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.

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.

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.)

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!