App Rejections

Another political rejection, with a twist. My earlier hopes were short-lived; even after the embarassment of rejecting a Pulitzer-winning cartoonist, within weeks Apple was rejecting cartoon apps again, for the same (non-)reason. In this case, it’s an app showing newspaper and web cartoons of Tiger Woods:

“I just got a call from Apple, confirming that they will again be rejecting our resubmitted Tiger Woods Cartoons app.”

Daryl Cagle’s original post (from his previous rejection) gives the full rejection letter. As we’ve come to expect, it’s that arbitrary and poorly-explained Section 3.3.17 yet again:

“we cannot post this version of your iPhone application to the App Store because it contains content that ridicules public figures and is in violation of Section 3.3.17 from the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement which states:

“Applications may be rejected if they contain content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, sounds, etc.) that in Apple’s reasonable judgement may be found objectionable, for example, materials that may be considered obscene, pornographic, or defamatory.””

…as an aside: from memory, “in Apple’s reasonable judgement” is a change to earlier versions of this document. If so, it’s an interesting change, because the word “reasonable” is one of those special legal words that has it’s own meaning, above and beyond the dictionary definition. Has something prompted Apple’s lawyers to alter this?

Anyway, back to the app…

What’s wrong with this app? Why is Apple still rejecting it?

“I got a call this afternoon from a representative with Apple’s developer relations. He told me that they are familiar with our apps and are OK with all of our cartoons, including the Tiger Woods cartoons, appearing mixed into our general “msnbc.com Cartoons” app
…
but our Tiger Woods themed editorial app is going too far; Apple remains committed to their policy of not ridiculing public figures.”

“OK with all our cartoons … including [this one] … but [a standalone app] is going too far”? What does that mean? Apple *explicitly* accept the content, and then reject the app for *the content*.

(if they think the app is poorly presented, useless, etc – they could have easily rejected it under one of their other sections. But they didn’t)

As soon as Mark Fiore won a Pulitzer, Steve Jobs declared that the previous rejection “was a mistake”.

We thought (hoped) that meant:

it was a mistake to reject an app on the grounds of simple satire

But the Tiger Woods rejection leads me to suspect a different meaning entirely, a rather more money-focussed one:

it was a mistake to get caught censoring high-brow work of huge artistic/social merit so that the press got excited and exposed our bad behaviour to the public

As far as I know, Apple still hasn’t come out and explained clearly – and publically – why it is that “ridiculing public figures” is grouped with the likes of criminal/illegal activity and obscenity. Until then, we’re free to interpret wildly on what Apple really means. I invite you to invent your own explanations…

Postscript: developer thoughts

While I disagree strongly with Apple’s cited rejection, Daryl’s not all shining white here. Many people have asked “if that’s the case, why don’t you just make Tiger Woods part of the same app? Apple said that’s OK, didn’t they?”

In my experience, Daryl’s response comes down to: “our programmers are too lazy”.

Personally, I’ve made a large number of RSS-based apps, and stitching together multiple feeds is simple if you have decent programmers writing their code properly. Even novice programmers shouldn’t have much difficulty.

In the days before IAP (In-App Purchase), Daryl would have had a great excuse: adding more content to one app, instead of making an extra app, reduces his sales. But this is no longer true – they could very easily charge an IAP price to download “the Tiger Woods module”.

If I were Apple, I would have been tempted to reject the Tiger Woods app for the emotional reason that it’s a crappy app that’s attempting to ride a storm of Google searches for “tiger woods”, and it should have been part of the first app instead. That “should” is from the perspective of: if you’re keeping the App Store high-quality, which Apple at least *tries* to do, albeit with limited success.

(and arguably there may even be a Trademark style rejection reason – is it legal to sell an app that uses Tiger Woods name as the core of its marketing?)

…but let’s not forget: neither of those are the cited reason in Apple’s own correspondence. We have to take Apple at their word. So long as they’re giving poor rejection reasons, we’ll keep holding it against them.