Back in 1994, there was no album I wanted more than Nine Inch Nails’ The Downward Spiral. The problem was that I was 12 at the time, and the album carried the dreaded “Parental Advisory” sticker, which meant I couldn’t buy it at the store without my parents — and that wasn’t an option. You see, they (like most other parents) weren’t too fond of songs like “Closer,” on the album. You know the one. “I want to f**k you like an animal.” Yeah, that “Closer.” Well, now it’s 2009, I’m 27, and should be free to buy whatever the hell I want. Except I can’t once again. This time thanks to Apple.
You see, Apple has apparently rejected an update to Nine Inch Nails’ iPhone app because it found the contents of The Downward Spiral to be “objectionable,” according to Nine Inch Nails’ frontman Trent Reznor. History repeats itself.
But what’s odd here — and what continues to be odd about the App Store approval process — is that the first version of the Nine Inch Nails app was already accepted into the store a few weeks ago. In fact, I have it. Guess what’s on it? Content from The Downward Spiral. I’m listening to “Closer” right now. Let me assure everyone, this is not the radio edit version of the song or the album. So what gives, Apple?
Well, it appears to be yet another ridiculous case of Apple’s uneven app approval process. I know I’ve written about this a half dozen times already. But you know what? I’m going to keep writing about it until Apple gets its act together with this. I have no problem if Apple wants to pick and choose which apps it accepts in their store — it is their store after all, and they can do what they want with it. But it’s entirely unfair to developers, many of whom are now trying to make a living off of the platform, that the process is a complete and utter crapshoot as to whether an app will get approved or not.
We’ve seen dozens of apps that are approved the first time, but later rejected for a seemingly small update. And we’ve seen others that are rejected, make almost no change, yet get in the next time they’re submitted. It would seem the the life or death of an app is entirely in the hands of the App Store inspector who checks it out. Sometimes they catch things that they don’t want in the App Store, sometimes they do (baby shaking app anyone?). But I’m really not convinced that it’s not just a personal decision on those people’s behalf which apps get through and which don’t. I’ve seen way too much evidence telling me that is exactly what happens.
So we can debate whether it’s silly for Apple to block the Nine Inch Nails app for content that it already carries in iTunes (I think it is, obviously), but that’s really a secondary issue. The big issue is the whole approval process. And Apple really needs to improve it soon. It still stands high above all other mobile platforms in terms of apps right now, but with the Palm Pre about to launch, and Android getting more phones on the market (and a few other mobile app stores just opened or about to open), Apple won’t be able to coast along with this wonky approval method forever. Eventually, some developers will get pissed off enough and just go to another platform.
Reznor himself seems dumbstruck by the rejection, “Not even sure where to start with that one,” he tweeted.
Ahhhhhh
Get your act together or someone should start a weekly rejected apps blog.
Have they already?
The above comment was directed at Apple of course.
I think it was this line in “Head Like a Hole” that summed it up nicely…
“You’re going to get what you deserve.”
Trent Reznor has been great about taking to formats like MP3/FLAC/M4A/WAV/etc… let’s hope that trend continues an extends to other platforms outside iPhone… or even making it a part of Cydia?
Agreed. As we wait for unknown reasons for music applications to be approved, we need to simply take the database backends that are most important, and move them to Android. Sadly, the experience is wanting, and is Google really that much more interested.
The iPhone is cool. Going broke developing for it is not.
And this is just audio now.
Imagine when the video app market explodes with access to faster video processing, bandwidth, and potentially broadcast or multicast capabilities.
This would put a whole new spin on a review process in that without the record player, you can’t hear the records.
It’s like that line in Braveheart…
“playin’ outlawed tunes on outlawed pipes”
We’re doing video too! And, the stuff is just sitting there. Walking along the lake in Chicago today, I decided to float the product by Amazon, T-Mobile and Google. We have the back end in place, all we need is the cash to extend to another platform.
