It’s no surprise that Apple’s approval and rejection process for iPhone apps can be completely arbitrary and often asinine. Take Wobble iBoobs, for instance: the application has been on the market for several months and has even earned about $300,000 in sales, but after Apple “recently received numerous complaints” from customers, the app was pulled. The best part? This app didn’t even contain any questionable content — certainly not a first for an app store rejection.
What Wobble iBoobs did was simple: you take an image of your choice (say, a bikini-clad girl from Safari on iPhone), mark the boobs within the app, shake your phone and watch them bounce and wobble. That’s it. It didn’t contain any porn, there were no preloaded images and it was on the market long enough to make more than pocket change.
Naturally, the developer was ticked and sent us the official response from Apple:
Dear Glentwood pty ltd,
The App Store continues to evolve, and as such, we are constantly refining our guidelines. Your application, Wobble iBoobs (Premium Uncensored), contains content that we had originally believed to be suitable for distribution. However, we have recently received numerous complaints from our customers about this type of content, and have changed our guidelines appropriately.
We have decided to remove any overtly sexual content from the App Store, which includes your application.
Thank you for your understanding in this matter. If you believe you can make the necessary changes so that Wobble iBoobs (Premium Uncensored) complies with our recent changes, we encourage you to do so and resubmit for review.
Sincerely,
iPhone App Review
So, the iPhone App Review team originally believed it was suitable for distribution, then changed its mind without first notifying the developer? Sounds about par for the course in iPhone dev land. Bye-bye application, tough luck developer.
What really irritates me is that these stories can fly all over the Internet, but ultimately Apple doesn’t budge or change its stance. Developers and customers alike are lambasting Apple’s proclivity for frivolous app rejections, but Apple just turns the other cheek. Do I think the process will change? Probably not. Can it change? Maybe if we get a large enough crowd with torches and pitchforks.