tech.yahoo.com/blogs/patterson/45065
billionth App Store download, while smartphone players such as Microsoft, Google, and BlackBerry are racing to duplicate Apple's App Store success. But with control comes responsibility, as Cupertino learned this week after the embarrassing "Baby Shaker" debacle.
Apple approved and then quickly yanked from the App Store a 99-cent app called "Baby Shaker"--a (reportedly) odd little "game" that challenges players to "see how long you can endure" the "adorable cries" of a baby "before you just have to find a way to quiet the baby down!" When you can't "endure" the baby's bleatings anymore, you shake your iPhone/iPod Touch until the toddler (a "black-and-white line drawing," according to the AP) goes quiet, complete with big, ominous "red X's over its eyes."
ensuring controversy shouldn't come as any big surprise. Then again, "Baby Shaker" is just the latest in a long line of dumb, tasteless software apps for every hardware platform under the sun.
") Back then, Atari didn't have licensing power over 2600 games, so gaming publishers were free to crank out whatever titles--ranging from classic to dreck--that they wanted. And when it comes to shareware, of course, it's Wild West time--neither Microsoft nor Apple have any control over Windows or Mac OS shareware developers, and many (rightly) feel that's the way it should be, for better or worse. After all, while a game like "Custer's Revenge" is (in my view, anyway) reprehensible, the (shameless) developers of that game have a perfect right to publish it. But Apple has taken a different tack with the iPhone App Store: it's the only gateway for publishing apps for the iPhone and/or iPod Touch, and Apple has complete and total control over the approval process--not to mention a 30 percent share of any revenue, in exchange for covering hosting and credit-card processing fees.
useless application with a $1,000 price tag--was just stupid. "Baby Shaker" boldly goes into tasteless territory, and by (initially, at least) making it onto the App Store, it dragged Apple along for the ride. But that's the price Apple will have to pay for its control--and 30 percent revenue share--of the App Store: not only will its quality-assurance team have to be on glitch patrol, copyright patrol, and malware patrol, it'll also have to be on taste patrol as well.
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