Linked List: December 11, 2014

Thursday, 11 December 2014

App Store Rejection of the Week: ‘Papers Please’ ★

Phill Cameron, writing for Gamasutra:

Papers Please launched last year to both critical and commercial success, and placed you in the role of a border inspector working for a totalitarian regime. The demands on exactly what is required for entry into your country grow over the course of the game, until you implement a full body scanner to check for explosives and contraband.

It’s this scanner that Apple has deemed to be “pornographic content,” according to Lucas Pope, the games developer.

So here’s an App Store rejection that many disagree with, but which is easy to understand from Apple’s perspective. Apple tends to err on the side of running the App Store with Disney-esque family values. The company places inordinate value in its family-friendly reputation.

But:

Pornography usually involves nudity, but nudity is frequently not pornographic. Pornography is famously difficult to define, but I think one aspect almost everyone would agree with is that pornography is intended to create sexual arousal. I haven’t played Papers Please, but by all accounts, it’s a serious game attempting to create a dystopian police state. The nudity seems to be oppressive and invasive, not pornographic.
This case highlights the way Apple holds games (and apps in general) to a different standard than other iTunes content. Movies, music, and books are not held to the same PG-13-ish standards that apps are. I can buy A Clockwork Orange from iTunes, but if I made a game that showed the exact same things that are depicted in that film, it’d have little chance of being approved. Conversely, an R-rated movie version of Papers Please could depict this scene without a hitch when it comes to iTunes.

Update, 13 December: Developer Lucas Pope says Apple has asked him to resubmit the app with the nudity intact.

Transmit for iOS Update Restores ‘Send To’ Feature ★

Good news:

After a considerate conversation with Apple, Transmit iOS 1.1.2 has been released with restored “Send To” functionality.

While the process feels less-than-perfect, this resolution is a nice reminder that, just as we thought, there are good people at Apple who will push hard to do the right thing. We hope you enjoy Transmit iOS 1.1.2.

I was optimistic that this would happen, because it just didn’t make any sense to me why they weren’t allowing this. With many controversial App Store rejections, you may not agree with Apple’s rationale, but you can at least understand it. This one just didn’t make sense.

Tools and Toys’s Favorite Camera Accessories ★

Speaking of photography, Tools and Toys has put together a solid list of accessories.

Ken Rockwell Reviews the Fujifilm X100T ★

Ken Rockwell:

The Fuji X100T is the world’s best digital camera because no other camera has its ability to capture great photos perfectly in any light, all usually on the very first shot. It’s also the world’s quietest camera, with a completely silent electronic shutter. […]

The X100T has an astonishing combined optical and electronic finder that allows perfect viewing of anything in any light. A lever push selects each one, and even shooting with the optical finder the just-shot image can pop up for review! New in the X100T is the ability to use the optical finder and have an electronic inset at the bottom right to magnify a focus area. No other brand of camera can do any of this.

The X100T is a mechanical jewel, made at least as well as a $7,000 LEICA M240, with all-metal dials, lenses and top and bottom covers.

I own and adore the year-old X100S. The T update brings face detection, Wi-Fi, the silent electronic shutter, and a few other improvements, but not enough for me to consider upgrading. This is a great camera.

Rockwell writes:

Just like the older versions, ergonomics are superb. The X100T is designed for photographers, not computer programmers. The X100T has all the dials and controls we need right at our fingertips, not buried behind a function button.

The menu/settings system could use a thorough redesign, but in terms of shooting controls — having aperture, shutter speed, and exposure compensation as analog dials is just wonderful. It feels like a camera. And image quality is excellent. It’s a little too big to fit in a pocket, but it’s way smaller and lighter than my Canon SLR. I already have a good camera in my pocket; the X100 series hits a sweet spot for me, between image quality, photographic control, and weight. $1300 isn’t cheap, but in my opinion there aren’t many cameras left that (a) cost a lot less than that; and (b) are good enough to justify carrying them around instead of just shooting everything with your iPhone.

How Overcast Asks for Reviews ★

Marco Arment:

My strategy to get good App Store reviews is simple:

Make an app good enough for some people to love it. By nature, you’ll lose some people along the way, but that’s OK: an app that strives to satisfy as many people as possible will usually only get people to kinda like it, not love it.

Accumulate a huge surplus of goodwill from those customers with a combination of step 1, usefulness, delight, and adding more functionality over time.

Make it easy to rate the app with a button that’s never annoying or in the way, like in the Settings screen.

Maybe it’s just me, but in the past year, I’ve seen fewer apps interrupting me with an alert asking to rate the app. (When I do see such a prompt, I still do what I recommended last year: I give it a review with a low star rating.)

I’m also seeing more and more apps asking, in an earnest and honest way, for reviews in their App Store update notes. That’s a great practice, and I often do just that to reward them.

HockeyApp Acquired by Microsoft ★

I didn’t see this one coming. From the HockeyApp team blog:

We want to be very clear about the most important thing: we remain dedicated to our mission of making the best mobile app development feedback and testing distribution platform in the world. Your HockeyApp apps and accounts will continue to work and the team has not stopped working on advancing the platform. Throughout the next few months, we’ll reveal more about our plans with Microsoft.

HockeyApp is the leading rival to TestFlight, which Apple acquired last year and began officially supporting within Xcode a few months ago. I’ve always liked HockeyApp — it’s what we use for beta distributions at Q Branch.

Very curious to see what comes of this.