Just when you thought the iPhone App Store approval process couldn’t possibly become more of a debacle, it did.
John Gruber of Daring Fireball details the story of Ninjawords, an iPhone dictionary that Apple censored.
You read that right: Apple refused to sell Ninjawords unless the developer removed certain words from the dictionary.
John Gruber describes Ninjawords as “a terrific app — pretty much exactly what I’ve always wanted in an iPhone dictionary,” but that, “Ninjawords for iPhone suffers one humiliating flaw: it omits all the words deemed “objectionable” by Apple’s App Store reviewers, despite the fact that Ninjawords carries a 17+ rating.”
Apple’s role as gatekeeper should be to keep apps that could keep malicious or illegal software off the app store. Apple’s role should not be deciding what’s offensive. Leave that up to iPhone owners and parents.
What are your thoughts about this?
Source: Extracts from http://www.pcworld.com/article/169667/apple_screws_up_again_censors_iphone_dictionary_app.html
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