Unexpected iPhone apps rejections — Part 2

Vis­i­bil­ity in Apple’s approval or rejec­tion process for the App Store has become the white whale of many devel­op­ers. In this sec­ond (and final) part of a series high­light­ing the first 18 appli­ca­tions to have been banned by Apple approvers, we will look at offer­ings that shock­ingly had to fight in order to be made avail­able to cus­tomers using the iPhone.

So let’s delve into the list:

Text (SMS Messages)

The main chal­lenge to the “Text” appli­ca­tion was due, in large part to the fact that it was ini­tially sub­mit­ted as “SMS Messages”.

For every appli­ca­tion that goes through the rig­or­ous approval process at Apple, the first thing that is done is review­ing whether the func­tion­al­ity of the appli­ca­tion is pro­vided by an appli­ca­tion that was pre­vi­ously approved. In the case of “SMS and MMS Mes­sages”, the word “Mes­sages” trig­gered all kinds of alerts as Mail had pre­vi­ously been approved. It was thus decided that any mes­sages could be sent via email.

The devel­oper resub­mit­ted the appli­ca­tion after remov­ing MMS func­tion­al­ity, point­ing out that this appli­ca­tion would not be able to send pic­tures, thus not repli­cat­ing mail func­tion­al­ity. The argu­ment failed the appeal and the appli­ca­tion was rejected again.

The approval only came when the devel­oper resub­mit­ted the appli­ca­tion as “Text” describ­ing it as an appli­ca­tion that allowed a user to take notes, as long as he/she didn’t have to cut or paste any­thing. This was con­sid­ered OK and the appli­ca­tion got to green light.

Cal­en­dar

Cal­en­dar was another appli­ca­tion that had mul­ti­ple dif­fi­cul­ties in get­ting approved. Ini­tially called “Rendez-Vous” to evoke the French’s aes­thetic design some­times appre­ci­ated in cer­tain cor­ners of the Apple world, the appli­ca­tion was rejected when it was dis­cov­ered that Rendez-Vous had once been another Apple trade­mark.

The devel­oper pro­ceeded to resub­mit that appli­ca­tion as “Cal­en­dar”, fig­ur­ing that the Microsoft-sounding name might pass some of the con­straint of the fascist-like approval board. At that point, the appli­ca­tion passed two thou­sands lev­els of sign-offs but, as it was about to get its last needed sig­na­ture for approval, some­one pointed out that a cal­en­dar could be used to sched­ule illicit behav­ior. This led to an imme­di­ate rejection.

It is unclear as to how the appli­ca­tion was rein­stated but the names Schmidt and Bohner appeared to have some­thing to do with it. Our assump­tion is that those are top secret projects related to devices we have yet to hear about.

Cam­era and Photos

The Cam­era and Pho­tos appli­ca­tion ended up being sub­mit­ted as part of the same pack­age. Inter­nal notes point to the fact that they are one and the same.

When first sub­mit­ted as “iPhoto”, the appli­ca­tion was quickly rejected because it repro­duced func­tion­al­ity avail­able in the Apple prod­uct line and infringed on an Apple trademark.

In order to increase his chances, the devel­oper decided to cut the appli­ca­tion in two and offer them as sep­a­rate ones that would hope­fully go to dif­fer­ent app-rovers. Lit­tle did he know that all appli­ca­tions are treated equally in the world of Apple approvals and denials.

In the case of Cam­era, the appli­ca­tion was ini­tially rejected because it could be used to take pic­tures of future Apple prod­ucts. After code was changed to ensure that the iPhone was explode if such pic­tures were taken, the Appli­ca­tion was approved.

Pho­tos was a lit­tle trick­ier. It was thought that “naughty pic­tures” could be stored using it, which make endan­ger the frag­ile nature of some iPod and iPhone cus­tomers. But after the devel­oper explained that the lim­ited space avail­able on an iPod or iPhone would pri­mar­ily be taken by ille­gally copied music, leav­ing lit­tle space to such naughty con­tent, the appli­ca­tion was approved.

YouTube

The pri­mary prod­uct of YouTube is to show user gen­er­ated con­tent. But few peo­ple know that the ini­tial YouTube appli­ca­tion allowed users to upload videos of their cats to YouTube. Because that “upload” fea­ture was included into the appli­ca­tion, it was ini­tially decided that it would endan­ger AT&T’s net­work, end the world as we know it, and prob­a­bly destroy the very fiber of soci­ety. As a result, it is only nat­ural that such appli­ca­tion would ini­tially be rejected.

Apple’s legal depart­ment stepped into the fray to help res­cue this appli­ca­tion based on the lit­tle known legal statute estab­lish­ing the tat­tle doc­trine. The legal depart­ment assumed that if the RIAA or MPAA were to come after them for the amount of ille­gal con­tent they’ve enabled users to use with­out con­trols, they could always point out to YouTube as being even worse, there­fore dri­ving the RIAA or MPAA lawyers away for a long period of time (or at least until every­one in the world had bought an iPod and sub­se­quently upgraded to an iPhone.)

Maps

Due to Apple’s close rela­tion­ship with Google (at least, at the time), Maps was seen as an easy thing to imple­ment. Not only would it demon­strate the great­ness of the iPhone but it would also show devel­op­ers that there were two classes of cit­i­zens in the Apple devel­op­ment com­mu­nity: those who have a mar­ket cap­i­tal­iza­tion still north of Apple’s and are not named Microsoft, and every­body else. Mem­bers of the first class could ini­tially have appli­ca­tions avail­able on the device. Smelly devel­op­ers (aka every­one else) could develop web appli­ca­tions. This only worked for the first release and even­tu­ally, Apple had to relent to offer the App store we’ve all come to know and love, free­ing the Apple devel­op­ment from the shack­les of… oh nevermind.

