Apple fine-tunes app censorship

Rating? Easy

How to rate 35k apps? Make the authors do it on pain of being delisted with a threat that if they get it too wrong it will be delisted. Called outsourcing i think.

At last

The toy built for children can now be safely used by children.

Evil jobs - he's a wanker

@AC (wanker)

ahhh... the first mistake of the ignorant: to mistake uncomplicated for unsophisticated

Sexting Teens

"Come to think of it, that last restriction could have prevented those sexting Pennsylvania teens from landing in a heap of trouble."

IIRC the iPhone does not yet have MMS capability, so really, just having an iPhone would have prevented the secting teens from landing in a heap of trouble.

(yeah, yeah, still has e-mail)

Parental controls

There's no parental control, like parental control.

Except self-control. Which is far cooler but harder to come by.

@Serenity

Come OS 3, it will. So I'd say its perfect timing.

Paris, because I suspect that she too partakes in the occasional bit of sexting.

@Most of the AC's/anti-iPhone crowd

I'm going to let you into a little secret. No. One. Cares. What. You. Think.

Bad press? Only in the VERY small geek world. Admittedly this may affect business adoption, however, iPhone seems to be fairing quite well in that particular sector too. Look at it this way, there are at last count 17,000,000 iPhones in the wild (not bad for a 2 year old product...) and based on Apple's recent satisfaction ratings (80% I believe) at least 13,000,000 of those punters are satisfied with their chosen product and the service afforded them (that's 4 in 5 - pretty good I'd say). Before the AC's come back with "my Nokia Nxx/HTC/Android is bestest because *I've* got one" schoolyard type ill thought out arguments et c. take a look at this; http://www.jdpower.com/corporate/news/releases/pressrelease.aspx?id=2008240 . I think it paints the picture rather the well. So Nokia/Windows Mobile/Android fanboys, I don't care if you will buy one or not. For the love of God. Shut up. The iPhone is a success. You were wrong. Move on.

I find it interesting that Apples censorship pisses so many people off. If we think outside of our comfort zone for a little bit (and I know for most of you this is hard), Apple are based in possibly the *most* litigious country on the planet. This is a country where fatty's can sue fast-food companies and where smokers sue cigarette companies for getting smoking related illnesses. It is also a *very* religious country, where bad language and even the joys of toilet humour are often frowned upon by a *very loud minority*. Why risk *real* bad publicity by allowing an app into the wild that would offend normal (and I mean that in the loosest terms) people?

This is a move in the right direction, and frankly, I think the scale and success of the App Store has taken Apple a little by surprise (I *know* all you FAIL monkeys out there are surprised - the amount of people that said iPhone would fail on release, then told us with relish how the 'closed' app store will fail...). As for how to update the apps, Richard Drysall and Muscleguy hit the nail on the head - make the developers do it as part of the submission/update process. It's not too difficult when joined up thinking is used, as opposed to mouth foaming ranting...

Three Year Old iPhone Users

Shame on you! A three year old probably won't own an iPhone, but my grandson frequently uses his mother's iPhone. The adults in a checkout line were amazed to see him select Youtube, goto the History page and then watch his favourite kid's programs. He also surfs kid-safe sites that are linked from the Home page and plays games. He hasn't mastered the App Store yet, thankfully. I've advised his mother to strengthen her password.