Yeah, it could be better.

Apple is essentially acting as the new-world publisher, and publishers have always had standards by which they’ve said “nope, we won’t publish that.” Anyone from the past century with a dusty manuscript in a drawer, which was rejected by a publisher, knows that this is just how the game works. You can’t get a bodice-ripper accepted by a “classics” publisher.

Not that Apple’s other third-party offerings are all “classic.” But anyway…click the link above to see the rest of my post about the sexy-apps-banned debacle.

Many people are arguing that Apple shouldn’t be selectively choosing which apps go into the App Store, and that they should instead fix their “parental controls” system. While I agree with the latter sentiment, I completely disagree with the former. I don’t see anything wrong with kicking assholes out of your store for ruining things for everyone. There comes a point when you say “Okay guys, we were willing to kinda just let it happen when there were only a few of you. Then there were hundreds. Then there were thousands. Now, everyone who isn’t a decades-old provider of this kind of stuff, kindly fuck off.” I can’t blame them.

But the point about the parental controls still stands. As has been widely noted, many apps in the App Store are labeled as “17+” simply because they allow unfettered access to internet content, textual or otherwise. As a result, applications like Instapaper have been saddled with warnings like the following:

You must be at least 17 years old to purchase this application.

Applications in this category may also contain frequent and intense offensive language; frequent and intense cartoon, fantasy or realistic violence; and frequent and intense mature, horror and suggestive themes; plus sexual content, nudity, alcohol, tobacco and drugs which may not be suitable for children under the age of 17.

What’s worse, until a recent update to the iPhone OS, the Restrictions part of Settings.app didn’t actually work correctly. So, when you customized the settings “Allow apps rated 12+” the OS would actually disable whatever apps you had which were rated 12+. Thankfully, Apple has fixed that problem, but it’s still rather ridiculous that Instapaper — one of the most consistently adored apps in the community — comes with such a hefty warning label. All it serves to do is to a) dilute the meaning of such a warning, and therefore b) discourage people from using the parental controls at all.

It would make a great deal more sense to simply add one more category to the Restrictions system: “Unrestricted web access.” Put it at the bottom of the list, as the final level of restriction before “Allow all apps.” Alternatively, it could be made into a secondary option, where you could activate or deactivate apps with unrestricted access, while also performing deactivations based on the age-based ratings.