A Garden of Pure Ideology

[andrewducker]

First - a quote from the 1984 ad for the Apple Macintosh, wherein a Big Brother figure speaks the following, before being smashed by someone symbolising Apple:
Today, we celebrate the first glorious anniversary of the Information Purification Directives. We have created for the first time in all history, a garden of pure ideology. Where each worker may bloom secure from the pests of contradictory and confusing truths. Our Unification of Thoughts is more powerful a weapon than any fleet or army on earth. We are one people, with one will, one resolve, one cause. Our enemies shall talk themselves to death and we will bury them with their own confusion. We shall prevail!

Second - Apple has banned a Pulitzer Prize winning Satirist from the App Store, because the app “contains content that ridicules public figures and is in violation of Section 3.3.14 from the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement which states: Applications may be rejected if they contain content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, sounds, etc.) that in Apple’s reasonable judgment may be found objectionable, for example, materials that may be considered obscene, pornographic, or defamatory.” (From)

Third - a quote from Animal Farm:
No question now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

Needless to say, Apple aren't getting a penny of my money while they have these policies in place.

Comments

[cairmen.livejournal.com]

Er... Wow. OK, with you on that.

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

What I don't understand is why shareholders don't call Apple to task on a policy like this: If I were a shareholder I would want the Apple store to carry any kind of app that wasn't illegal, unless it could be demonstrated to me that not carrying it was more profitable than carrying it.

[andrewducker]

I think Apple wants to be like the Disney Channel or Ninetndo. Presenting a sanitised version of the world through total control.

Which may make some users very happy, but I'm not going to have my phone or laptop-kind-of-thing have those kinds of restrictions on it.

[errolwi.livejournal.com]

Well the Store (which has good mechanisms in place to enable you to stop your kids picking up your device and getting Impure Thoughts) is sanitized, Safari is as open as normal.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

And I'm quite sure they will have some sort of market research showing they will make more money by having a clean, sanitised store which people will trust.

[simont]

Or that they'll lose less money out of overcaution than they would out of lawsuits, perhaps.

[andrewducker]

They're going to get sued for other people's software? That's made of cartoons?

That's....a stretch.

[diotina.livejournal.com]

They've also censored the word 'sperm' from Moby er...Dick.

[andrewducker]

Oh For Fuck's Sake.

[heyokish.livejournal.com]

but there's a WHOLE CHAPTER ABOUT SQUEEZING SPERM.
wtf?

[interactiveleaf.livejournal.com]

That chapter is left out.

No, really.

Moby Dick is a story about a man and a whale. Nothing more. STOP WITH YOUR PERVERTED MIND!

[pisica.livejournal.com]

So all that homoerotic subtext that's so blatant it renders slash fanfic redundant?

[pisica.livejournal.com]

WHAT?????????????????????????????

[drdoug.livejournal.com]

Ta - I shall henceforward refer to Apple's various License Agreements and so on as 'Apple's Information Purification Directives'.


Sent from my iPad.

[mb2u]

I tried an iPad today, and was impressed with how unimpressive it is. I mean, yes it's got a pretty display, but don't try to go to a website with Flash. You can't multitask? It's heavier than I expected, and then there's the software policies. No, I don't need this.