Please rate this Government before you delete it.
PullMyFinger, an iPhone app, has been recently accepted into the iPhone App Store. Writes the creator:
[Apple] told me that they are going to start approving a whole new “genre” of apps, and that Pull My Finger will be the first to be accepted in this genre. As of now Pull My Finger is available in the app store.
The very kind Apple Team Member told me that they didn’t want to reject it originally, but that they were sorting out how this “genre” of apps were going to be handled. She told me they’d be lifting the restriction on them, and more apps will follow that may have been previously not allowed.
Let’s pause for a moment to reflect on the founding document of our App Store Constitution and to remember those who gave at least fifteen minutes of their precious lives to make a program that lets you make farting noises.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Apps are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Revenue. That to secure these rights, Programming Teams are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the project designer, — That whenever any Form of App Store becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the Programmers to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new App Store, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that App Stores long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such App Store, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Programmers; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Apple is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these Developers. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has forbidden his Programmers to pass Programs of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Programs for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the App Store, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
Let freedom ring, friends. Let it ring from every hillside, every dell, every corner of every city. Free at last, free at last, sweet Lord Almighty we are free at last.
I think Pull My Finger is great. I only wish you could click the icons and make the fart sounds rather than the way they have it now. Then, I would be able to make music with farts!
Great, now a fart is the sound that is going to come to mind when I think of the word “freedom”…
…so in essence the app got rejected because Apple didn’t have time for it.
Secret first draft of the Pull My Finger rejection letter:
We don’t know where to put your app. We have tens of thousands of apps to review, we can’t leave you hanging until we do figure out where to put it, and we certainly can’t give the impression that we’re in over our heads, so: Rejection with a lame excuse.
We’ll choose: Inappropriate.
You know the excuse is lame, we know it’s lame, but we are forbidden to discuss future plans, so I can’t tell you that submitting the app again later will get you in… so you must toil until you figure it out yourself.
We do this so our competitors can’t steal the subtle nuances in the way we’ll implement the features of a new or improved product or service (and not to kill our current product or service). Our policy: Deny, deny, deny. If that doesn’t work, we spout the company line: We don’t discuss unreleased products or services.
If you try again and again, you will eventually find that there’s a category for your app, and an acceptance letter in your inbox. Your reward for trusting that we’d do the right thing eventually, even if we have to do it in an asstastic way, will be owning your category, at least for a while.
I agree the yurinator, but I found one called “Excuse Me,” which lets you push them at will all on the same screen. I guess they’ll be adding some more features soon too, but we’ll have to see. :)
The ease of 1-click purchasing is not a good thing for me.. I’ve already tried a few of the fart apps, including the PMFinger and excuseMe ones you guys are talking about. There are some cool features out there like timers and vibrate, but the excuseMe one had more realistic sounds and that makes the gag more fun for me at least.
When you think of freedom, Akuma, I hope the fart noises play the national anthem :D