Hot on the heels of the Great iPhone Baby-Shaking App Debacle of 2009 we have another example of the crack Apple iPhone App Review Team in action. Alkali Media, a little programming shop run by three college grads, decided to make a crude soundboard and entitled it, fittingly, CrudeBox. The app had a number of clever sounds including, but not limited to, farting, peeing, burping, and a “sproing” sound to simulate the male member reaching tumescence. Unfortunately, all of this was a too much for Apple’s App Review team. Alkali writes:
Apparently the seemingly tame soundboard, bodily sound effect application was far too offensive for Apple’s strict moral guidelines. We unanimously agreed that maybe it was the female orgasm sound that set the app over the edge. The orgasm was replaced with a cartoon-like spring sound. The kind you hear when a male cartoon character finds himself awkwardly aroused. The application was submitted a second time. Seven Days later we received word that once again Crudebox was too obscene and offensive for the iTunes App Store. After moving past the inevitable feeling of frustration towards Apple, we decided to poke some fun at Apple’s app approval team. What if we were to submit the same sounds as before, except this time around we make the app look extra flamboyant and change the name to the ironically appropriate, Prudebox?
Eight days later we would received an e-mail from Apple stating that our recently submitted application, Prudebox, has passed the approval process and is now ready for sale. After a name change, and an overtly flamboyant reskin of the application (complete with a pink bunny and a a fleeting sunset), we were able to get our app approved. To this day, we’re still questioning what sort of quality assurance is in place for Apple’s quality assurance team. I’m sure you can only imagine what other quality apps you’ve been missing out on thanks to Apple’s ever-so-stringent approval process.
So now you can download PrudeBox without complaint. But CrudeBox, obviously, was too much.
What can we ascertain from this? Clearly the review process happens on a desktop – as evidenced by the failure of the team to notice that the Shake-a-Baby app kills a baby when you physically shake the iPhone – and that the team is probably so overwhelmed that outright but light profanity (“Pissing” appeared in CrudeBox) in a UI is automatically dinged while visual cues like sunshine and bunnies gets the nod. In short, the review team is run by pre-schoolers who love violence (iShoot is a great app and is rightly considered one of the best but it does involve blowing things up with nukes) but don’t like pee pees.
Perhaps we should do a kill-the-baby app set in a land of woodland sprites and fluffy bunnies? When you shake the phone, the bunnies will eat a bunch of babies and rainbows will appear. Then the app will fart. Anyone know any good programmers?
Update: MobileCrunch’s take on the story
funny, John :)
Hahaha… so, that is how Apple apps team works. “Perhaps we should do a kill-the-baby app set in a land of woodland sprites and fluffy bunnies? When you shake the phone, the bunnies will eat a bunch of babies and rainbows will appear.” – Awesome idea. Go ahead. Full support for you guaranteed.
LOL … Alice in wonderland maybe? ;-)
we can kill but we can not fart and in the end we will explode ;(
Ok we can look at this type of thing and go the app approval team is stupid but face it, they are going through heaps of apps and day and a app that is acutally worth while doesn’t have problems. It normally these stupid little apps that have trouble getting approved because lets face it they are stupid and apple don’t want that.
And this situation is just like calling a airline company trying to cancel your ticket because your mother is sick. The woman/man might turn you down but you ring again and do the exact same thing and they might let you have it. It depends on the person and what react they get from it at first.
Being overwhelmed is no justification for Apple’s arbitrary and capricious app approval process.
Even before the app store launched, Apple’s manual approval process was problematic. It should have been clear to everyone at Apple that they needed to address this issue by putting a better process in place.
One possible approach would be to add an “unapproved” category to the app store, that all new apps are automatically put into. By requireing users to “opt in” to this category via a disclaimer, Apple could remove themselves from any legal liability, while crowdsourcing out the responsibility for testing new apps to actual iPhone users. (E.g. apps in this category could have “Flag as …” options in addition to the usual rating widget)
This would reduce Apple’s costs and overhead. It would minimize the time-to-market required for developers to get apps out. It would provide more rigorous testing of apps. And, finally, it would provide a means for developers to do *real* beta testing.
