The T-Poll: Apple’s iPhone App Acceptance Policy

By  |  Wednesday, August 5, 2009 at 10:49 am

tpollHey, let’s try something new–a fresh T-Poll (powered by the wonderful PollDaddy) every weekday. For our first one, let’s revisit the ongoing story of Apple’s, um, unpredictable behavior when it comes to approving third-party applications for the iPhone App Store–the latest chapter of which involves it censoring a dictionary and then restricting sales to people over 17 anyhow. (Here’s John Gruber’s account over at Daring Fireball, which includes some of the words Apple required be purged.)

 
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4 Comments For This Post

  1. Mike Cerm Says:
    August 5th, 2009 at 11:46 am

    Against increasingly-strong competitors like Android and WebOS, the app ecosystem is one of the few remaining areas where Apple is the clear market-leader. Apple’s policy is severely undercutting the iPhone’s key selling-point. The other, more open platforms have some catching up to do, but as they mature, Apple will have to open up to remain competitive.

    There are reasons that Apple lost the battle for the desktop back in the ’80s and ’90s. They’ve got a pretty big lead, so they’ve got time to change course, but it’s such a shame to see them make similar mistakes in the hand-held market.

  2. Harry McCracken Says:
    August 5th, 2009 at 3:16 pm

    It’s fascinating to watch this play out (I continue to think that Apple will, in the long term, do the right thing–in part because it’ll conclude that it’s the right thing for its business). Apple is one of the few companies in the history of American business who’s ever gotten a “do-over” after losing a competitive battle–90% of what it’s doing with the iPhone is spot-on, and I hope it figures out the very important remaining 10% sooner rather than later.

    –Harry

  3. Level1Alt Says:
    August 5th, 2009 at 3:31 pm

    As long as it has email and safari i don’t really care. i download all these apps and after 2 days i’m over them

  4. Steven Fisher Says:
    August 6th, 2009 at 12:15 am

    I fall somewhere between “It’s annoying but outweighed by all that’s right with the iPhone” and “It’s a serious issue that threatens the value of the iPhone,” because there’s no question in my mind that consistent and rational policies for the App Store would increase the value of the iPhone. So the App Store policies are definitely hurting the value of it.

    On the other hand, the value of the iPhone isn’t going to suddenly drop. It’s just artificially held lower than it should be.

2 Trackbacks For This Post

  1. More on the iPhone/Ninjawords Situation | Technologizer Says:
    August 6th, 2009 at 12:06 pm

    […] and its alleged insistence that the app be both censored and restricted to users over 17. But I did mention it in yesterday’s T-Poll, with a link to John Gruber’s coverage at Daring Fireball. Now Gruber has followed up with an […]

  2. More on the iPhone/Ninjawords Situation | Oh Wow ... a Blog Says:
    August 12th, 2009 at 10:24 am

    […] and its alleged insistence that the app be both censored and restricted to users over 17. But I did mention it in yesterday’s T-Poll, with a link to John Gruber’s coverage at Daring Fireball. Now Gruber has followed up with an […]