I believe we can turn the business on its head. Why run music, video, or anything through an application so to speak? It is an object. How those objects relate is more important.
You’re 27 and smart enough to shoot your mouth off on the internet.
Ergo, you are smart enough to find “The Downward Spiral” somewhere on CD and copy it into iTunes.
You can’t get that album at a lot of places. The ONLY reason you complained about Apple’s policy is because you are a hit whore, and know that writing anything about Apple draws hits.
Knowing that you have to resort to this kind of journalism to make a living, insures that I won’t be back.
In a class, my friend who is a professor asked how many people have purchased a CD. Zero! Vinyl got a couple of hands.
You are a fool. Hits has nothing to do with it. Creating an ecosystem where any kind of music can thrive is important to music. It is idiotic to reject material and reminds me of Jello Biafra and Tipper Gore.
seriously? apple already offers the album in its STORE. Which you can ACCESS using the iPhone/Pod over the wifi iTunes app.
I fail to see the point you are trying to make, Greg.
its 2009 and you still can’t have NIN with those vile lyrics – oh well! – wuss & muvs (aka the parents)
ha. let’s just say I obtained the album through other means
other means? see, were just fostering creativity – excellent parenting. by the way, if you think i’m out of touch – i was just on a buddy’s counterterror blog & he thought NIN was a foreign intelligence agency!
Dude, I totally empathize with your first 2 sentences!!
Loved that album. So glad I was an adult in ‘94!
Had the best s** of my life to NIN!!!
NIN was my daughters first concert without her old man. Scary indeed! Especially cause she had back stage passes and hung out with The Amazing Mr. Lifto from the Jim Rodes sideshow. And she turned out just fine!
Either they do a better job of screening apps or just put every single app in the store and let the market decide what’s popular and what’s not instead of Apple. just my 0.2
I’d just like to play devils advocate here for a moment. I see a lot of people bashing Apple for their seemingly random application acceptance policy but to me there is nothing random about the process at all. I think Apple has made it very clearly what apps submitted to the app store should and shouldn’t contain. Now do some apps get in that shouldn’t? Absolutely. Is that because Apple is purposely denying some while allowing similar apps just so they can sit back and laugh and call people fools? Absolutely not. Is it ok to murder somebody just because someone else did and got away with it? Why isn’t there more outrage over our legal systems consistancey!!?? OJ killed somebody and didn’t go to jail so why can’t everyone else!!?? That’s what people who complain about Apples app store management sound like to me. What, like 25,000 apps are available in the app store? Are you freaking kidding me people?? And you expect Apple to never accidentally allow an app and then remove it a week later or to never deny an app and then allow another app with similar functionality a week later? Listen, I understand that there will always be critics and there is nothing wrong with that – if you think Apple is doing a piss poor job of running the App Store that’s certainly your prerogative. Personally, I think Apple is doing an outstanding job, if they weren’t, they wouldn’t have passed 1 billion downloads just recently which completely obliterates any other mobile application store in existence. I do have a special place in my heart (no sarcasm intended) for those developers that are honest victims of honest mistakes but those things do happen. For the others who are upset because they knowingly submitted an app that breaks the rules, are you serious???
Right on, brotha.
Go look at the appstore now. There are hundreds of apps that by their own nebulous standards should probably be removed. Dozens of the top 100 apps in Lifestyle should in theory not pass.
So this is more than just careless oversight. And with apps taking 1-2 weeks to get approved, yes, they should be able to get it right the first time. It’s not like they approve an app in a few minutes and oops, a bad one got out, they have these things for a long time and they look at them inside and out. They catch things like icons and metadata not matching, they dig into the app bundle, so they know exactly what they’re approving.