But it really isn’t a problem as it is. Who cares if a few apps that make stupid sounds don’t get through. Any app that has any potential is going to make it through because apple want quality apps on the app store.
It would be great if that was true. But unfortunately all of these nonsense apps also have the effect of clogging the pipes for legitimate apps. We’ve been waiting a month for approval of VoiceCentral (our Google Voice app).
“Not a problem”? Care to tell that to the countless app developers complaining about this non-existent problem?
what’s with farting in apps anyway?
@Nick
When fart & baby-shaking apps get a green light — and genuinely valuable/useful apps get rejected and delayed for mysterious reasons — the criticism is totally valid.
Very valid indeed. I would suggest that Apple seriously looks into its apps approval process. High time the approval team is given a wake up call.
You also need a wake up call, stating the obvious in the comments is moronic.
Absolutley,domestic violence runs rampant in this country why put this idea into peoples heads and give those that find this amusing the tool to practice violent child rearing.
Please dont assume people are so stupid an iPhone app gives somebody the idea that shaking a real baby is healthy and funny.
There are idiots out there that shake babies without any iphone app encouraging them. Just stupidity.
I would think this has more to do with the complexity and sophistication of the software too…it may take longer to test
seriously, no big deal. it’s a good thing apple has an approval process anyway. After all, it’s not like it was a super-wow app. it’s another copy of another copy of another ripoff of a fart app; why don’t you feature some innovative apps for a change (are there any?)
I agree that the approval process is great. People think twice before submitting apps, for one. Unfortunately, the process backfires when you get into capricious situations like this.
Its bad enough that now we have to think about going places a having to listen to childish fart noises but the idiot that came up with shaking babies and the irresponsibility of Apple to approve of this app is beyond me. While they are at it they might as well come up with an app that you can abuse the hell out of women.So much for the new powerful tools such as the i phone.
Don’t forget that Apple takes a pretty signifcant cut of the revenue for these apps. Therefore, there’s no valid reason why they can’t have a more transparent and equitable process for screening submissions. Regardless of the merits, there’s something to be said about a process that allows a wholly offensive app like BabyShaker pass through AND refuses a college humor app twice, then seemingly approves it after a reskin and naming.
Sad that the process seems so random; they really need to get some strict consistent guidelines in place.
Perhaps it wasn’t the sounds which the reviewers found offensive in the first place?
Note the “reskinned” application has actually changed a lot of the names of the sounds to less obscene versions…
Burp -> Belch
Vomit -> Sicky
Peeing -> Piddle
Fart -> Toot
Wet Fart -> Big Toot
Not to mention “Crude” -> “Prude”. Crude is basically giving them an explicit reason to fail the app. Because it is admittedly “crude”.
My guess is that the words were failing the app, not the sounds. This would be consistent with the app review teams judgements and would mean that the review process is actually doing what it’s supposed to.
Why do people think they have rights but Apple doesn’t? There are other outlets for apps. Shake it off.
Come on John, tell us the truth. Weren’t there other sounds that you submitted in the original one? A sound sexual in nature?
our app, AudioMicro, is full of over 500 effects and had no prob getting through with sproings, farts, human noises, etc. it may be a lot about the packaging and what side of the bed the reviewer woke up on that day
A minor suggestion/enhancement…
After eating the babies, have the bunnies fart.
why don’t we just make it like windows..no restrictions… you can have what ever you want.. and let’s just let it crash all the time! cause that is way better!
no thanks, I will take stability and deal with a little bit of complication
Your sarcasm has backfired; I, for one, would prefer a little random crashing with freedom to less freedom… and still crashing (because everything crashes at some point)
Good lord, NONE of the discussed apps should have been approved. They are disgraceful! I am so glad that Apple is taking the lead in deciding what we are allowed to use our phones for. AT&T should also be filtering out more of this disgraceful garbage.
Frankly it’s about time that Microsoft, Dell, HP etc took some level of responsibility for the sinful garbage on our computers. We should be prevented from downloading what we want onto those devices as well. 3 cheers for Apple for getting the ball rolling!
and that is what windows mobile is for ;)
personally the elimination of “naughty” software is not really the point… I am guessing that a tester took the approval process as a personal subjective view rather than a utilitarian view however the fact that the software is being inspected before delivery especially to protect consumers from less than quality programming is an important part of Apple keeping the things safe in “Iphone Land” I for one appreciate the having a semblance of testing before I let happy hacker into my Iphone.