So back to the Maps. They were ini­tially rejected because cer­tain towns had names that can­not be repeated in polite con­ver­sa­tion. After Aus­tria and Penn­syl­va­nia were removed from the maps, the appli­ca­tion was approved.

Stocks

This appli­ca­tion was con­sid­ered dan­ger­ous to many users as it might lead them to invest in com­pa­nies other than Apple. Sub­mit­ting the appli­ca­tion, the devel­oper fig­ured that he would default choices to Apple and Google. The choice of Apple helped inter­nal dis­cus­sion but the appli­ca­tion was ini­tially rejected on other grounds, as can be attested by the fol­low­ing rejec­tion letter:

We’ve reviewed your appli­ca­tion Stocks. Because the stock mar­ket has been on a down­ward cycle and tends to make our users cry, we have deter­mined that this appli­ca­tion is of lim­ited util­ity to the broad iPhone and iPod touch user com­mu­nity, and will not be pub­lished on the iPhone.
If you choose to pro­vide addi­tional fea­tures that uti­lize iPhone func­tion­al­ity while tend­ing to the men­tal well-being of our cus­tomers, your appli­ca­tion can be recon­sid­ered for rein­clu­sion on the iPhone deck after you resub­mit a new binary to us.

After agree­ing that the only stocks that can be listed in the appli­ca­tion are stocks that go up, the appli­ca­tion was approved.

Weather

Some­times, the weather can get you into trou­ble. When the devel­oper of this appli­ca­tion sub­mit­ted it, it was assumed that few things could be con­sider as plain and bor­ing as the weather. The rejec­tion came in less than an hour after the appli­ca­tion was sub­mit­ted. Here’s the text in full, with attri­bu­tions being removed:

Thank you for sub­mit­ting weather to the iPhone approval process. We’ve reviewed your appli­ca­tion and deter­mined that we can­not include this ver­sion of your iPhone appli­ca­tion at this time because it con­tains objec­tion­able con­tent which is in vio­la­tion of Sec­tion 3.3.12 from the iPhone SDK Agree­ment which states:

“Appli­ca­tions must not con­tain any obscene, porno­graphic, offen­sive or defam­a­tory con­tent or mate­ri­als of any kind (text, graph­ics, images, pho­tographs, etc.), or other con­tent or mate­ri­als that in Apple’s rea­son­able judge­ment may be found objec­tion­able by iPhone or iPod touch users.”

The objec­tion­able con­tent ref­er­enced in this email is the use of the words “Hot and Wet”. These words tend to appear in many sala­cious sites on the inter­net so we sus­pect that your appli­ca­tion would fit into that cesspool. Since the app is already avail­able on any iPhone, please make the nec­es­sary changes to the appli­ca­tion as soon as pos­si­ble, and resub­mit your binary to us. Thank you

After many emails going back and forth, it was agreed that weather could be hot or humid but never at the same time.

Clock

Apple’s unfor­tu­nate his­tory of col­lu­sion with ter­ror­ist was respon­si­ble for the rejec­tion of the clock, because the timer func­tion was felt to look too much like the timer on bombs in many Hol­ly­wood movies.

After tick­ing sound was removed from the appli­ca­tion, it was approved.

Cal­cu­la­tor

Deep in the heart of every iPod user is some­one look­ing to hide col­lec­tions of pic­tures you do not want to see. It has been doc­u­mented that the iPod and iPhone cal­cu­la­tors are really just secret door­ways to Sodom and Gomor­rah. Unbe­knowst to the devel­oper who ini­tially sub­mit­ted the innocu­ous (or is it?) cal­cu­la­tor, the approver assumed that noth­ing as bor­ing as a cal­cu­la­tor would be included on an iPhone and that, there­fore, it must be an appli­ca­tion that nefar­i­ously hid its true intent. Since such intent was not spec­i­fied, it could only be bad so the approver rejected the application.

As was the case for Cal­en­dar, it is unclear how Cal­cu­la­tor ended up approved. Through what appears to be purely coin­ci­dences, any wit­nesses we tried to dis­cuss this with died within sec­onds of agree­ing to talk with us.

Notes

This one was caught into the unfor­tu­nate Snafu that allowed Text to be approved. As approvers assumed that Text was a notes tak­ing appli­ca­tion, due to the fiendish way in which its devel­oper had man­aged approval, they just assumed that Notes was pro­vid­ing dupli­cate func­tion­al­ity and rejected it.

The appli­ca­tion devel­oper then resub­mit­ted it, claim­ing it was a tool for mak­ing shop­ping list. That was enough to get it approved.

Set­tings

When this appli­ca­tion was sub­mit­ted, the iPod shuf­fle was a great suc­cess. It was thus decided that pro­vid­ing set­tings was “of lim­ited use to iPod and iPhone users.”

How­ever, when some­one pointed out that this could be used to sell users ring­tones from the iTunes store (and allow them to change them), it was approved.

iTunes and the App Store

Nah, just kid­ding on those two. They were always part of the phone and always approved. How­ever, it is inter­est­ing to note that iTunes came first, fol­lowed by the App Store later. The ini­tial appli­ca­tion called “Send more money to Apple” was judged to have to lengthy a name.

Related Terms

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