Apple censors Ninjawords iPhone dictionary app
When a friend called my attention to this story earlier, he did so with the rhetorical question, “Apple, why do you make it so hard for me to defend you?” I can certainly sympathize. Apple has made some bizarre decisions to reject iPhone applications over the last year, and it is becoming harder by the moment to defend them.
The latest bizarre app rejection involves the Ninjawords dictionary app. Even though the app was rated for 17+, and even though Ninjawords’s programmers took measures to make sure the words would never show up unless specifically searched in their entirety, the app was rejected until a number of “vulgar” words were removed. (Note: the first link includes a list of those vulgar words. If you’re reading from work, it might be best to wait to click through until you get home.)
That’s right: Apple is now censoring a dictionary of the English language.
This really isn’t the face Apple needs to be presenting so soon after getting an FCC letter of inquiry asking, among other things, what the exact criteria are that Apple uses to approve or reject a given application. Given that other dictionaries have been approved to the app store with the same objectionable content included, Apple’s criteria for rejection seem to be entirely arbitrary, presumably based on which reviewer happens to look at an app and how he or she is feeling that day.
August 6th, 2009 at 3:59 am
Therefore, Mac OS should be sold with a “parental advisory: explicit content” ticket. I’ve looked up in the Dictionary application, which is included in the Apple system, and not only it includes words like “pussy”, “fuck” or “dick”: they are also indexed, so that any kid can unawarely find a lascivious vagina when he or she is looking for information about Alexander Pushkin. Intolerable. We should make Apple know that we won’t let our children to freely access to such a pornographic operative system. By the way, I’m thinking that Apple’s photographic professional software, “Aperture”, may contain, in its name, a subliminal suggestion to promiscuity. We need to find out.
August 6th, 2009 at 10:00 am
WTF is up with Apple and their App Store????
This silliness they engage in on a seemingly weekly basis is just bizarre.
What baffles me is that the American Heritage 4th Edition I bought for my iPod Touch has all those words on the list along with their slang definitions.
Exactly what has Apple achieved here?
This is the major thing that bugs me about the App Store. Apple should not even be a gatekeeper that determines which apps or content that users can place on their device.
Apps for the iPhone/Touch should be available from other vendors such as Handango or PocketGear or directly from the creator in addition to the App Store.
Are people just too busy slamming Amazon and the Kindle to see that this is just as nefarious (more so in my opinion)? Where’s the outrage? Where’s the lawsuits? Where’s the same sort of venom Bezos is subjected to?
August 6th, 2009 at 10:04 am
Majorinus You are kidding? don’t you?
August 6th, 2009 at 10:44 am
One hopes that Apple does not withdraw the fabulous free app, dictionary.com. Rarely do you even have to type in the whole word, since it starts suggesting early on. It also speaks the word if you click on its microphone icon, making the “bad” words even more potentially titillating.
The censorship of a dictionary is about as ludicrous as Apple has gotten so far in its Draconian and inconsistant approval process. How about all the fart apps? Those are ok, and a dictionary is not? Ye gods!