Photo: There's quality control for you. This is

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Seen by David on February 9 2010:

There’s quality control for you. This is the latest entries in the Entertainment category on iTunes.

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23 comments so far

adam 09 Feb 10

haha, is this the first results that appear?? they should be sorted by user votes

DHH 09 Feb 10

This is going to the App Store and clicking “Entertainment”. No image manipulation or trickery needed to make it look like this.

Douglas F Shearer 09 Feb 10

Fraser Spiers was right about the app store:

http://speirs.org/blog/2010/1/20/the-apple-soft-porn-store.html

David Kuhta 09 Feb 10

Laughs Well clearly what they mean by “entertainment” was the page itself and not the apps!

Damien 09 Feb 10

Hahaha that Burger vs HotDog is EPIC ! Wow… I just realized it’s not even free….

That is indeed a very interesting screenshot.

Joel 09 Feb 10

The people cried out against Apple’s firm but benevolent hand, and now they live in filth.

JC 09 Feb 10

Not a single app there is unique or entertaining.

brady 09 Feb 10

the apps with “a” prepended to the title?

Shane Vitarana 09 Feb 10

The QA Apple does is to make sure there are no bugs in your app, not filter by content. Apps just have to adhere to the SDK agreement.

DHH 09 Feb 10

Shane, they hardly ensure that there are no bugs in your app. I’ve used plenty of apps that’s been buggy as hell.

This is part of the argument that it’s not worth keeping the gate up. Just automate the checks that are already automated (like checking for internal API usage) and get rid of the gate keepers slowing everything down.

Conquering Horde 09 Feb 10

i’m incensed. The fine and hard working folks are also working hard to filter out naughty words too.

tomslee 09 Feb 10

@Shane: Apple does filter by content. For example, the recent blocking of apps with the word “Android” in their description: http://www.pcworld.com/article/188696/apple_bans_the_word_android_from_app_store.html

tomslee 09 Feb 10

Conquering Horde beat me to it.

kira 09 Feb 10

The app store is long overdue for an adult category. And/or subcategories for the entertainment category. Of course you’d practically need a subcategory just for fart apps… (“juvenile entertainment”, perhaps.) ;)

Of course if Apple starts rejecting any app, then people whine and complain about censorship. Just can’t win, I guess.

Ravi 09 Feb 10

@brady – I guess, the “a” in the title is for the app listing to come right on top when sorted alphabetically!! What it does to the comprehension of application is hilarious!!

Sean Wilson 09 Feb 10

You can take the developers out of the Windows world, but you can’t take the Windows world out of the developers.

Tomas Jogin 09 Feb 10

I don’t even understand what argument you’re making here. Are you saying that Apple should add “taste policing” to their approval process?

Are you saying they should add “too many of your kind of app already” to the reasons why your app might get rejected?

This makes no sense. If they were taste policing you’d be complaining about that instead.

Joe Sullivan 09 Feb 10

The picture doesn’t tell the whole story. In the app store, to the left of what’s pictured is a list of top paid apps; to the right, a list of top free apps. And one can reorganize the center column by name, most popular, and release date.

What makes this weird is the center pane’s default to “release date,” allowing any crap that’s new and approved a premium spot in the app store.

I can’t figure out why that’s in anyone’s best interest—well, other than the publisher of the about-to-be-approved Super Happy Fun Bikini Line Hot Chick app.

DHH 09 Feb 10

Tomas, I’m arguing that their gate keeping does nothing to ensure quality. There’s already a flood of lame apps in the App Store. Thus, they’d be better off letting developers release timely updates (like us, not waiting 11 days on approval on a new version of Ember) and less arbitrary rejections.

Move to a we’ll yank it if you step over the lines model instead of upfront permission.

KevinS 09 Feb 10

As a FORMER iPhone developer I have now decided (in part due to issues raised with App Store ) to simply develop my mobile applications for the mobile web instead… I think Peter-Paul Koch’s blog role of late on the state of iPhone development says it best – the iPhone is the new IE 6 …

iPhone Obsession

EH 09 Feb 10

Joe: The tragedy of the commons will ensure that more and more crap apps will flood the store based on top-posting by release date, thus making it less of a “premium spot.” Release Date will become a useless firehose, if it isn’t already.

Justin Bell 10 Feb 10

This is why I hardly ever use the App Store for actually browsing apps. All the decent apps I’ve loaded onto my iPhone I have found by reading websites that I respect. If an app is good enough, people will blog about it. The rest, I don’t even want to know about.

Alan Paxton 10 Feb 10

I think too many points are being conflated. It’s fine for these apps to exist, as long as their display is filtered age appropriately, but the app store isn’t doing that.

Their existence is explained by the fact that they are making their creators money, because people are willing to pay for them.