Category Archives: iPhone

Apple Kicks Out iPhone Apps with “Sexual Content”

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As reported by TechCrunch, Apple yesterday reversed its policies regarding previously accepted iPhone apps that contain sexual content. Numerous such apps, some having been in the Store for months, were removed. Developers received a brief email stating:

“We have recently received numerous complaints from our customers about this type of content, and have changed our guidelines appropriately. We have decided to remove any overtly sexual content from the App Store, which includes your application.”

The list of now-banned apps includes many with only the mildest form of sexual content (certainly no nudity or anything that might be considered pornographic). On this list were eleven apps from Chris Pavlou, author of the the Audio Match game, whose saga to get the app into the App Store I previously covered. Making matters worse, Apple appears inconsistent in its enforcement of this new policy; several apps with sexual content remain in the Store.

Reader comments appended to the TechCrunch article epitomize the common split of opinions in this debate:

“It still does bother me that Apple has complete control over what can be put on their platforms. It might be THEIR platform, but it’s MY phone; I should be able to put whatever the hell I want on it. If they don’t want this kind of stuff in the app store then they have to make an alternative medium for distributing apps available.”

“The don’t HAVE to do anything. It may be YOUR phone, but it’s THEIR store. If you want to look at smut, use your web browser.”

“It isn’t a big deal that they removed this particular content. It is a big deal that they are removing an entire category of content. Whats next, Safari will block any website that Apple deems sexual? I can’t receive any SMS or email on my iPhone if Apple has scanned it and deemed it sexual? In my opinion Apple has switched sides in their famous 1984 commercial a long time ago. They keep doing crap like this because people keep buying their products. Until customers react they have no reason to stop.”

“If they started restricting what websites Safari can browse then that’ll be a big deal. Keeping porn out of their App Store is akin to keeping skin mags out of their brick and mortars.”

As regular readers of my writing surely know, my sympathies lean toward those critical of Apple’s position. In that regard, I note:

• While Apple is certainly entitled to change its mind about its policies, it continues to do so in a way that too often seems unpredictable and capricious. This is not good.

• Why should customer complaints about the sexual content completely determine Apple’s policy here (assuming Apple’s statement can be believed)? What about the likely vast majority of customers who had no complaints? Or the ones who would have preferred that the apps remain in the Store? Don’t their opinions also matter? If I (and enough others) complained that we wanted the apps to return, would Apple do so? I doubt it.

• Apple has a 17+ parental controls Restrictions option. If a parent is concerned about their children accessing these apps, they can enforce this option. Apple could even set up the Store so that restricted apps are in a separate area where you need 17+ access to even see them. Instead, Apple treats all of us as if we are children and Apple is the parent.

I am not saying there should be no limits. But the now-removed apps were fairly mild in content (or they never would have made it into the App Store in the first place). Often, the apps had to be revised several times (as I detail in my above-cited article) before eventually getting an initial acceptance. And yet now they have been summarily removed.

• Reversing a long-standing policy, especially one that forces out previously accepted apps, is especially difficult to navigate successfully. Such changes tend to cause all sorts of havoc for developers. Imagine the time and money that someone like Mr. Pavlou invested in his iPhone apps. At this point, it is now all for naught, as all of his apps are gone from the Store. If you were a developer thinking of doing anything the least bit edgy, would you want to risk it now — without any way of knowing in advance whether or not your app will be accepted or whether your app might be accepted and then later removed? Perhaps. But I believe it is a lot less likely. It’s not just about sexual content. This has happened in other areas as well, with apps that have no sexual content at all. I believe Apple is hurting innovation here.

• The big debate remains: To what extent should Apple be able to maintain 100% control over what apps you can install on your iPhone? Where, if anywhere, are limits on what control Apple has? There are no easy answers here. I clearly have my own bias. If I want Chris Pavlou’s apps on my iPhone (or any of dozens of other prohibited apps, many of which that have no sexual content, that I would like), I want to be able to do so. If not from the App Store, than some other way. To me, the fact that it may be “Apple’s iPhone” in some sense should not matter, any more than it should matter that the computer on my desk is “Apple’s Mac Pro.”

