I'm waiting for them to reject a paint/drawing app of some sort for "illicit content" after an app store reviewer draws an inappropriate picture.

I'm one of the developers for Ninjawords. Thanks everyone for sharing in our frustration. I thought this was a bit ridiculous as we were going back and forth with Apple, but I didn't know it would cause such public outrage. I guess Apple is really striking a nerve recently in exercising their totalitarian App Store powers. I hope they're interested in rectifying the developer experience, because it really is a great device to build software for. It's just that months of rejection over an innocuous educational utility tends to crush any excitement, you know?

Using the brown M&M's as a test to check if the contract was read thoroughly counts as a clever hack in my book.

I love the fact that Apple required it be censored because if they typed in an obscene word, they saw an obscene word...

Priceless.

The ads help pay for the service. If they are that intrusive choose something else.

This reminds me of a twitter update Wil Shipley[1] sent recently:

  "I feel like Apple should rate their new iDisk-access app 
   for iPhone "17+," since my iDisk is full of porn. It's 
   only fair."

http://twitter.com/wilshipley/status/2921713963

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wil_Shipley

This is why having a well-known online presence is important.

I loved reading it. But keep in mind...

Anyone can drink, gamble, smoke, eat oysters, dress well, have sex(1) and use their credit card.

However, creative people create, and this is the only common attribute of creative people.

I did a lot of creative writing in college, and a lot of folks acted the part, but when you asked to read what they'd written, there wasn't much to show. Even something bad. Just nothing.

(1) may require use of the credit card.

IMO that online persona is perfect for a technology evangelist. Make noise, rake muck, profit.

Too! Too much recursion!

"To much recursion!" would be proper if you were, say, offering a toast on account of having loads of recursion. Like:

The Good King Lisp raised his glass and toasted with the Knights of Lambda, "To much recursion!"

It's worth noting that it's an online presence backed by serious code, which makes Zed worth listening to (and hiring). It seems like many online presences have the attitude without supplying the code.

Long, long before he put up his infamous Rails rant, I spoke with him several times about Mongrel implementation, build issues and getting stuff running on different linux systems.

He seems to me to be a nice guy, a clean coder and yes, a guy who gets things done. Very much in contrast with the generally abrasive character he's built on his website.

Anyway, for what it's worth, I'd have no trouble hiring him.

I've had more time to think about this... This link is now the number 2 link on HN. A few days ago one of the top links was about how to survive on $36/month for food. You have to be kidding me, right? Sorry, but woman and marathon, multi-day coding sessions filled with noodles, beans, rice, oats and pb&j just don't mix.

Not to be the bearer of bad news here, guys, but I very much doubt that this is going to do much to slow apple down.

Their core user base for the iPhone seems to be not geeks, but teenage girls. Even if it WAS just geeks, we make up a minuscule percentage of the population. Chances are that if I told one of my sisters, or my mother (who all have iPhones) about this, they would roll their eyes a bit, add an entry or two to the "brother is a conspiracy nut" column, and point me to the latest "omg cute!" app that they downloaded.

The iPhone and the appstore are not going anywhere. If developers like us stop building things for it, people who value cash more than they value principles will take our place.

As much as it sucks, this is the world that we live in.