Copyright 2004 by M. Uli Kusterer Fri, 29 Nov -1901 11:06:32 GMT Comments on article blog-apple-shouldnt-censor at Zathras.de http://www.zathras.de/angelweb/blog-apple-shouldnt-censor.htm witness_dot_of_dot_teachtext_at_gmx_dot_net (M. Uli Kusterer) witness_dot_of_dot_teachtext_at_gmx_dot_net (M. Uli Kusterer) en-us http://www.zathras.de/angelweb/blog-apple-shouldnt-censor.htm#comment4 http://www.zathras.de/angelweb/blog-apple-shouldnt-censor.htm#comment4 Uli Kusterer writes:
Jonathan, if he's up front and says it didn't cure cancer, I'd see it as a joke. Like the app with the 'DWIM' button. Both are things that are quite obviously not possible. Humour is subjective, so particularly in that class of application, I'd expect Apple to step back and just let people have their fun.

The transition from humour to gaming the system is fluid. Apple could always put up 'potential scam' warnings, but taking apps out of the store is, IMHO, a bad choice. There'll soon be enough apps on the store that it'll be easy for Apple to just 'bury' an app by not including it on any of the featured pages. They can de-value dubious apps in their search engine. They could require apps they don't like to provide their own hosting and do a checksum verification that the file hasn't been modified.

But considering the huge potential for false positives, I'd rather they leave all of these in than take them out.
http://www.zathras.de/angelweb/blog-apple-shouldnt-censor.htm#comment3 http://www.zathras.de/angelweb/blog-apple-shouldnt-censor.htm#comment3 Jonathan Wight writes:
Maybe you're more optimistic than I am about human nature. I know the question of what is art is subjective, one person's art is another person's junk, but this reeks of scam to me. And I think the author is laughing at all the folks defending this application.

Let's say I release an AppStore app for $1000 that has a "Cure Cancer" button. Let's say I'm up front about it too and don't actually claim any guarantee that it'll cure your cancer. Would I be scamming the AppStore users or not?
http://www.zathras.de/angelweb/blog-apple-shouldnt-censor.htm#comment2 http://www.zathras.de/angelweb/blog-apple-shouldnt-censor.htm#comment2 Uli Kusterer writes:
Jonathan, the author actually claimed on his web site that this was a piece of art. And it *is* a painting of a gem that's displayed, and it's not un-pretty. I wouldn't pay $1000 for it myself, but then, there are photo prints (also easily replicated) at similar price points sold by photographers.

And I don't see why this would be a scam either. He's very up-front about what the app does, or rather doesn't, do. And if you think the $999 price point was engineered to look like $9.99, then Apple would have a simple fix: Put up a warning dialog before letting users buy apps whose price point exceeds a certain limit.
http://www.zathras.de/angelweb/blog-apple-shouldnt-censor.htm#comment1 http://www.zathras.de/angelweb/blog-apple-shouldnt-censor.htm#comment1 Jonathan Wight writes:
We're not talking a work of art. We're not talking a rare comic book. We're not talking $1000 of labour towards setting up a new Mac. There is no concept of limited supply forcing the price of this App high. Instead the developer arbitrarily picked the price point.

This isn't even a $1000 equivalent of a pet rock. At best this is a publicity stunt for the developer. At worst this is the developer trying to scam AppStore users out of $1000.