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IKamasutra: Apple Hates Brunettes

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Re: IKamasutra: Apple Hates Brunettes

#41

Post by bambax »

antirez wrote: post #5

The problem is that "app approval" does not scale well, for a very simple reason: it is hard. Applying guidelines like the ones Apple uses, requires a very skilled individual that is able to evaluate at the same time a set of rules in a flexible way, and really understand if the app is good for the apple store or not. You can do that if you have a team of 20. Finding 300 people doing this work very well is going to b…

In this case the crux of the problem is that they're deleting an app that's almost as old as the app store itself.

Curating content is almost impossible to do; app stores should limit their reviews to exclude:

- viruses

- blatant spam and copyright violations

and THAT'S IT. Assessing the quality of an app is what users' ratings are for (and of course excluding adult content is just childish).

Re: IKamasutra: Apple Hates Brunettes

#42

Post by JohnLBevan »

Someone could start an App Approval business. Applications don't require approval to go on to an app store / market place, but if the developers submitted their code to one AppApproversLtd, those guys could review it for a small comission, then upload it to the app store as a trusted application. Though there's a slight conflict of interest (i.e. the person paying the approvers is also the person sending the code) I believe it's in the AppApproversLtd company's interest to do a good job since their business depends on them giving a reliable evaluation / building up a good reputation.

Using that business model keeps flexibility in place, where users decide if they want to risk trusting an unapproved app, or would rather go for an app that's been approved by one of these companies (potentially incurring additional cost if the developers passed the approval cost on to their users rather than offsetting against advertising).

AppApproversLtd could offer different levels of approval / ratings - i.e. just checking for malicious code vs. checking for polite error handling, efficiently written code, best practices, impact on battery life, etc.

Re: IKamasutra: Apple Hates Brunettes

#43

Post by rogerbraun »

JohnnyFlash wrote: post #9

The trouble is that the guidelines aren't black and white. They are somewhat grey. This means that 2 reviews will rarely result in the same action. I would argue the Kama Sutra is both historical and educational and not sexually explicit at all. Perhaps a celebration of human bodies even, I don't know. It seems though that Apple particularly feel that its customers require a squeaky clean filter to assess everything…

I think a guide to sex positions is as sexually explicit as it can get, it's just not necessarily pornographic.

I also think that the argument that it keeps the store clean so kids can browse it does not really work. Other online stores like Amazon don't have this, you can search for and buy porn there and nobody is outraged. A much better idea would be to give apps a suggested user age, so you could filter the store.

Re: IKamasutra: Apple Hates Brunettes

#45

Post by xyzzyz »

rkudeshi wrote: post #37

I'm not a fan of these sort of apps but from the pics provided, it seems to be made as tastefully as possible and without excessive "sexual allure" (ie. titillating apps made for 13-year-olds to download without their parents knowing). (I'd say the 13 million "SALES" are also an indicator of quality but, Angry Birds aside, there's no way a number that high was all paid downloads.)

Imagine all the titillating books 13-year-olds can read in a public library without their parents knowing!

Seriously, though, there are much better sources of porn out there than books and sketchy non-explicit monochrome drawings, and kids are well aware of them.

Re: IKamasutra: Apple Hates Brunettes

#48

Post by triblib »

antirez wrote: post #5

The problem is that "app approval" does not scale well, for a very simple reason: it is hard. Applying guidelines like the ones Apple uses, requires a very skilled individual that is able to evaluate at the same time a set of rules in a flexible way, and really understand if the app is good for the apple store or not. You can do that if you have a team of 20. Finding 300 people doing this work very well is going to b…

i've always wondered how the app approval process works...I imagine there are diagnostic tools that search for suspicious behavior in the code. But how much time is spent going through the content? clearly there's not a rigorous effort to test stability. Besides crashes, I've seen games where much of the UI is just broken through bugs.

But seeing how quick they are to jump on objectionable content...is it safe tos ay that most of an app-approver's time has to be spent skimming for nudity/extreme violence/cuss words? how else could this reasonably scale?

Re: IKamasutra: Apple Hates Brunettes

#49

Post by excuse-me »

bambax wrote: post #41
antirez wrote: post #5

The problem is that "app approval" does not scale well, for a very simple reason: it is hard. Applying guidelines like the ones Apple uses, requires a very skilled individual that is able to evaluate at the same time a set of rules in a flexible way, and really understand if the app is good for the apple store or not. You can do that if you have a team of 20. Finding 300 people doing this work very well is going to b…

In this case the crux of the problem is that they're deleting an app that's almost as old as the app store itself. Curating content is almost impossible to do; app stores should limit their reviews to exclude: - viruses - blatant spam and copyright violations and THAT'S IT. Assessing the quality of an app is what users' ratings are for (and of course excluding adult content is just childish).

App stores should do what is good for their shareholders

Apple is trying to move from being the cool kids counter-culture creative types alternative to the PC to being the corporate acceptable alternative to the Blackberry.

A story about karmasutra apps or ifart in the WSJ could cause a CEO to change their mind about allowing users to use their iPhone on the corp network.

And of course the best way of preventing such a story is, as we all know, to make a big splash about banning such an app

Re: IKamasutra: Apple Hates Brunettes

#50

Post by triblib »

ErrantX wrote: post #39
plasma wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't agree that its a super hard job and that's why this problem has occurred. Surely the review team should hear the iKamasutra's concerns and realise that the app has been in use for years already, and that the sudden reason to reject it is confusing and obtuse.

What you are saying boils down to "Surely it's obvious that...". Of course, the problem there is that it's not obvious to a non-trivial number of people. Who apparently in this case work in Apple's review department. The most obviously idiotic things often look perfectly sensible from "inside", or from a singular perspective.

But like any big organization, there are likely idiosyncrasies that have bubbled and been allowed to continue just because, "that's the way things are." For example, the whole iphone4 antenna thing was surely seen by many people...but it's likely that someone at top said, "It's passable" and everyone else on the team learned to just accept it. Just because lots of people recognize a big problem doesn't mean that all efforts have been made to rectify/smooth it out.
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