February 24, 2010 :: Posted by - SoSly :: Category - News

Mixed reports have emerged that Apple may have created a new “Explicit” category for app submissions using iTunes Connect. Last week, Apple removed as many as 5,000 titles from the App Store that it determined were inappropriate for some users. The dragnet caught some apps but left others – like Playboy and the Sports Illustrated swimsuit app – still available for download. Some devs, however, have said that the new category does not appear on their iTunes submission screens.
Read more…

December 08, 2009 :: Posted by - SoSly :: Category - News

Molinker, the prolific Chinese development company behind numerous iPhone apps, saw all its titles pulled from the App Store on Sunday after an attentive user noted that most – if not all – of its five-starreviews appeared to be fake. The scam caused over 1,000 apps – nearly 1% of all of the titles on the App Store – to disappear at once.

The user, “SCW,” contacted a Glyn Evans of the iphoneography blog whom he knew to have contacts at Apple top management. SCW had noted something odd about the glowing (and poorly written) reviews of the “NightCam Pro” app and went through the applications offered by Molinker. As many as 90% of the reviews on some of their applications appeared to be written by a group of people who only reviewed Molinker applications. On “NightCam Pro”, for example, 42 of the 44 5-starreviews appeared to be fake.
Read more…

October 27, 2009 :: Posted by - SoSly :: Category - News

Any lingering hopes of new last-minute holiday hardware from Apple have been cast in doubt, as the Mac maker has reportedly confirmed that its holiday 2009 lineup is “set.”

In a recent conversation with Gizmodo, Phil Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, reportedly said that Apple will not introduce any more new products this year. The report was issued to quash recent rumors of even more hardware updates portrayed as potentially imminent.

After the story initially ran, Apple’s public relations contacted to clarify with an official statement: “The holiday lineup is set.” No further explanation was given. Read more…

September 19, 2009 :: Posted by - SoSly :: Category - News

Hours after Google’s letter to the FCC was published in its entirety, Apple has directly responded to the claim that it has formally rejected the Google Voice application from the iPhone App Store.

In a note to Silicon Valley Insider, an Apple representative Friday reiterated what the company said in its own letter to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission in August: That it has not rejected the application, but it has not accepted it either.

“We do not agree with all of the statements made by Google in their FCC letter,” the Apple rep reportedly said. “Apple has not rejected the Google Voice application Read more…

September 18, 2009 :: Posted by - SoSly :: Category - News

Google today announced today that it has released an unredacted copy (PDF) of its response to an investigation by the U.S. Federal Communications Commission into Apple’s apparent rejection of the company’s Google Voice iPhone application. Most significantly, Google’s filing claims that Apple Senior Vice President Phil Schiller personally informed Google that the Google Voice iPhone application had been rejected for the reason that it “duplicated the core dialer functionality of the iPhone”.

The primary points of contact between the two companies were Alan Eustace, Google Senior Vice President of Engineering & Research, and Phil Schiller, Apple Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing. On July 7, Mr. Eustace and Mr. Schiller spoke over the phone. Read more…