Sounds anti-competitive to me. I’m sure Eric Holder’s Justice Department will be all over it.
“These are not the (an)droids you seek...”
The Flash of Genius app was a finalist in the Challenge, and Novikof thought including that information in the description could help illustrate the program's value and increase its iPhone-based sales. Apple evidently didn't agree; Novikof says he received a notice from Apple's app approval department that stated the following:
"During our review of your application, we found that your application contains inappropriate or irrelevant platform information in the Application Description.
"While your application has not been rejected, it would be appropriate to remove 'Finalist in Google's Android Developer's Challenge!' from the Application Description.
"Please log into iTunes Connect to make appropriate changes to the Application Description now to avoid an interruption in the availability of Flash of Genius.
The above is really hilarious when you consider that Apple paid huge bucks wayback when to air this commercial:
Apple 1985 Super Bowl Commercial
Shhhhh Big Brother is listening, and his name is Steve Jobs!
Maybe is wasn’t the A word. Maybe it was the G word.
I’m not sure I understand the issues here, but I will say that corporate and product branding all seems petty and irrelevant — until I consider that it makes companies billions, and in the aggregate, trillions of dollars. My initial impression of this tempest in a teapot is to let Apple protect its brand and attack its competitors brands in any way that it wants to, free of my criticism.
Hey, this is Jobs all over. He has been trying to figure out how to provide closed, proprietary hardware ever since the original Macintosh.
Apparently, market forces have not allowed him to succeed in general purpose computing, though even those are as closed as he can get away with.
I find it hilarious that the "Apple-cores" think Jobs is the great counter-culturist, when in fact he is probably the most hard-core anticompetitive capitalist in the computer business, with the possible exception of Larry Ellison.
The REAL counter-culturist in the PC business is Bill Gates, who has been about "open systems" from day one.
Into the wayback machine to ‘94...Apple names a beta project “Carl Sagan” as they want to make billions and billions of them. He being a jerk objects. Apple engineers complied with his demands and renamed the project “BHA” (for Butt-Head Astronomer).
This is retarded.
Many years ago, didn’t Apple Records file suit against Apple Computer - everything being settled when Apple Computer agreed not to enter the music business...which is ironic since you can now download the Beatles on iTunes. And now Apple wants to protect their brand, eh.