This is exactly why I switched to Android a year ago.
Smartphones are not trivial consumer electronics devices: they are sophisticated computers, and increasingly are our primary portals to the wider world. Any central authority that governs what you are and are not allowed to do with your smartphone is thus an incredibly powerful political actor. It would be scary enough if such an actor were governed by the democratic state, which had at least some theoretical accountability to the general population. Apple, however, does not have even the pretence of that kind of accountability.
I'm somebody who has publicly castigated RMS for being an alarmist and a zealot, but here I have to agree with him 100%: this is an issue with profoundly negative implications for the development of a healthy and democratic civil society. If walled gardens like this are going to become increasingly dominant, then I honestly fear for the future.
"which had at least some theoretical accountability to the general population. Apple, however, does not have even the pretence of that kind of accountability."
Apple, like any for profit business, is certainly accountable to the market. I'm indifferent [1] to this app but maybe so many people are outraged that Apple reconsiders lest it's brand or market share suffer. Again I doubt that's going to happen. For one, this app works perfectly as a web app. If Apple were to start blocking the web I think I might join you and head for another platform but I don't see them doing that.
[1] I have a certain tolerance for crudeness and so I'm fine with this app but let's imagine there's a whole "morbid app tracking" section of the app store. Serial killers trackers, Rapes Near Me, etc. Is that something Apple wants to encourage? Probably not.
> Apple, like any for profit business, is certainly accountable to the market. I'm indifferent [1] to this app but maybe so many people are outraged that Apple reconsiders lest it's brand or market share suffer. Again I doubt that's going to happen. For one, this app works perfectly as a web app. If Apple were to start blocking the web I think I might join you and head for another platform but I don't see them doing that.
This is not a good argument. Public pressure for apps of this kind will always be relatively low, so other interests will almost always take precedence, which means that states can effectively use their leverage to block undesirable content with minimal consequences. It is effectively a form of soft censorship.
"Pressure for apps of this kind" sort of gives away that game that no one really cares about this Drones+ app.
Let me tell you if Apple started featuring an App that let you dress up Obama in racist costumes there would be crowds and boycotts and stores would stop carrying their products and their stock would quickly approach the value of their cash on hand and property. Yes Apple is accountable to the public, full stop.
As a matter of principle I consider it wrong that a company that has absolute control on a market exerts its influence on political grounds that effectively stifle freedom of the press. Whether it gets one complaint of a million is not relevant to the question. Ask yourself what would happen if this was the case of ISPs blocking access to a website of the same sort.
A large number of people happen to select the iPhone over alternatives. That does not mean Apple loses the right to design the iPhone.
Shopping malls get to reject tenants. Store owners get to reject products. Store owners also get to make loud religious and political statements (Forever 21 anyone?). Nobody owes you disinterested businesses or general purpose computing.
I agree that its erosion is dangerous, which is why my last smartphone was a Motorola Droid 3. It had superior specs and more freedom, but after a couple of months, revealed itself to be absolute crap. At the end of the day I took the tightly integrated and polished walled garden over what was at that point bloated, buggy abandonware, and it's one of the best electronics purchasing decisions I've ever made. I consider it wrong that people believe this option shouldn't even be available to consumers.
Same goes for software freedom. I would move from OSX to Ubuntu, from Creative Suite to GIMP, and from Office to Libre/Neo/OpenOffice in a heartbeat if either of those products served my needs effectively. I have tried them all, and they don't.
It's great that the anti-Apple crowd continues to make noise. Consumers should know what they're getting into, and I hope the Android ecosystem develops a high-quality, mature, stable, non-gimmicky product. But handset manufacturers are not last-mile infrastructure. Consumers have a choice. Popularity != absolute control.
Microsoft let anyone run software on its OS but was alleged to have deliberately hobbled 3rd party code only if it competed with Internet Explorer. You can't freely run 3rd party code within the OS of a Garmin GPS, either, but you'd laugh if I called Garmin an illegal monopoly on routing algorithms for Garmin GPSes.
My point is, every major design decision at Microsoft now has to go through their legal department to ensure it won't run afoul of any consent decrees. Over the past few years, much of the design process at Microsoft has taken place in a courtroom.
I believe they've only recently been released from the original Netscape antitrust sanctions.
You're assuming Apple is exerting it's influence on political grounds as opposed to simply thinking the app has failed their taste guidelines. I've seen a number of comments suggesting the same thing or that they are buckling to government pressure but without evidence all of that amounts to little more then conspiracy theory mongering.
"Whether it gets one complaint of a million is not relevant to the question"
It's certainly relevant, the force of numbers is how pressure is exerted both in the market and in democracy. I'm sure there's a few people outraged that white power apps aren't in the app store. The key word is "few" as in generally, no one gives a fuck. Nearly every argument slamming Apple over Drones+ seems just as effective when restated for white power political party apps. IMHO that's a sign something's wrong with those arguments.
"if this was the case of ISPs blocking access to a website"
I've already talked about this above. I don't see these as remotely equivalent.
