Besides the absolutely broken process of getting updates processed in a timely manner, the other biggest problem with the iPhone App Store is that Helen Lovejoy apparently ran the show: applications either had to be acceptable for children (fart noises not withstanding), or they couldn’t be sold at all. That meant that they couldn’t include words or pictures that a mysterious “someone” at Apple consider inappropriate.
And since the app store was the only (legal) place to buy applications for your iPhone, it created a ridiculous paradox: you could buy songs with explicit lyrics from iTunes, watch R-rated movies you bought from Apple, load explicit films and pictures yourself, or surf any number of websites using Safari.
Apple may finally be taking steps to correct this problem: according to the iPhone blog, the new iPhone OS 3 (beta 5) includes new age restrictions on what apps can be run.
Options include:
* Don’t Allow Apps
* 4+
* 9+
* 12+
* 17+
* Allow All AppsIt’s still unknown, however, whether Apple will take it upon themselves to determine ratings, leave it up to developers, or use a hybrid model where devs pick a rating and Apple approves or returns it for re-rating.
And it’s about damn time. In addition to the problem mentioned above (who gets to decide what level an application is at), there’s another issue: OS 3 is going to be free for iPhone users, but iPod touch users will have to pay an upgrade fee to get the latest goodies. Clearly, there’s going to be an incremental upgrade to OS 2 which will allow the touch to interact with the new ratings system.
Read the iPhone blog.
I'm glad Apple are finally introducing this, but I do hope they use it correctly. There have been some strange judgements on accepting apps into the App Store – lets hope the ratings process work out right.