solarbird | Addenda to the Apple post

Please read ETAs below. Thanks!

For those not willing to telephone - and I recommend telephoning before emailing -

[Go] to apple.com/feedback, and put in a complaint at the bottom where there's a section for "software". Don't click on "store request," click on "itunes..." "Feedback about..." is a pulldown menu; click 'other', and then put in the comment.

The person

pocketnaomi talked to said doing both will help - consider it the bonus round.

Useful phone fodder: if you use the Apple store search function with the word "peekaboo," you get a bunch of children's games - and this. That's gonna go over well with parents.

I had an anonymous commenter - not unscreened, sorry - opine that I needed to "Chill the FUCK out," insisting that "Theres no hate going on here", and added that they bet "a tranny or drag queen created the goddamn app." Which is no doubt all part of why the developer's corporate twitter feed's latest tweet at 12:05 today (28 October 2010) is a link to a presumably "hilarious" photo of "some tranny" who "[fell] down an elevator shaft."

eta:

rdi suggests citing the following sections of Apple's store policies for applications approval:

Section 14.1 (Personal Attacks) says Any app that is defamatory, offensive, mean-spirited, or likely to place the targeted individual or group in harms way will be rejected.

Section 16.1 (Objectionable Content) says Apps that present excessively objectionable or crude content will be rejected.

Section 19.1 (Religion, culture, and ethnicity) says Apps containing references or commentary about a religious, cultural or ethnic group that are defamatory, offensive, mean-spirited or likely to expose the targeted group to harm or violence will be rejected.

Also, Apple has a Diversity Policy, which includes the statement As an Apple employee you are expected to be respectful of the diverse backgrounds of all employees, temporary agency workers, independent contractors, customers, clients and vendors. Approving this this for sale app doesn't seem to be in line with this policy.

eta2: Can you still see the application in iTunes? We could as of this morning but are getting reports that it's being withdrawn from store servers, and I don't see it anymore myself; see comments for first report. It seems to have started disappearing sometime after 8:30am Pacific time, North America. Is it still findable for you?

And if it is gone, what should happen now? I'd personally hope that whoever approved this gets a good talking to. I don't want them fired or anything; I'd just like somebody to go, "what the hell you thinkin'?" at whoever it was.

eta3: Thanks to

kirbyk for finding an announcement (from GLAAD, but it'll do) confirming that Apple did in fact respond to complaints and pull down the application. Again, if you're going to have a 'walled garden' approach to apps, you'd better pay attention to what you let over that wall. An open environment would've kept Apple out of this mess entirely.

Hi, all you awfully large number of people! I'm normally a musician, and I'm working on my first album. (My official band site, such as it is, is here, and if that's having net issues again, our music is actually hosted over here, on Bandcamp, and they have lots of bandwidth. Give a listen, if you like.) I'm trying to keep on top of comments and things while working on my music, but I'm going to be playing catch-up in waves. So if your comment doesn't appear for a few hours, that's why; I'm quite busy. Try to keep Apple at least as busy as I am, OK? XD