And as for developers’ frustrations with them, it’s because we are increasingly building a livelihood on this, and in return they not only get 30% of our gross revenue, but if you look at any recent iPhone or Touch add it’s all about the Appstore. “There’s an app for that” is the central message. People are choosing the Touch or the iPhone over competitive devices now in part to the 30,000+ apps it gives them access to–without that it’s a touch screen phone, and there are now several better, cheaper touch screen phones out there if you exclude the capabilities of the underlying OS and the existence of the apps. The Apple Stores have app icons completely covering the windows. So this is the backbone of their marketing strategy for their mobile and music devices. So yes, given what they get in return, expectations in the developer community are high. If I release an app with a bug, I get slammed and take a hit. Likewise when Apple screws up, I’m going to say something. That’s life. And when they screw up, which is often, it has a real and immediate impact on the income of the developers.
In one example, I had an app that apple approved multiple times (multiple updates), but then decided not to and had me change it. For a month I went back and forth with them until finally it passed the magic test. The resulting update infuriated my customers. They all bashed me in reviews saying they wish they had never updated and since then the app’s sales have fallen to almost nothing. And there was nothing actually objectionable in the app, it was an arbitrary decision, but one that had a real financial impact on me.
The irrationality, and questionable motives, is what is my problem. If Apple stated that x apps are not acceptable, fine. That is far from the case. We have to navigate what Apple may be interested as a company in the future, as well as things like porn. Somewhere in the chewy core of usable apps lies the issue. George Carlin would laugh of course.
Maybe we should just develop more fart apps. How about another innocuous flashlight? Get a clue.
I agree. “Need to make a fart noise? There are 15,000 apps for that.” I would not be surprised at all if the 1 billionth app was actually not Bump, but iFart, and they decided, “uhh…let’s got with the 1 billionth and 1 app instead”.
Your devil’s advocate means NOTHING when the very content they cite in the rejection is ALREADY IN THE APPLE STORE. I have no doubt of Apple’s ability to properly deal with app screening on the whole. This one is a huge error and being quite indignant about it is justified.
Wow, I haven’t thought about those Parental Advisory stickers in a long time. I was screwed over many a time by those things at Sam Goody.
I’m not fond of “market solutions”. I’d rather there be some kind of review process, but hopefully they can make it more transparent.
This is extremely common with the appstore. An approved app can be disapproved when you attempt to update it with a minor bug fix or enhancement, even if the content is the same. There is rarely a concrete explanation of what precisely needs to be changed in the app to get it approved–seemingly because they walk a line of being gatekeeper but not wanting to be 100% responsible for the content by saying what is okay and what is not okay. It’s a censorship system with very few published guidelines.
And there is growing level of hypocrisy, almost misogynistic at times. For example it’s okay to have an app that shows a cartoon character’s asshole open as it farts; it’s also okay to strip a woman down to her underwear with your finger (as dozens of apps now do); but yesterday we had an app rejected because amongst all the sounds there was one provocative “oh yeah” in woman’s voice. So it’s okay to write an app that allows anyone over 12 to strip off a woman’s clothes, but the sound of her expressing pleasure is obscene.
The explicit version of “Closer” is available in the iTunes store. Uh, Apple, what’s the difference? Why are there different standards for iTunes and iPhone apps? Are iPhone users less adult?
We have developed an app for a label who has music in the store. The video in the app has some bad words on it. We’re waiting for a nice rejection, however Apple doesn’t feel that such niceties are warranted. Maybe we’ll just go away.
More anti-Apple BS from TechCrunch and the PC gamer/haters, most of whom know very well why the app was rejected when the music is available on iTunes. For those who can’t figure it out, here it is: iTunes has parental controls tied to song ratings. The app store does not. There are many parents in America who don’t want little Tommy or Susie listening to: “I want to f**k you like an animal.” Some of them might sue Apple if that happened. 35% of the American population call themselves Evangelical Christians.
As more cellphone makers get into the app business, an independent rating system will be needed something like the movie rating system.
Ahhh…. Sensorship…. Does anyone remember Apple’s 1984 commercial? Apple vs the mainstream companies (IBM at that time) that are trying to control everything?
