Apple relents. Bobble reps rule!
An iPhone app illustrated with caricatures of the 111th Congress finally gets the green light
Photo: App Store
At least someone at Apple (AAPL) has a sense of humor.
Less than a week after the iPhone Developer Program rejected as "objectionable" and "defamatory" an application illustrated with caricatures of U.S. Senators and Congressmen, the company has reversed itself and approved the app.
Bobble Rep for the iPhone and iPod touch was conceived by director Ray (Super Capers) Griggs and illustrated by Mad Magazine caricaturist Tom Richmond. The drawings serve as an entry into a data base of information about the politicians, whose oversized heads bobble when shaken or flicked with a finger. The app is now available for sale here for $0.99.
"I'm glad Apple came to their senses," says Richmond, "and realized that this app is not only not derogatory or insulting to our congressional representatives and senators, it's a beneficial program and a little fun as well."
Richmond spent months drawing the heads of all 540 members of the 111th Congress, including nonvoting members from Puerto Rico and Guam.
Fox News on Saturday was taking credit for Apple's decision to approve the app, although it was Richmond himself who drew national attention to its rejection earlier this week with a widely read entry in his blog.
See Apple bans Nancy Pelosi bobble head.
[Follow Philip Elmer-DeWitt on Twitter @philiped]
Whoever really thinks FOX has a bigger reach then CNN, alone… not to mention with other networks, is not the smartest… but then again they probally watch fox alot too, so i can not blame them for becoming less and less smart…
but anyway, some funny comments
Well, at least Elmer did not take credit for the national attention because we all know that would not have been true. But of course it is delusional to believe that FOX News did not play a bigger role. Not that I am calling Elmer delusional. He's just like most MSM folks and just will not face the facts about FOX's reach and influence–which is greater than all of CNN/Fortune/Time put together.
ex ped: I think you may be living in the Fox bubble, Houston. We're talking about FoxNews.com on the Net, not Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck on TV. Whatever Fox News' Cable TV ratings might be, CNN.com has a much stronger presence on the Web.
CNN.com is ranked third among online news sites in unique users in the U.S., after msnbc.com and Yahoo! News, according to Nielsen/NetRatings.
According to Newsknife, CNN.com is the No. 5 top news site based on Google hits, after the AP, Reuters, the NYTimes and the BBC.
According to Alexa, which measures traffic of all websites, CNN.com is No. 17 in the U.S. and No. 59 worldwide. FoxNews.com is No. 38 in the U.S. and No. 223 worldwide.
I was totally disillusioned by this story.
Caricatures?
I thought all the congresspeople really WERE Bobbleheads!
Am I losing touch with reality?
Is all lost?
My responses to the amazingly uninformed commentators here:
1. Apple HAS NO review process. You cannot contact anyone after an app has been rejected. Any "publicity stunt" was 100% Apple and the media's doing. I simply posted on my personal blog how silly I thought Apple's rejection was. The rest happened on its own.
2. As close as my politics could be defined, I am a liberal… although I prefer to do my own thinking as opposed to letting Olberman or Beck do it for me. The app's developer is the conservative.
3. I have no financial stake in this app. I was paid to do the artwork up front. It makes zero difference to my pocketbook how many copies of it sell.
ex ped: Welcome, Tom. And thanks for weighing in.
I work at Apple. Yes, Steve Jobs votes "very liberal." But to his credit, he seldom lets politics cloud the day-to-day business. He has stated loud and often, to his credit, that he intends to keep the App Store devoid of porn and sleaze. It's a fine line, I'll admit, and will sometimes miss the mark, as I think it did here.
Jobs does not micro manage like he did years ago; there are minions who are in charge of enforcing his "non-controversial" edict. When they mess up, and it works its way up the food chain to SJ's attention, he might intervene. But by and large, I think this was nothing more than a case of an employee doing the best he could to interpret Steve's desire to keep the App Store family friendly, and he erred. Big deal. Stuff happens. It got reversed, so where's the beef? Millions of others and I are perfectly content with how Mr. Jobs runs his Store. Don't like it? Buy someone else's product, go away, and leave us contented customers alone.
May I be the first to ask, who gives a crap. I am sure they will be flying off the shelf. CNN is a buch of idiots for wasting the web space to show this story
Can you say publicity stunt? If it weren't for all of the press, how many people would even know the program existed? A lot less, I suspect. It seems as though the press has been the newest, popular way to advertise.
@Constable,
My thoughts exactly. It amazed me that the author was whining to the entire world about how evil Apple was within 24 hours after receiving his rejection rather than taking it up with Apple.
I guess it's easier to complain about how evil Apple is rather than solve the problem.
OTOH, if it was approved this quickly, it was probably all a publicity gimmick. He had to have the review already underway when he went public, knowing that he'd get tons of free publicity.
Unbelievable. So it is this author's contention that Tom Richmond's blog entry, not the gozillions of people that watch Fox that tipped the balance? Get a clue. The blog had nothing to do with it. Other posters think that this was just some oversight by Apple? The fact that Apple has actively taken liberal positions, i.e., resigned from the US chamber of commerce over health care and supports cap and tax had nothing to do with rejecting an app from a conservative like Richmond that posts phone numbers of congressman squirming under the liberal initiatives of this administration played no role in this. Apple is an active liberal organization that supports liberal initiatives such as gay marriage, universal health care and cap and trade.
ex ped: It was FoxNews.com that took up the Bobble Rep cause, Chuck, not (as far as I know) the Fox News cable TV network. Moreover, they ran their item on Nov. 12, four days after Richmond wrote his blog entry, three days after Daring Fireball and MacNN picked up the story, and two days after an item on this space did had generated 90,000 page views. That's not gozillions of people, but I suspect it's more than the FoxNews.com item generated.
Apple is ridiculous. How do people tolerate spending big bucks for a flaky phone, and then having Apple tell them what software they can and can't put on it?
I knew it would be approved soon and that people were just jumping the gun spouting nonsense that the vetting system is heartless or incompetent or whatever. Some higher-up managers probably took one look at it and said there were no problems whatsoever. The artwork is really good and there's no way anyone could take offense at that app. I'm glad it finally got approved and should prove to be a very useful app for information.
Far FUNNIER would be bobble-butt; Hellary would require a wide screen while Barfly Frank a l-o-n-g one for saggy-butt! Both with 'stabilizers' to avoid tectonic shifts, likely to damage one's phone once they get a rockin and a rollin!! VOTE on it!!!