button to sync your last page read with a Kindle.

The Whispersync tech works exactly as advertised — books purchased show up as “Archived” and you can then download them directly to your iPhone.

Head on in after the break for your screenshots! Read the rest of this entry »