At one point or another, someone is going to spend the money and sue Apple for their business practices when it comes to their app store. They control the content on it but provide no clear guidelines on what can be done and what can’t. They play favorites (see Google’s app for using API to determine if the phone is raised to the user’s mouth or not – Apple does not allow usage of that API). They contradict themselves with some of their app approvals and denials. And most of all, they sensor what can be published and what can not.
How is this any different from Microsoft? Apple always complained about the browser being built into Windows yet their browser is built into the iPhone and they are not allowing any other browsers to be sold. Applications are being denied because they copy functionality of apps on the iPhone itself or “planned” functionality. But it is Apple doing it and, sorry for the wording, but their shit does not stink. Theirs smells like roses.
The biggest problem with all of this is that the App Developers do not say anything because then they will get cut off and they will lose a source of income.
BTW, that album is sold on iTunes so what is the issue with the content? I can buy it using iTunes on my iPhone but I can not listen to it on NIN’s app?
I don’t feel quite so bad now, my app got rejected twice for “objectionable content” as well (despite there being 4 apps with identical content on the App Store already). The funny thing is the screenshots they sent me back as evidence were pretty mild:
http://jarin.po...-offending-fmls
Trent’s first mistake was using Apple products, being blind to their censorship (or thinking it wouldn’t affect him since he’s so popular).
The Downward Spiral is one of the best. Each song is a gem. The album as a whole is one of the most influential albums of all time.
I’m glad Apple banned it.
People will take note and consider Apple-alternatives, like the coming Android phones.
We are going to do just that! I have used Apple products my entire computing life from the Apple II and am furious.No, I am f-ing furious.
I have to review the Cupcake options for media control. Ironically, we may be able to create a better product by moving out of the iPhone ecosystem. The interaction stuff needs to be brought up to speed though. Crossing fingers!
Apple really does not seem to know what its doing when it comes to the approval process. What they should do is make the concrete outlines and post them somewhere where everyone can read them. That would help them and help the developers. Then when an app is submitted they can go through it again.
Also, they should clearly specify the reason for removing an app. Like that thing with the baby shaking or something like that: I though that was hilarious, but some people found it offensive. So what they should do is when you mark something as offensive then the app would be gone for you but it would not remove the app for everyone.
on My twiiter on April 11th
”
“is wondering if NIN iPhone app will aproved fast by Apple with so many f*ck words in lyrics
yawn
The App approval process reminds me of a similar application system: applying for a trademark registration from the US Patent and Trademark Office. When I used to represent clients in sending in their applications, I really had little idea what would happen, as trademarks that should have sailed through according to the law were rejected, and others that were “on the fence” might go right through. At my site, our recent application had been approved, but was then pulled and sat on a supervisor’s desk for 6 months. They couldn’t give me a reasonable explanation why.
It’s not a good sign when a for-profit corporation’s performance mimics the federal government.
Apple really needs to get this more consistent, or the iPhone as a platform will suffer in the long run.
apple has always tried to keep a pg rated attitude. i’m surprised they let those bikini apps on there. it’s not right, but that’s how it is. hopefully they will make a way to get mature apps. there’s deffinitly a market for it.
Our company’s iPhone app was rejected. It was called iCok and let Apple fanboys service their iPhones in ways that until now only existed in their fantasies. Luckily, with a quick port to the 5800 and Symbian’s rigid, well defined approval process and complete abstention from subjective judgements, Nokia fanboys will soon know the gratification of full-release haptic feedback.
Cool, some more high profile customers and Apple will have to change it’s approval policies. I totally in with NIN. You cannot select a book if it contains sexual references..Sidney Sheldon anyone? It depends on the customers. The customers are old enough to know what’s good for them and what’s not. Apple don’t have to act like the big mommy. There should be approval policies and they should be clearly defined.
good one…..
http://www.ipho...ogs/mobile.html