Apple’s Phil Schiller: Yes, the App Store approval process is far from perfect

Written on 12:53 AM by Mujtaba

In rare public outing, Apple’s marketing honcho defends Apple’s approval policy, rejecting accusations that the company demanded a developer to censor swear words in an already mature-rated dictionary app. While the executive admitted that the approval process “may not always be perfect,” he insisted that Apple’s “efforts are always made with the best intentions.”

Phil Schiller stunned Apple watchers by openly responding to a highly by Daring Fireball’s John Gruber, published Tuesday, accusing Apple of censoring the Ninjawords Dictionary app . Gruber asserted that Apple required , the developer behind the $2 app, to censor swear words despite the fact that Ninjawords carried a 17+rating.

Developers describe Ninjawords as “fast, quick, and deadly accurate,” unlike the “slow and cluttered” dictionaries in the App Store that “all use the same bad data source (WordNet) for their definitions”. Rather than being a simple front-end for online dictionaries, Ninjawords works completely offline, leveraging a built-in database derived from , an open, constantly-changing free online dictionary source. In addition, the program at no point refreshes its internal database wirelessly in order to avoid providing access to “unfiltered Internet content,” a common reason why benign apps like Twitter clients get 17+ ratings.

To make a long story short, Apple emailed developers screenshots of the app with specifically highlighted four-letter swear words apparently demanding they purge this “objectionable content” despite the fact that the app was already rated 17+. This enraged Gruber who wrote that “Apple requires you to be 17 years or older to purchase a censored dictionary that omits half the words Steve Jobs uses every day.”

Two days after this rant, no other than Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing Phil Schiller emails Gruber. The message revealed, for the first time ever, some of the principles guiding the App Store approval process.

Schiller wrote that Apple initially rejected the app over “more vulgar terms than those found in traditional and common dictionaries, words that many reasonable people might find upsetting or objectionable,” arguing that a number of offensive “urban slang” terms are nowhere to be found in other popular dictionaries.

He also denied Gruber’s censorship allegations, stressing that Apple at no point censored content or required developers to remove references to common swear words.

Instead, Schiller wrote, Apple suggested resubmitting the app after iPhone OS 3.0 came out so it could carry a 17+ rating. Developers instead cleaned up Ninjawords of vulgar terms, rushing the app to the market ahead of the iPhone OS 3.0 release.

The most recent version gained 17+ rating, taking advantage of new parental features of the iPhone OS 3.0.

“Ninjawords application should not have needed to be censored while also receiving a 17+ rating, but that was a result of the developers’ actions, not Apple’s,” Schiller wrote in his email.

Gruber confirmed this with developers who said they decided to screen objectionable words themselves so they could release the app ahead of the iPhone OS 3.0’s release. “Given the options of censoring or sitting on the side lines while our competitors ate our lunch, we chose to launch,” Matchstick Software told Gruber. Schiller closed his email by highlighting Apple’s App Store approval philosophy:

Apple’s goals remain aligned with customers and developers — to create an innovative applications platform on the iPhone and iPod touch and to assist many developers in making as much great software as possible for the iPhone App Store. While we may not always be perfect in our execution of that goal, our efforts are always made with the best intentions, and if we err we intend to learn and quickly improve.

Christian’s Opinion

Did Apple just publicly admit they may have made mistakes rejecting some apps after all? Schiller’s email is extremely rare example of Apple commenting publicly on their actions. For the company of Apple’s stature to react publicly–and to a blog post, not a New York Times piece– could only mean that someone there thought this could snowball into a PR nightmare. At the end of the day, a lot has been said and written about the App Store approval policy so far and lots more will be written in the future–not because people are tremendously worried over the issue but due to iPhone’s tremendous popularity that undeservedly earns such benign cases headlines.

And while we’re at the App Store approval policy, pressuring Apple into revealing the App Store review criteria publicly will yield no results whatsoever. Remember, Apple likes to fully control the user experience. Being able to bend own rules at own discretion in order to protect own interests and interests of users is of utmost importance to Apple. You could call such policy fascist but it has been successfully keeping ill-intended, lawsuit-potential software off the App Store.

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