fail

ICHC Update Rejected again

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This is getting to be an ongoing ritual. I submit an update and about a week later Apple rejects it.

Here’s my latest rejection letter:

Follow-up: 78814583

Dear Mr. Cohen,

Thank you for submitting I Can Has Cheezburger 1.5.2 & I Can Has Cheezburger (Ad Free) to the App Store. We’ve reviewed I Can Has Cheezburger 1.5.2 &I Can Has Cheezburger (Ad Free) and determined that we cannot post these versions of your iPhone applications to the App Store at this time because they are not appropriately rated. Our review indicates that the applications’ contents are not consistent with the current rating. I Can Has Cheezburger 1.5.2 & I Can Has Cheezburger (Ad Free) contain user-generated content, which can include frequent mature or suggestive themes. Applications must be rated accordingly for the highest level of content that the user is able to access.

Please visit iTunes Connect to resubmit your binaries and rate your application appropriately.

Regards,

iPhone Developer Program

However, it isn’t possible to change the rating because everything is grayed out on the rating screen! A few developers have told me that the rating can only be changed for 3.0 apps, so I’m building it for 3.0 only so Apple will finally let me change the rating so they can approve it.

More Ratings Stupidity

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Barnes & Noble’s eReader contains no content and doesn’t access internet content directly. All content comes from books downloaded from your B&N account. It has to display all of these warnings, yet it gets a 12+ rating. In this case, the parental control restrictions should be set in the B&N account rather than restricting the application.

iTunes
Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch!

PS – KRAPPS picked up the story of ICHC’s latest rejection.

REJECTED

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I just got another rejection notice from Apple:

Dear Mr. Cohen,

Thank you for submitting I Can Has Cheezburger 1.5.2 & I Can Has Cheezburger (Ad Free) to the App Store. We’ve reviewed I Can Has Cheezburger 1.5.2 &I Can Has Cheezburger (Ad Free) and determined that we cannot post these versions of your iPhone applications to the App Store at this time because they are not appropriately rated. Our review indicates that the applications’ contents are not consistent with the current rating. I Can Has Cheezburger 1.5.2 & I Can Has Cheezburger (Ad Free) contain user-generated content, which can include frequent mature or suggestive themes. Applications must be rated accordingly for the highest level of content that the user is able to access.

Please visit iTunes Connect to resubmit your binaries and rate your application appropriately.

I don’t want ICHC to be rated 17+. I’d rather just pull it completely rather than continue to fight with Apple.

Email of the day

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I got the following email this morning:

Mike;

I really appreciate the fact that you designed and made available an app for the iPhone that shows the ICHC site. I’m not bashing you for that.

However, your unchecked ad campaign is a bit asinine. “Unibrows: since 1969” is not an ad. It’s annoying space taking designed to annoy the user into buying the 99 cent version of the app. I must say that it is effective, since I will be buying it as soon as I can get to my computer.

Anyway, thanks again. Even though you’re an ass.

Sincerely;

[name withheld]

Sent from my iPhone

Movie FAIL

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The ICHC Web site has switched from YouTube to Viddler for embedded videos. Unfortunately their videos aren’t compatible with the iPhone (even in Mobile Safari they’re broken). I currently don’t have any work-around until they can provide iPhone compatible videos.

Screenshot 2009.07.10 17.38.57.png

WP-O-Matic FAIL

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If you follow me on twitter, you probably saw about 32 tweets spew from my blog, thanks to WP-O-Matic blowing chunks all over my blog, which Twitter Tools dutifully reported as new posts.

I’m attempting to set up automatic photo blogging from my Flickr photo stream. Flickr produces RSS feeds for each tag, so I’m using the tag photoblog to have those images posted here automatically by subscribing to the resulting feed. Unfortunately, Flickr’s tag feed URL has several characters such as ‘?’ or ‘&’ that WP-O-Matic choke on. As a result, instead of seeing my tag feed, WP-O-Matic saw my entire photo stream. Furthermore, although I limited it to post only 5 items, it decided to post each item multiple times.

A work-around for the URL problem is to use a URL shortener such as tinyurl to generate a clean URL for WP-O-Matic. I’ve made it create new items as drafts instead of publishing immediately, so it shouldn’t happen again.

iPhone FAIL

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Since yesterday I’ve been unable to make calls with my iPhone. As soon as I dial any number, I get CALL ENDED followed immediately by CALL FAILED. I’m able to receive calls and send SMS, though.

I completely restored my iPhone, made sure the time zone & caller ID are correct as suggested in Apple’s support forums, and even reset network settings and the problem still persists. If nothing else works, I’ll probably be taking a trip to the Apple store.

Should Apple pull the plug on the iPhone?

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Last year, John Dvorak said:

These phones go in and out of style so fast that unless Apple has half a dozen variants in the pipeline, its phone, even if immediately successful, will be passé within 3 months.
There is no likelihood that Apple can be successful in a business this competitive. Even in the business where it is a clear pioneer, the personal computer, it had to compete with Microsoft and can only sustain a 5% market share.
And its survival in the computer business relies on good margins. Those margins cannot exist in the mobile handset business for more than 15 minutes.

According to Steve Ballmer:

Now we’ll get a chance to go through this again in phones and music players. There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It’s a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I’d prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get.

Who’s having the last laugh now?