Pocket Troll 1.0

For more info, go here: http://www.juggleware.com/iphone/pocket_troll/

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?

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.

Well, I’ve given up on trying anything too humorous for the App Store— if you have to finish your idea BEFORE it’s approved, what’s the point?

But that hasn’t stopped others from trying ideas that are beyond the pale, and some that are so truly tasteless, that our little attempted joke at the expense of the outgoing president of the US seems really sterile by comparison.

I’m sure you’ve all heard about the “Baby Shaker” app controversy. It got the press scrambling to look at Apple’s app approval stories once more and, after months of assuming the whole thing had been relegated to its proper place as a footnote in the appendix of the Apple history books, I got contacted by ABC News and the Wall Street Journal over Apple’s rejection of Freedom Time.

• Banned by Apple: 9 iPhone App Rejects – ABC News (page 5)
• Apple’s Gatekeeper Role Draws Scrutiny – WSJ.com

All very exciting, I suppose, except that the reporters never seem to get the gist of what I was trying to say, which was this:

If Apple makes itself the gatekeeper, it is actually causing itself the problems it’s trying to avoid. By rejecting an app that makes fun of Bush, but accepting one that lets you kill babies, it implies that it disapproves of one and approves of the other. If someone had made this application for Windows, Mac OS X, or any other desktop system, no one would accuse Microsoft, Apple or Linux for not building an OS that prevents Baby Shaker applications from being installed. Apple made both a whole lot more work and a whole lot more controversy for itself by insisting on manually gatekeeping for every single app that goes in the store.

It’s a new year and a new era!

Juggleware’s debut iPhone app, Freedom Time, as many of you so cleverly noticed, was an application with a time-specific usage. Funny, it just happened to coincide with the inauguration of President Obama.

For those of you who were lucky enough to get the banned iPhone app, or even bothered to look at the Flash version on the site, you’ll see that the time began to move forward at the precise instant^* of the swearing in of President Obama at the inauguration, and the text end of an error changed to time to clear some brush!

So it’s a kind of forced obsolescence, but it’s still functional for those who wish to count the days, hours, minutes and seconds since the Bush regime, it’s still working. And in all humility, we were the first to pat ourselves on the back for the nifty symbolism of time moving forward from that moment on.

We’re not giving away any more copies of the app however. We’re moving onward and upward!

In that respect, we hope to have some nifty games for the iPhone in 2009. Keep checking back for news on the latest.

* actually, the precise scheduled moment; he was sworn in a few minutes late and the clock actually ran out during Yo Yo Ma’s cello introduction.

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.

[The following blog entry was deleted by me and is now restored; although originally Apple added a line that said that communications were "under NDA" and as I value my status as an Apple developer and don't have any interest in getting involved in a dispute I redacted their rejection letter and this blog entry. Now that Apple has redacted the NDA, I am including the blog entry and rejection letter again.]

After a wait of 10 days while Freedom Time was in review, Apple sent us our Dear John letter.

I find the word “censorship” a bit strong, so I’ll use it carefully. But the long and short of it is that Apple did not find the Freedom Time app to their liking:

Hello Juggleware Developer,
Upon review of your application, Freedom Time cannot be posted to the App Store because it contains content that does not comply with Community Standards.  Usage of such materials, as outlined in the iPhone SDK Agreement section 3.3.12, is prohibited:

“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.”

Defaming, demeaning, or attacking political figures is not considered appropriate content for the App Store.

If you would like to provide an application that contains such content to a group of friends, then we encourage you to use the Ad Hoc application distribution method.  Please go to the Distribution Tab in the iPhone Developer Portal for complete information on Ad Hoc distribution.

Best Regards,

iPhone Application Review Team
Apple Developer Connection 
Worldwide Developer Relations
**************************************************************************
THE INFORMATION CONTAINED IN THIS MESSAGE IS UNDER NON-DISCLOSURE
**************************************************************************

I don’t believe that we violated the terms as they were specifically defined. The reason in the rejection letter was that it’s not appropriate to defame, demean, or attack political figures. The original terms I agreed to of course allow for  ”Apple’s reasonable judgment”  which means that they have the right to reject anything they want of course by applying their own standards, and as it’s their App Store, I don’t dispute that right.

However, I could not disagree more with the approach both to the general public and to the developer community, and I wish they’d been more clear in defining what was “offensive”  or “demeaning.” I can honestly say that I believe this app does not demean George W. Bush. If we had wanted to do that, we’d have made him look like a monkey. (But then people would say that we were demeaning monkeys!).

Defamation means making an untrue claim about someone in order to hurt their public standing. This app makes no untrue claims whatsoever. It actually goes pretty light on “W” considering his record. A good case could be shown that the guy is probably a war criminal, possibly even a traitor in his role as military leader with respect to the Constitution. However, this App does nothing but animate him count the time till he leaves, and play back a few quotes that the guy himself said. The text “till the end of an error” is the only thing that could even remotely be considered defamatory (if it wasn’t obviously satirical). I know in Britiain the laws are a bit different, but in the USA you can say just about anything you’d like about a political figure and it’s not considered defamation. Especially if it falls under parody or satire, and this certainly would.

This isn’t exactly a case of First Amendment rights, and I can see why Apple wants to keep the App Store clean of controversy, but I think they really walk a thin line trying to make themselves arbiters of what is tasteful and what is not. There should be some sort of rating for explicit material, of course, and for stuff like this maybe put it in a “Satire” or “Commentary” section of the App Store so that people who get offended by such things won’t have to navigate to that part of the store.

I’d heard of their rejecting applications for duplicating technology and a violent comic book for being too violent, but I didn’t think they’d ban a lighthearted political satire very gently mocking the least popular president in recent U.S. history (if not all-time). 

My first Apple program was a text-based AppleBASIC Lunar Lander on an Apple ///, I’ve been a Macintosh afficionado for ages, and I’m even an Apple shareholder. The iPhone and the App Store are two of the coolest things that I’ve come across in ages, and have gotten me more excited about development than anything has in a long time — but I won’t deny that this puts a serious dent in my enthusiasm.

My hope is that they review and reconsider their policy. I’ve written them back, and at the urging of my friend John who’s a fellow Apple junkie, an email to Steve Jobs, in the off hope that he’ll see it. John says he responds to developers’ emails now and again, but I’m not holding my breath.

It started out as Court’s idea as a way for me to learn Apple’s Xcode, Obj-C, and the iPhone development kit, but it kind of took on a life of its own.

There was a pretty steep learning curve, and registering to be an iPhone developer (although very affordable) and getting your device provisioned and such was a little more difficult than I’d hoped, once you’re over that hump it’s really kind of fun.

Court done the graphics up, Texas style. Originally, we were going to call it “Freedom Clock” as in Freedom Rock, but I found a bunch of public domain audio clips where W. says “time” in them, such as “It’s time for a leader” or “It’s time for a new administration to deal with the energy crisis” that hilariously illustrated the current situation.

More information is available on the Freedom Time for iPhone page.

Submitted to Apple for review; look for it in the App Store soon!