Apple Censors 'Ninjawords Dictionary' iPhone Application

Wednesday August 5, 2009 12:07 pm PDT by Eric Slivka

Daring Fireball's John Gruber reports on the case of Ninjawords Dictionary [App Store, $1.99], a dictionary application for the iPhone based on Wiktionary offering a high-quality user experience and information content that was recently approved by Apple for inclusion in the App Store. Unfortunately, Apple's approval process for the application required several months and multiple rounds of refinement for the application, ultimately resulting the application carrying a "17+" age rating and also lacking a number of words deemed "objectionable" by Apple's reviewers.

Apple censored an English dictionary.

A dictionary. A reference book. For words contained in all reasonable dictionaries. For words contained in dictionaries that are used every day in elementary school libraries and classrooms.

Gruber's lengthy post details the seemingly ridiculous hoops the application's developers jumped through to win Apple's approval, from adding the mature age rating to preventing "objectionable" words from appearing as suggestions for partial word matches when searching to finally removing the "objectionable" words entirely. A number of the words that Apple objected to and have been removed from the application also carry entirely non-objectionable definitions, and it is unclear why those entire entries were required to be removed instead of merely the offending definitions for those words.

Every time I think I've seen the most outrageous App Store rejection, I'm soon proven wrong. I can't imagine what it will take to top this one.

Apple requires you to be 17 years or older to purchase a censored dictionary that omits half the words Steve Jobs uses every day.

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clevin

Posted: 37 months ago

http://www.engadget.com/2009/08/05/apples-new-low-censoring-a-dictionary/#continued
http://daringfireball.net/2009/08/ninjawords

Apple censored an English dictionary.
A dictionary. A reference book. For words contained in all reasonable dictionaries. For words contained in dictionaries that are used every day in elementary school libraries and classrooms.

"We were rejected for objectionable content. They provided screenshots of the words '****' and '****' showing up in our dictionary's search results. What's interesting is that we spent a good deal of time making it so that you must type vulgar words in their entirety, and only then will we show you suggestions in the search results. For instance, if you type 'fuc', you will not see '****' as a suggestion. This is in contrast to all other dictionaries we're aware of on the App Store (including Dictionary.com's application), which will show you '****' in the search results for 'fuc', 'mother****er' for 'mother', etc."

In essence, you would have to already know the word in order to be able to look it up in the app -- your mind would have had to be already poisoned with the sinful idea.