Apps

While we don't want to turn this into the rejected-app-of-the-day column, as an end-cap to the week, and perhaps a chance to test out the theory we proposed earlier in the BargainBin post, we thought we'd pass along one last example of Apple App Store weirdness, via Mippin:

Quite early on in the process they failed us because of rude words in some of the Internet articles we were publishing. Early this week Tweetie was rejected for the same reason- they kicked up such a stink on Twitter that Apple backed down within hours and accepted it. When this happened to us though, 3 weeks ago, we bowed to their greater wisdom and implemented 2 levels of checking for our iPhone application to prevent "objectionable" content getting through. We rate all our 50,000 feeds in Mippin and prevent most if it even getting to the user, then just to be sure we check every word in the article real-time for a list of rude words and if one appears we block the display of the content from the server. We thought this was enough, but this week we got rejected because of a YouTube video - we were amazed at this. In the very amusing video "sxephil" does use one rude word, but in our minds YouTube have allowed this through - its certainly acceptable to them. What's even worse we found the same video through Apple's own YouTube application on the iPhone

Friday the 13th? "Duplicates functionality" coverall? Vestiges of the same Tweetie "Church Lady" reviewer? And will it get to the point where developers can cry "pocket rejection" or "incompetence" when even valid issues are raised by Apple? What do you think?

Comparative screenshots after the break...

Well it is official, Sirius XM will be streaming it's satellite radio content sometime this spring according to CNBC. This announcement has come very quickly after Nicemac announced they were closing shop and this is exactly what we predicted was going on from the first time StarPlayr was "not accepted" by Apple. Mel Karmazin, chief executive of New York-based Sirius said:

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blockquote>"It behooves us to consider every possible way to grow our subscriber base."

Konami has released some new shots of Metal Gear Solid Touch for the iPhone and iPod touch and they look... snakey! BGR quotes:

A special ‘Advance Edition’ of Metal Gear Solid Touch containing the first 12 stages of the game is scheduled for release on the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch in March of 2009. The final release will follow with eight additional stages of gameplay, and will be available to existing players via a free update on the Apple App Store.

One of the new features in Apple's iTunes 8.1, released just today, is iTunes DJ. Replacing the old Party Shuffle atop the Playlists heap, it also integrates with the Apple Remote app for the iPhone for shiny party goodness.

How does it work? At first look, anyone at your party with the Apple Remote app can request songs from your iTunes library, and everyone with the app can vote for which song gets played when. Genius seems to work with it as well.

Jeremy was kind enough to grab us some screenshots, after the break! If you've given it a go already, let us know if you've found anything else in there!