This is a debate that will continue to burn. Unfortunately, this latest incident is just another in a seemingly unending string where Apple throws fuel on the fire.

iPad and the Meaning of Jailbreaking

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With the arrival of the iPad, I have been asked, several times now: Do the new features in the iPad — such as external keyboard support and an iPad version of iWork — eliminate, or at least reduce, the reasons to jailbreak iPhone OS devices?

Not at all.

The major reason to consider jailbreaking has been, and continues to be: the closed nature of the iPhone OS. Nothing much has changed here. Most especially, I am referring to the censorship Apple exercises in its App Store. Apple COO Tim Cook defended the App Store approval process recently, stating “We created the approval process to really make sure that it protected consumer privacy, to safeguard children from inappropriate content, and to avoid apps that degrade the core experience of the phone.” This is disingenuous at best — especially the last phrase.

Mr. Cook makes it sound as if Apple’s primary concern is the consumer. Apple is acting as a benevolent parent. However, this is just political rhetoric. In fact, Apple’s approval process exists primarily to benefit Apple. Apple keeps a tight control over apps that would open up access to the OS in any way, or reduce Apple’s ability to restrict what third-party hardware is permitted to work with iPhone OS devices, or might otherwise irritate Apple for any conceivable reason. It’s all about control and profitability. How it aids consumers is hardly the point.

To make this case more clearly, here is a list of just a few of the worthwhile or desirable things you cannot do on a standard iPhone — only because Apple doesn’t allow you to do so. In almost all cases, these are things you could do if you jailbroke your iPhone. [I have written about this topic numerous times, as evident from the links below, as well as via more general articles such as The iPhone: Everything in Your Pocket (Except a Mac).]:

• You can’t access iPhone OS files that are helpful to solve troubleshooting problems (as I describe in Bugs & Fixes: Solving ‘circular loop’ problems in iPhone apps). This is true even though you can easily access the comparable files in Mac OS X.

More generally, there is no Finder-like app to access the contents of the iPhone. Although less critical to the average user, there is similarly no Terminal app. The bottom line is that Apple keeps the iPhone OS almost completely off-limits to users.

• You can’t copy files to or from an iPhone over a USB connection (except in a few restricted cases) — other than for photos or via iTunes syncing. I describe this more in Apple Requires DigiDNA to Modify iPhone App and USB Feature Returns to FileApp.

• You can’t use Bluetooth except for headsets and peer-to-peer games (as I note in Will a Tablet Replace My MacBook?). Most notably, you cannot use Bluetooth for file transfers, even though this is a well-supported option in Mac OS X for other mobile phones.

With the iPad, Apple says you can use its Bluetooth keyboard, but I strongly suspect that this freedom will not be extended to include third-party keyboards (or Apple would have said so).

You can’t print to Bluetooth printers such as the Polaroid PoGo (as I detail in Print That, iPhone!). Actually, printing from the iPhone is very limited in general.

• In the U.S., you still can’t enable Internet tethering. AT&T remains mute on when (or even if, at this point) tethering will ever be enabled.

• You can’t mirror the iPhone display on a Mac or any projector system (except in very limited ways — such as to show a video or a photo slideshow or, with the iPad, a Keynote presentation). I covered this matter more in An iPhone Killer App May Be Left to Die.

• You can’t mount an iPhone as an external drive on your Mac — either via USB or wirelessly — even though you can mount an iPod nano or classic.

• You can’t have apps that attempt to add any feature that Apple has deliberately omitted from the OS, such as folders on the Home screen or multitasking.

• You can’t have apps with sexual content, beyond the relatively tame ones that survived Apple’s approval gauntlet (as I detail more in Bikinis and the App Store Approval Process). Apple allows R-rated movies on the iPhone, including those that display a level of nudity prohibited in apps. Considering that the iPhone supports parental controls, it is not clear to me why Apple has to be so restrictive.

• Apple has blocked, either temporarily or permanently, an assortment of apps based on bizarre claims of copyright infringement (as I covered in Apple’s App Store Rejections). As I know from personal experience (and which I may write more about at a later time), even mentioning the word “jailbreaking” in an app can lead to approval problems.

