Jason Grigsby wrote an excellent article on Cloud Four about the significance of Apple’s rejection of Freedom Time that anyone who is interested in Apple’s App Store policies, or corporations and censorship should take a look at.

Thanks Jason, I am glad that someone gets the real issue, and I won’t even take issue with “simple, stupid”:

Can you imagine political discourse of any significance that doesn’t include demeaning or attacking political figures? Like it or not, that’s part of the exchange of ideas that form a democracy.

This policy essentially bans any editorial cartoons—cartoons that have been part of America’s history since its inception….

Freedom of speech is easy to defend when the speech is popular, but the real test comes when you have to defend unpopular speech or things that you don’t agree with.

In Fall 2008, George Bush had the worst approval ratings since Nixon. At a time in which we had one of the most unpopular Presidents in American history, Apple didn’t have the courage to approve a simple, stupid application like Freedom Time.

What is the likelihood that Apple would approve a truly controversial and unpopular application during a time when popular opinion makes it difficult to stand up for what’s right?

Although I started writing this as a cheat-sheet for myself (after many hours of struggling with this by trial-and-error), I figured it would be helpful for other iPhone developers who’d like to take a mySQL database online and migrate it to their current iPhone project. While other tutorials cover how to read the database into the application from the coding point-of-view, this is just to make sure you get your data uncompromised from your existing mySQL database into a new SQLite DB that your iPhone app can read.

First of all, here’s what I am currently using; I am including versions in case that’s relevant to your situation:

• MySQL 5.0.81
• MySQL charset: UTF8-Unicode (utf8)
• MySQL connection collation: utf8_unicode_ci
• phpMyAdmin – 2.11.9.5
• SQLite Database Browser 1.3 (includes 3.3.5 of the SQLite database engine)
• iPhone Dev Kit – 3.0
• XCode 3.1.3
• SQLite 3 framework found at /Developer/Platforms/iPhoneOS.platform/Developer/SDKs/iPhoneOS3.0.sdk/usr/lib/libsqlite3.dylib

You can try other solutions for importing the data into a SQLite format, but I’ve had the best luck with Mauricio Piacentini’s SQLite Database Browser. Other options you might want to try include a Firefox plugin.

Here are the steps, using SQLite Database Browser:

1. log into phpMyAdmin, select your database and go to Database> Export.
2. On the export tab, make sure all databases are selected, and the “SQL” radio button is selected.
3. Select ANSI from the pulldown for export compatibility.
4. Uncheck all options under Structure and Data, but leave each section checked.
5. Save as file should be checked, and probably be via ZIP or GZIP, just in case.
6. Click the Go button to download your file.
7. Extract the file and open it up in your favorite text editor (I use BBEdit).
8. Find the first CREATE TABLE line. We need to modify these by hand to simplify the table creation so that SQLite doesn’t get confused. For example, my file came down looking like this after the comment section ended:
   
CREATE TABLE dictionary (
id int(11) NOT NULL auto_increment,
word varchar(100) NOT NULL,
adjective tinyint(1) NOT NULL default '0' COMMENT 'is an adjective',
noun tinyint(1) NOT NULL default '0' COMMENT 'is a noun ',
intro tinyint(1) NOT NULL default '0' COMMENT 'is an intro',
PRIMARY KEY  (id),
UNIQUE KEY words (word)
);


   You’ll want to edit this to remove pretty much everything but the most basic information and normalize the data types to SQLite 3 Data Types, which are TEXT, NUMERIC, INTEGER, REAL, or BLOB. Your CREATE TABLE should look something like this:

   CREATE TABLE dictionary(
id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY ASC,
word TEXT,
adjective INTEGER,
noun INTEGER,
intro TEXT
);

   I was using id as a primary key so I’ve added “PRIMARY KEY ASC” after “id INTEGER”. (Primary Keys are aliases to row IDs in SQLite, if you have questions read this.)

