Initially we received a rejection letter from the App Store review team, saying that the app used bandwidth that was demanding on the cell network that was excessive “in Apple’s reasonable judgment.” With a 128kbps mp3 stream, I found this curious as I have used several streaming radio apps that connect to 128kbps streams, including the excellent WFMU app, but also the much higher profile AOL Radio app.

Some google searching revealed this helpful article on StackOverflow wherein the writer related being told verbally by App Store personnel that one megabyte per minute was the maximum allowed. I did some quick math on the calculator and it seemed that my app should be receiving 960KB/minute, so I should be good.  But following the StackOverflow poster’s advice related from Apple staff, I shut off all other notifications and used the Settings app>General>Usage  to reset the statistics and then track the app for 5 minutes. For some reason the app came in as receiving 5.4MB over 5 minutes, which means I was around 10% over the limit.

I am not sure if other 128kbps streams have this issue, or there’s mysterious overhead lurking in mine, but I had planned to knock down the quality to 96k anyway as 128k over 3G still has too many dropouts.

I wrote Apple an email back explaining that it was not an app issue but a stream issue, and I could easily knock the stream down a notch. Which I did, and I got an email saying the status of the app had been changed to “Pending” again. A couple days later, a very congenial Apple developer relations person called me and confirmed the rumor that the limit was indeed 1MB per minute. I said that I had already compressed the stream further and she said they’d rerun the metrics.

It was all very well handled, and to my satisfaction… but the question remains, if the limit for data transfer is a hard number (1MB/min) then why isn’t that written in the developer agreement? Why do they only communicate the details of the rules verbally after the fact? As with the no satire rule, it would would be nice to know what the specifics are in advance.

Backporch Revolution is an artist-run collective and netlabel based in New Orleans that specializes in releasing experimental electronic works by local musicians. The website is backporchrevolution.com

Regular readers will remember that Juggleware’s own app Freedom Time was actually the test case of this unwritten and up-til-then unknown policy, which had not been explicitly defined beyond the word “defamatory” briefly appearing.  For a timeline of other apps (there are at least 16 now) that have been banned for this silly charge, see this blog:

Apple’s Policy on Satire: 16 Apps Rejected for “Ridiculing Public Figures” [Cloud Four]

If there was an app rejected before September 2008 for political satire, we’d like to hear about it; please post in the comments below.

The interesting thing about the Mark Fiore case is that Apple has apparently reconsidered their rejection, and asked Fiore to resubmit his app. That’s great news, but does it really mean Apple is finally reconsidering their rather draconian policy? Or are they just trying to avoid the bad publicity that’s likely to escalate when the content is associated with the winner of a Pulitzer? I guess we’ll have to wait till the next rejection (or approval) to find out.

John Gruber of Daring Fireball makes the point that what’s most frustrating to developers is the grey area of ill-defined rules. Developers trying to navigate App Store policy plays out like trying to divine the will of a god, who is without a doubt omnipotent, but  rarely seems omniscient, and appears to mortals as vindictive and capricious at times. Or perhaps a closer amalgam could be a Kafka-esque bureaucracy, layers of obscure rules unseen by citizens, wheels moving cruelly behind the scenes towards some irreversible and arbitrary concept justice so thickly wrapped in red tape as to be impenetrable?

But back to the heart of it, what’s really so awful about demeaning public figures? Most of them need a swift kick in the ass. If it’s done in a way that’s not illegal or obscene,  that threatens violence or makes a patently untrue claim, then why the censorship? One possible answer might be that that’s it’s just wide cover for one public figure who is sacrosanct in the Apple canon, in which case I would like to suggest the following amendment to the satire rule:  No application may include images, text, or sound that demeans Steven P. Jobs.

At least that way we could still satirize everything else under the sun, and the rule would kind of be a parody of itself.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125561844

You can also read more from Mr Zittrain on the subject in this piece from the Financial Times.

Here’s the latest, an app for worshippers of one of the most divisive presidents before Bush, Ronald Reagan.

According to a post on Credo Mobile’s Facebook feed:

When Apple banned an iPhone app counting down the days until Bush was out of office, Steve Jobs said “I think this app will be offensive to roughly half our customers.” (Clearly, Steve hadn’t seen W’s approval #s). How does Apple justify this hagiography of Ronald Reagan? We think THAT is offensive.

But it is perfectly all right to make an app that spreads the “talking points” (a nice phrase for propaganda) generated by a handful of cable TV news hosts, Washington columnists, and think-tank lobbyists.

Sounds like crazy talk, yes? See this story in the Atlantic.

Here’s an excerpt:

America’s political civil war has hit the iPhone… The First Shot over the Liberal Bow has been fired!… Be armed with the Conservative Talking Points iPhone App as your powerful arsenal to debate those emotional and ill-prepared liberals… conduct this war on ignorance and liberal idiocy.

This is practically an incitement to violence, especially compared to the light-hearted harmless mocking of President Bush that was in our app. Steve Jobs dismissed our iPhone app as possibly alienating “half” of his customer base and said “what’s the point?” I have to ask if our Mickey Mouse cartoon of Bush was incindiary, what’s the point of this app that derides people while referring to an ideological “civil war” using violence as its only metaphor?

Furthermore, a screen shot from the Atlantic page shows an article on Fascism, trying to paint the current administration as fascist. This is the worst kind of right-wing propaganda that redefines the terms to their opposite. Another screen shot says:

Help us defeat the liberal fascists attempting to take over America!

To date this is perhaps the best example to date of Apple’s myopic App Store policies. What are we to think, that Apple only approves “politically charged” apps associated with extreme right-wing causes? Has Ann Coulter infiltrated Cupertino? Is Steve Jobs staying up late watching Glenn Beck? It’s really, really hard to imagine a universe in which Apple allows this kind of evil crap through, but not something as harmless as Freedom Time.

I have never seen a more obvious case of bias in my life.

App Store Fail. Once again.

[Edit: I just added more detail describing the content of the App.]

Here’s the link: http://lambdajive.wordpress.com/2009/09/26/isinglepayer-iphone-app-censored-by-apple/