The northlondonhippy

Archive for February, 2010

My iPhone app was rejected, again. That’s twice in the last month.

I heard back yes­ter­day. This time, the app has been rejected on the basis that Apple have changed their sub­mis­sion pol­icy and no longer allow apps that “…are solely intended for an indi­vid­ual blog­ger with a small audience…”.

Isn’t that most inde­pen­dent bloggers?

I’ve been blog­ging for 6 years, my anniver­sary is next week. My web­site was never going to be main­stream, but that’s kind of the point of its exis­tence and the exis­tence of most blogs. We cater to niche audi­ence, but an audi­ence none the less.

Are my read­ers less impor­tant than the read­ers of the New York Times web­site? Every reader counts, whether its one thou­sand or one million.

Why does Apple hate me? Why does Apple hate my audience?

Why does Apple hate inde­pen­dent bloggers?

Let’s put this into a bit of per­spec­tive. I invested time and money into cre­at­ing an app that I thought would be of inter­est to my read­ers. The app is quite sim­ple, but well designed, effec­tively cre­at­ing an iPhone-optimised inter­face linked to all my online northlon­don­hippy related content.

There’s noth­ing wrong with my app, it all works smoothly, the design is clean and sim­ple, and the graph­ics are slick and pro­fes­sional. The price, there was none, I wanted to offer it via the iTunes store for free, I wanted to give it away to any­one who wanted it.

So why do Apple hate me?

They shouldn’t, I am an unashamed Apple fan boy.

Cur­rently, in the room I’m sit­ting in, there’s a 27” Quad Core iMac, a Core Duo Mac Mini, A Core Duo black Mac­Book, an iPhone 3GS, an iPod Touch, an Air­port Extreme, sev­eral Air­port Expresses, I use Final Cut Express and Logic Stu­dio and iWork, I buy apps, music and films.…

You get the idea, I own a lot of Apple kit and just because they hate me, doesn’t mean I won’t con­tinue to pur­chase their toys. iPad, you are next on my list.

And I don’t just buy a lot of Apple stuff, I rec­om­mend it to my friends and am respon­si­ble for count­less sales to many recent converts.

Apple should love me, like I love them, they’re like that girl who gave you a drunken pity hand­job once, but now looks at you with dis­gust when­ever you run into her sober and you keep hop­ing you’ll catch her a bit pissed again, but you never do. The desire is all one way and it only ever ends in bit­ter disappointment.

I praise Apple on my web­site and won’t stop just because they hate me. I can han­dle rejec­tion, I’m used to it.

In short, there’s noth­ing wrong with my con­tent, includ­ing all my weed related entries. Apple don’t have a prob­lem with cannabis and there are sev­eral mar­i­juana related apps avail­able on iTunes, includ­ing one that will direct you to the near­est med­ical dis­pen­sary. Mine’s appar­ently in Ams­ter­dam, last time I checked.

So why do Apple hate me?

Why does Apple hate all inde­pe­dent bloggers?

I’ve writ­ten a cou­ple of nov­els, and was watch­ing with great inter­est to see if Apple would have a route for inde­pen­dent pub­lish­ers to get books on to their upcom­ing iBook Store for the iPad, but now I am not so sure.

If Apple are cen­sor­ing iPhone apps to the point where they won’t con­sider sub­mis­sions from inde­pen­dent blog­gers, is there any point to me invest­ing more time and money devel­op­ing my eBooks for the iPad, only to have Apple change their poli­cies suddenly.

Maybe you think a northlon­don­hippy iPhone app is a bit point­less, maybe I do too, but that’s not what’s impor­tant. What’s impor­tant is free­dom of speech and expres­sion and if I wish to bring my mes­sage as an inde­pen­dent blog­ger to an estab­lished, pop­u­lar mobile plat­form, I should be able to do so, with­out any imped­i­ment from the cor­po­ra­tion who sup­plies the plat­form. What’s wrong with giv­ing the lit­tle guy a chance?

It would be like Sony ban­ning you from watch­ing home­made videos on your tele­vi­sion, only Sony Pic­tures DVDs would dis­play on the screen, but not your hol­i­day or wed­ding videos.

Maybe no one would have down­loaded my app, maybe mil­lions of peo­ple would have, but I’ll never know. Apple have killed it, dead in its tracks for no good rea­son other than on a whim they have decided to lock all inde­pen­dent blog­gers out of the app store.

Will Apple recon­sider? If peo­ple make enough noise they might. It wouldn’t be unprece­dented, but I’m not going to hold my breath.

All I wanted to do was expand my online reach, just a lit­tle. I invested time, I invested money, but more impor­tantly I invested my hopes and dreams on a lit­tle iPhone app that I could call my own. I would never have guessed that this lit­tle dream would become a night­mare of cen­sor­ship and unchecked cor­po­rate power.

Does Steve Jobs know about this? If he finds out, he’s going to be mighty pissed off.