I feel the pain. We recently had an app rejected because a song title (buried in the album credits) contained the phrase “lick balls”.
*The reason Apple gave was the app “contains pornography”.
This shows that perseverance will sometimes win out. You should never quit, keep the repetition of submitting going on, never know whose desk it will fall on.
In fact it is like farting-repetitious to the point of recognition. Hey! Who F………
:)
hii….how r u?
…and people wonder why I opted for Android
I have had a similarly bad experience. I created a sound board app three months ago. I submitted it and did not get any feedback when it was rejected. I had to log in to Apples iTunes Connect to see that they had rejected it. I have tried following up via email and they do not respond. What can you do? I would just like a reason!
I will take the same approach and resubmit it under a different name and see how it goes!
We had a surprisingly pleasant experience when submitting Snap!t Photo Mail which allows you to instantly upload photos and have them printed and mailed to you or anyone of your choosing directly from your iPhone.
We’ve been through the same fiasco. Apple enters into murky waters when they try to take the moral high ground.
You can read about our experience of multiple submissions for our translation tool here: http://www.lingopal.com/blog/page/2/
I have a similar problem. We submitted a free APP only for it to be rejected. I’ve tried to contact the review team via email but nothing. I only discovered it was rejected by logging in to itunes connect. We then tried to resubmit it again but it is still rejected and still now news from Apple to explain why.
Does anyone have any advice how I can possible find out why the App would be rejected? At this rate I’m going to miss by delivery date.
Maybe the review team should be more concerned with code integrity and less concerned about content except for blatantly immoral apps. Why would it be OK to have a shooting game app or a tank app but not OK for a pesky language app. Do you really want a new nanny? The app, any app should be reasonably expected to not crash the device and let the consumer make the choice of whether the content is worth installing except for blatant moral issues. The moral issues could be dealt with by having a “not reviewed or endorsed” application section. Good golly apple, grow up! It is the 21st century for crying out loud.
I agree with Bart. This review process should be to ensure the code works and that there is no malicious intent in regards to the hardware. For all of you people who actually agree that they should block certain content based on moral objectivity, maybe you should try to think for yourself and decide what you should and should not see. If you find an app offensive, dont use it. Why is it that society wants to leave their choices up to someone else? Are you not capable of making a simple decision? Do you have no moral compass? And if you do, why the heck are you using the internet with all of the free access to pornography and “objectional” content?! I for one enjoy total freedom to use any application of my choosing. I can think for myself and I like to make my own choices. I use a Windows Mobile phone. Not because I cant afford an iphone, but because i like to be the one to decide what i can use on the device for which I paid my hard earned money. I will not have someone else tell me what is good for me and what is right, and what is wrong. What is going to be next? Rejecting a religious book because it might offend someone else?! Maybe I am wrong for enjoying my freedom and using the free will that God gave to me to make my own moral choices, but the difference is that I have that choice.
Now I want to know how far back in the other direction you could take PrudeBox and still get approved. Could you change the name back to CrudeBox? Get rid of the bunny? Set the buttons back to slime? Or just one icon? No matter where the tipping point is, I bet it would be hilarious.
Dude, I don’t understand why apple got into the business of taste and decency. We should be able to choose what we want or don’t want on our iphone, not apple. A friend told me about the process for their app (name game- libertymobile.ca) and it sounds completely arbitrary. Check out their app though, it makes you laugh and is fun when you’re out for drinks.
Apple caters to folks like myself that apreciate a stable, easy to use platform that does 99% of what I need it to do. They understand that freedom is sometimes the ability to choose resonable boundarys for the value that those boundaries provide. You also have the freedom to use a windows mobile device…unfortunately the apps available are not quite as stable or easy to use… Hmm must be their easy apis or maybe their impeccable quality control? But it’s probably the freedom to do what you like that makes win mobile the true iPhone killer!