As soon as you start censoring certain kinds of information (whether it's a topical news aggegrator mashup or anti-gay propaganda ... or both) you are taking a political stance. Period. Censorship means you stop being neutral.
Now whether this stance exerts any meaningful influence on society and public opinion, largely depends on the public mindshare this entity has.
You are arguing the wrong way around and attacking straw men of "conspiracy theory mongering". Please go and reply to those actual comments that say these things, if they are there, you can probably find them all the way below on the page, downvoted by the Apple fanboi and electronic freedom proponent alike.
And not particularly as a reply to you, I thought I'd look up Freedom of Speech, see what it exactly means. I thought, for something to become a Freedom-of-Speech (Human Rights) issue, you need to have a political entity that enforces it (such as the imaginary claim made by your straw men). But it seems to be a bit broader than that:
Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted in 1948, states that:
"Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers."
I highlighted those two parts. "Through any media" means that, if this app would also get refused by the Android platform, the author is practically prevented from using the medium "smartphone app" to impart his message. Fortunately, Android is open (even if their app market would reject it). That does (IMVPO) not make it right for Apple, because they do nothing to preserve this freedom, it exists despite their actions, not unhindered because of it.
The "regardless of frontiers" part, not entirely serious, I know that it refers to geopolitical frontiers, but it could be easily extended to the walls of Apple's "walled garden": what it means to say is that you should be able to freely impart your information from Nation X to Nation Y. This blockage of the Drone news aggegrator means that he cannot in fact reach the people of "Nation iPhone-user".
(The fact that perhaps most people of Nation iPhone do not want to know, funnily enough is shared by a lot of Chinese people as well)
I get the argument about the principle. But I guess Steko is nearer on reality that it practically does not matter. Because it really does not "effectively" stifle freedom of press. Especially if the developer himself regards Drone+ as a one trick pony with no downloads. And there are dozens of full featured news apps available who are reporting all kinds of bad news. You can surf the big wide web. An email newsletter would provide the same feature of a notification alert.
A few years ago I read a disgruntled guy complaining that he made a very basic clock App, but Apple rejected it with the explanation there are already hundreds basic clock Apps in the clock category. The other commenters were riled up, how dare you Apple! But in the end there are really enough ways to check the date and time.
> Whether it gets one complaint or a million is not relevant to the question.
I disagree. A million complains have enough weight to lead to a public discussion and the forming of public opinion and pressure. In the hn thread about this drone-topic, which was only 2 days ago, this link was posted:
That's just as much an argument against democracy. The difference is, in the market, a 0.1% niche can be sustainable, while in democracy, a 0.1% niche is meaningless.
> Apple, like any for profit business, is certainly accountable to the market.
Apple is also using the government to enforce a monopoly on some extremely basic ideas.
Thanks to the patent system the market around smartphones is not even remotely free, it requires billions of dollars and armies of lawyers to even have a chance of competing, and even then you might lose.
Is there any evidence to believe that anyone would have known of or cared about the app if it had been accepted? It seems likely that most people have only heard of it because of the rejection, first on "technical grounds", and then for the cowardly admission that they thought that people would find the content objectionable.
Apple certainly can run their store any way they want to. At the same time it's worth noting that compared, say, to standards set by bookstores and libraries which often contain material that many people would find offensive, Apple is acting, well, rather gutlessly.
One might have thought that the brand that they wanted to protect would have been that of a company that is not afraid to "think different" and that worked to ensure that "1984 is not like 1984". Evidently they'd rather throw away that brand equity and become as inoffensive as the local Walmart. Fine, noted.
Seems to me that notifications were essential to the functionality of this app, you can't get that with a web app.
Of course the "web app is sufficient" point is irrelevant though, it's fundamentally weird that someone is making arbitrary decisions on which apps are allowed and which ones are not.
> It would be scary enough if such an actor were governed by the democratic state, which had at least some theoretical accountability to the general population. Apple, however, does not have even the pretence of that kind of accountability.
Sure they do. You're going off to buy an Android phone, so Apple lost your money and you got the phone you wanted better. That's even better than a democratic state, where you're stuck with the same one until you can get half the population to agree with you.
It would be a lot worse if the actor was governed by the state, because then it could be combined with: policing, ejudication, military, intellogency agency, surveillance...
Smartphones are not trivial consumer electronics devices: they are sophisticated computers, and increasingly are our primary portals to the wider world. Any central authority that governs what you are and are not allowed to do with your smartphone is thus an incredibly powerful political actor. It would be scary enough if such an actor were governed by the democratic state, which had at least some theoretical accountability to the general population. Apple, however, does not have even the pretence of that kind of accountability.
I'm somebody who has publicly castigated RMS for being an alarmist and a zealot, but here I have to agree with him 100%: this is an issue with profoundly negative implications for the development of a healthy and democratic civil society. If walled gardens like this are going to become increasingly dominant, then I honestly fear for the future.