   However, I’ve noticed that the SQLite Database browser exports SQL in the even more simplified format with no datatype specification as such, which also seemed to work for me and may work just as well for your needs:

   CREATE TABLE dictionary (id, word, adjective, noun, intro);


9. Continue going through your text file and fix all CREATE TABLE lines as in #8, above.
10. Check your file text encoding. BBEdit may default to Western (Mac OS Roman), which worked for me, but if you have problems you may need to set it to Unicode, depending on your character set.
11. Check your file for suspicious characters that might cause the import to choke. Single quotation marks used as apostrophes show up as escaped by themselves; for example you're becomes you''re. This seemed to import fine as long as the other guidelines are followed. Here’s what an example INSERT should look like:

    INSERT INTO dictionary VALUES(305, 'ne''er-do-well', 0, 1, 0);


12. Check your line endings. BBEdit defaulted to Unix (LF) which worked for me.
13. Open up SQLite Database Browser, create a new database (.db) file, and import your SQL text file by selecting File> Import> Database From SQL File from the menu.
14. Check your data by clicking the Browse Data tab and make sure everything came in all right. If not, go back over the steps. Look for weird characters, text and line encoding issues, and syntax issues. The only two commands in your file should be CREATE TABLE and INSERT, although technically it should probably begin with BEGIN TRANSACTION; and end with COMMIT;

Again these steps were derived mostly by trial-and-error, so there may be issues particular to your DB that these guidelines didn’t solve. Please feel free to add any corrections, tips, and questions to the comments area.

Also, I know that with the iPhone OS 3.0, Core Data can take care of a lot of database functionality for you. I’d love to hear how people made the transition, and especially how anyone got a pre-existing SQL database into a Core Data store.

I just saw that Apple has put on its home page now has a public response to justify its App Store policies.

http://www.apple.com/hotnews/apple-answers-fcc-questions/

Of course the FCC is primarily interested in its rejection of big, important apps like Google Voice, and not indie developer apps, so Apple was able to gloss over its political censorship of apps like Freedom Time (See section 5, above), and not even include any rejected political content app in its list of “representative applications.”

To me, rejecting an app for speech reasons is much worse than for technological competition reasons, but maybe that’s because I am someone who cares about the first Amendment, something that has been shoved to the back of the bus while greasing the wheels of the free market machine.

Thanks to Brad at Bent Media for pointing me to this excellent essay by Joe Hewitt demanding the end of the App Store approval process as we know it.

I made a promise to myself on November 3. If Obama wins, I’ll make a downloadable version of Freedom Time for Mac and Windows and let everyone download it.

Well, as everyone in the galaxy knows, we now have two reasons to celebrate at 12:00:00 GMT -0500 on January 20, 2009: good riddance to the worst president of all time, and hello to the first African-American president (and the first president I ever voted for with a smile on my face!)

You don’t even need to have an iPhone now to have a virtual iPhone on your desktop.

Watch the actual countdown on this page:

http://www.juggleware.com/iphone/freedomtime/

and download the version for your computer and keep it on.

Only 73 days left! TIME for a NEW leader!

Tip: click on the screen to hear the next Bush quote. (These are all actual audio quotes by Bush and are unedited.)

Well since we can’t sell it for 99 cents on the App Store, we’re going to give it away for free via Apple’s Ad Hoc distribution model.

Send us your iphone’s UDID (unique device ID) on the contact form on this page.

And we’ll send you a link with install instructions. 

Why do we need your UDID? Because we have to authorize your specific device to run the app. 

Where to find your UDID:

Make sure you have a recent version of iTunes (version 7.6.2 or later).

Connect your iPhone to your computer.

When your iPhone appears in iTunes, select it.

Click the summary tab. The name and other information including the serial number for your iPhone will display.

Click on the Serial Number field. It will change to the Identifier, also known as the UDID number.

Wow, although I’m not happy with Apple right now, I have to give Apple’s CEO some serious credit for answering the email I wrote yesterday:

Dear Steve,
 

A quick note to let you know what kinds of apps are being rejected for the App Store.
 

This app is not defamatory, harmful or speaking untruth. It is lighthearted and humorous. Does it imply critique? Of course it does, but not without crossing any lines of decency or the boundaries agreement. 
 

For a quick screen shot:

http://www.juggleware.com/iphone/freedomtime/       

Sincerely,

Alec Vance

juggleware llc

Mr. Jobs replied :

Even though my personal political leanings are democratic, I think this app will be offensive to roughly half our customers.  What’s the point?

Steve

I’m not sure if he’s asking what’s the point of the app (not much—just poking fun and a time-killer), or what’s the point of letting me risk alienating a portion of his customer base (which is what I think he’s asking, rhetorically).

My friend John Barousse (the guy who convinced me to write Mr. Jobs) makes the point that the market should decide. And why not? No one thinks this is an Apple app, it’s clearly from an independent developer. Why would Apple lose business because of this app? As John says, “It’s not Apple’s application; they’re the store.”