Update: 04/11 - Apple has approved the Tweetie 1.3 update. The company did not give any reasons for the change of heart.
A successful app in Apple's app store can net a developer hundreds of thousandsof dollars. But the price to pay for that is dealing with Apple's whims.
The makers of a popular Twitter application for the iPhone called Tweetie have said that Apple has rejected the latest update of their app for allegedly having bad language.
Now the real story? The bad language showed up in the trends feature of the app, which pulls together the most popular keywords that people are twittering about!
Tweetie is one of the many applications available for iPhone users to connect to the increasingly popular social networking site Twitter. Unlike other apps such as Twitterfon that are available for free, Tweetie costs $3.
Loren Brichter of atebits, which makes the Tweetie app, informed his Twitter followers earlier today about Apple's stance. "You all ready to be pissed? Tweetie 1.3 rejected. Because there's an offensive word in the TRENDS," Brichter twittered.
Third party developers that create apps for the iPhone have to submit them to the Apple for approval. But Apple's heavy hand with the process has drawn flak. Remember the South Park app that got rejected for "potentially offensive" content? Or the Obama Trampoline game for apparently ridiculing a public figure?
But denying the latest Tweetie update into the iPhone's pearly gates is probably taking the God complex too far even for Apple. There's hope Tweetie may still find redemption.
Brichter says he won't back down because Tweetie is not at fault. "I will not censor anything in Tweetie," he twittered. "Resubmitting with the same binary now."
Photo: Apple's screenshot of why Tweetie was rejected/Loren Brichter
