Apple and their iPhone App Store have been in the news quite a bit lately - and not in a good way. A series of high-profile application rejections and generally poor decision-making regarding their application approval process have led many iPhone advocates to question the cult of Apple - and their vague, preposterous standards regarding the acceptability of applications for the iPhone and iPod touch might become the deciding factor in the coming mobile war between Apple, Google, Blackberry and Nokia. That war will be fought in our pockets and in our hands; as applications proliferate and the market becomes saturated, the winner will be the company that can deliver the perfect combination of good hardware, good software, and an excellent content delivery system.

Until now, Apple was the undisputed king of the mobile platforms. Their iPhone store was bulletproof, untouchable, a once-classic demonstration of the right way to deliver application content.

And then the approval process started getting all manky. First it was the "Baby Shaker" snafu. Apple's approval for distribution via the iPhone Apps Store of a "game" whose sole purpose is to shake a baby to death led to a massive public outcry against the company. Threats were made, apologies were hastily issued, and the application was pulled from the iPhone Store, thankfully never to be seen again. At that point, though, it was already too late for Apple; the iPhone Application approval process, once the sole provenance of programmers and app distributors, had seen the light of public discussion, and the cat was out of the bag.

In the weeks and months that followed, Apple went on an insane crusade against any submitted application content in the App Store that it deemed "unsavory" - i.e., any content that might possibly blow up in Apple's face the way that the Baby Shaker application did. Citing a clause in their terms of use, Apple has rejected countless applications, such as:

1. Nine Inch Nails' application, rejected because of a reference to The Downward Spiral, an album with objectionable lyrics. An album which is already available for download in the iTunes store. Status: Silently approved by Apple after widespread blowback and Reznor threatening to distribute the app on the Jailbreak black market.
2. South Park's application, rejected because of "potentially inappropriate content." That content being the show itself, which is already available for download in the iTunes store. Status: Unknown.
3. Eucalyptus, an ebook reader, rejected because the program can be used to download a text-only version of the Kama Sutra. Several other ebook readers already approved on the iTunes store are able to download versions of the Kama Sutra with pictures. Status: Developer is hacking code to expressly disallow the Kama Sutra from being downloaded.
4. DriveTrain, an application that allows users to remotely control Transmission, an OSX-based BitTorrent application. Rejected despite the fact that BitTorrent is a major distribution platform for legitimate software (Blizzard's patches are all distributed via BT), and despite the fact that DriveTrain is only a remote control and contains no BitTorrent components. Status: Resubmitted without change. Approval status unknown.
5. Podcaster, rejected because it "duplicated the functionality of the iTunes App." Status: Rebranded as an "RSS Aggregator" and approved..
6. MailWrangler, rejected because it "duplicated the functionality of the Mail App." Status: Unknown.
7. Tweetie, a Twitter client, rejected because during testing, it displayed one of Twitter's trending topics, which contained a swear word. Status: Unknown.

The list goes on and on - ad nauseum.

What Apple doesn't seem to realize is how badly this string of rejected applications is hurting its once-pristine reputation. Users and application developers alike are starting to look at Apple as the overprotective parent, coming between users and developers, both of whom want to see these applications approved.

One of the biggest complaints is that the approval process isn't consistent - there's absolutely no pattern to their approvals and rejections. One week they approve a game to shake babies to death, and the next week they reject an ebook application because an online library of ebooks contains a text-only version of the Kama Sutra. One Twitter application is rejected because a trending topic on Twitter contained a swear word, yet countless other Twitter applications are available through the iPhone store which would have displayed that exact same trending topic, if Apple had bothered to check. Trent Reznor's music, appropriate for distribution through the music section, is apparently too profane to be distributed through the app section - oh wait a minute, no it's not, since Apple later silently approved the app without any changes. The lack of consistency is revelatory - it shows us that Apple has absolutely no idea what it's doing when it comes to the approval process, and that they're always a step behind - they didn't approve Reznor's application until the public started threatening to jailbreak their iPhones.

Apple keeps objecting that once the iPhone 3.0 OS is implemented, parental controls will be put in place that will allow this kind of content to be resubmitted and approved, despite containing "adult" content. Although this is nice to hear, it might be "too little, too late" - with other application platforms luring developers away from the iPhone, this might be the point that the tables begin to turn. Apple needs every advantage it can get against up-and-comers Android and Nokia Ova, and the omnipresent Windows Mobile, but instead of making this their finest hour and capitalizing on their momentum and strength, Apple seems committed to hamstringing itself, wrapping its application process in as much red tape as possible.

Wake up, Apple: there's a difference between baby shaking (wholly inappropriate) and reading a swear word on the internet. Perhaps Apple should take a hard look at its own applications (Safari, Mail, etc) and hold them to the same dipstick - Safari can be used to browse porn, and Mail can be used to engage in "adult" conversations, making them, according to Apple's rules, wholly inappropriate for distribution. In fact, while they're at it, maybe they could just start filtering everything that we read or listen to - since apparently Apple doesn't trust its users enough to do that common-sense filtering itself.

Apple is swimming in some untested, shark-infested waters, and right now they're thrashing around like a bleeding seal. We're just waiting for the feeding frenzy to start.