Again, none of the limitations in the above list are inherently necessary. In most cases, you can have these features by jailbreaking your iPhone. That’s why many people continue to jailbreak their devices — despite the continuing hassles in doing so (as I covered in iPhone Jailbreaking: The Landscape Shifts Again). The arrival of the iPad will not change this. It may be that Apple can successfully block attempts to jailbreak the iPad. But I am certain that people intend to give it a try.

As Matt Deatherage put it, in describing the App Store approval process: “No one wants to use the word censorship because it’s ugly. It’s also correct. Can you imagine a market dominated by a single bookseller that demanded to read and review all books before they went on sale? The very concept is ridiculous.”

So, no. The iPad does not change the jailbreak equation. My goal here, however, is not to encourage jailbreaking. Rather it is to encourage Apple to eliminate the reasons for jailbreaking — to open up the iPhone OS, to allow more third-party solutions to work with the iPhone OS, and to end unnecessary censorship. Will Apple ever do this? Never say never, but I am pessimistic about Apple’s plans in this regard.

Magic Mouse and Mac Pro: A Bad Combo

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It’s official. Apple, we have a problem.

I have now owned three separate Magic Mouses (Mice?). In each case, I have had the exact same symptom. The Mouse’s Bluetooth connection to my 2009 Mac Pro kept cutting in and out. It would happen so often that I was ultimately unable to use the device (which is why I went through three of them).

Of note, I also have an older Bluetooth Mighty Mouse, which has worked and continues to work perfectly (as I previously covered in a Macworld article). This led me to conclude that the problem is not simply with the Mac Pro, as some have suggested.

I have now done further testing. With my third mouse, I gave up on using it with my Mac Pro and connected it to my MacBook Pro instead. For the past week, it too has worked perfectly — not one disconnect. For me, this confirms that the problem is due to some odd interaction between the Magic Mouse and (at least some) Mac Pros. Neither device by itself causes the symptom. The two simply do not play well together.

Hopefully, Apple is aware of this and will issue some sort of firmware update that fixes it.

Licensing the iPhone OS?

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One of the more eye-catching products I saw at last week’s CES was Pure’s Sensia Internet and FM clock radio. It’s been available in Great Britain for several months now, but it won’t be sold here in the U.S. until the spring. What most drew my attention was its colorful and detailed touch-screen interface. All of the features of the device are accessed via this touchscreen. There are no dials or buttons that I recall. It’s as if an iPhone had been implanted in the Sensia and was running a special Sensia app. Except it was not the iPhone interface. It wasn’t even an iPhone interface imitation. It was Pure’s own original take on an touchscreen interface. In the demo I saw, it worked quite well. There’s just one problem:

I use an iPhone. I am comfortable with and experienced with its interface. I am not particularly interested in having to master a second touchscreen interface. I could do it. But I’d rather not. Unfortunately, mastering the Sensia could be just the start of a slippery slope. As touchscreens become more common, showing up in more and more devices, what if each company developed its own interface? What if you had to master a dozen different touchscreen “operating systems” for all the devices you owned? And you had to be able to remember which actions went with which device? Not fun.

From this dilemma, I see a great opportunity for Apple. What if they licensed a special “dedicated” version of the iPhone OS? What if, for example, a company could create a touchscreen alarm clock and not have to bother to reinvent the interface wheel? Instead, they could license the special iPhone OS, modifying it to be meet the specific requirements of their hardware. Boom — they have an alarm clock that looks instantly familiar to all iPhone users. There would be an iPhone-like Home screen from which all other features are accessed. There could be a Settings app, looking and feeling just like the one now on the iPhone, from which you would set the clock’s main features (such as the time zone). An Alarm app would be used to set the alarm. Another app to access the radio. And so on. Plus, all the touchscreen actions, such as pinching and swiping, would work the same as on the iPhone.

Similar to how iHome’s iA5 works, vendors could even have a matching iPhone app that remotely controlled the clock.

For the vendor, this would give the device a competitive marketing advantage, helping spur sales. For Apple, the advantage is twofold. The iPhone OS could become a de facto standard for touchscreen devices. And Apple would make money both from licensing the OS and (indirectly) via more iPhone sales.

Admittedly, there are lots of obstacles in this path. Apple has never done anything quite like this before. I wouldn’t place any bets on this happening any time soon. But it’s something to consider.