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Technology Stocks : Apple Tankwatch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: pyslent who wrote (9745)	9/15/2011 7:37:13 AM
From: sylvester80	Respond to of 32692

Apple approves then removes app highlighting the dark side of iPhone manufacturing Sep. 14, 2011 (4:03 am) By: Jennifer Bergen geek.com Want to learn about the slavery, suicide, and e-waste that come from manufacturing iPhones? There’s an app for that. And Apple was briefly selling it for just 99 cents in the iTunes App Store yesterday. When we first saw the game offered in the store, we had a feeling that Apple may not have realized what the game Phone Story was about. We had a hunch that as news of the iOS app’s message started to spread, Apple would quickly remove it from the App Store. Sure enough, the game was yanked due to a violation of Apple’ review guidelines. According to Italian developer Molleindustria, the iOS game “attempts to provoke a critical reflection on its own technological platform.” The app’s description in the iTunes store says it’s an educational game about the “hidden social costs of smartphone manufacturing.” The game takes you on a journey from the Coltan mines of the Congo to the electronic waste dumps in Pakistan. Apple said that Phone Story violated review guidelines since the store doesn’t allow apps that “depict violence or child abuse,” “contain false, fraudulent of misleading represntations,” or “present objectionable or crude content.” Phone Story addresses the “troubling supply chain that stretches across the globe.” In addition to your trip to the mines in Congo and the e-waste dumps where our toxic smartphones are trashed, there are two other educational games that deal with outsourced labor in China, and the gadget consumerism in the West. These themes definitely go against Apple’s review guidelines. Before the game was yanked, all revenues from the sale of Phone Story were to be donated to organizations that work to solve the issues the game addresses. As with all iOS apps, Apple would have kept 30 percent of the profits, but the other 70 percent would be redirected to organizations who are “fighting corporate abuses.” The Phone Story site has information about Coltan, suicides, e-waste, and obsolescence, so make sure to read up on those if you’re interested in what the game was really trying to teach its users before being pulled.

To: pyslent who wrote (9745)	9/15/2011 7:41:32 AM
From: sylvester80	Respond to of 32692

Newspaper Pulls App Off iTunes In Dispute With Apple September 1, 2011 npr.org STEVE INSKEEP, host: A major newspaper publisher is refusing demands from Apple and it's pulled its App off of iTunes. Apple demands that companies pay 30 percent of download revenues and the Financial Times doesn't want to do that. It also doesn't want to give up control of its customer data, as Apple requires. Mr. MURAD AHMED (Technology reporter, The Times of London): It is definitely very brave of them to do this. It's publicly criticizing Apple for its policies, which a lot of publishers who want to stay in with Apple don't want to do. INSKEEP: Technology reporter Murad Ahmed has been following the negotiations between the Financial Times and Apple for his newspaper The Times of London, and says the customer data aspect was especially key here. Mr. AHMED: That's a really big deal for newspaper publishers. They need to develop a relationship with their subscribers, to be able to make an FT which is personalized to the individual user to do that. They have to get this customer information, otherwise they've got no benefit from being in the App Store at all. INSKEEP: Now not many companies have challenged Apple the way the FT is doing, although not many really have the resources to do it either. FT.com is one of the few profitable newspaper websites and it's now launched its own application on the Web - going around Apple.