Rotten Apple
The iTunes App Store approval process continues to be a complete debacle, and this week managed to ruffle the feathers of someone slightly more famous than the average developer: Nine Inch Nails leader Trent Reznor. When Apple rejected an update to his official Nine Inch Nails iPhone app (who knew there was such a thing?), the reason given was "objectionable content" -- more specifically, access to a podcast containing songs from the one-man band's 1994 album The Downward Spiral. Sure, the album contains a hefty helping of profanity, but as some folks have pointed out, the album is available on iTunes. If that's not proof enough of how absurd, arbitrary and nonsensical the App Store approval process is, consider the fact that one of the apps Apple did give the thumbs-up to this week is a striptease game called "Peekababe." Whose definition of the word "objectionable" are we working with here? As you can imagine, Reznor wasn't exactly thrilled with Cupertino, and so he unleashed an expletive-laden tirade on the NIN forums in which he compared Apple to Walmart. Ouch. Well, it looks like if you're loud, angry and famous enough, Apple will listen, because as I'm writing this, news is that the app has been approved. Yay, Internet!