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NiN's Trent Reznor Speaks Out on Apple's App Store Rejection Policies

Monday May 4, 2009 2:01 am PDT by Arnold Kim
Apple's seemingly arbitrary rules for rejecting App Store applications is once again in the news. This time rock band Nine Inch Nails' founder Trent Reznor has taken issue with Apple's rejection policies.

Nine Inch Nails (NiN) released their own iPhone application in mid April. The app allows fans a way to access NiN news, updates, music, and more. Over the weekend, Reznor reported that a routine version update had been rejected due to "objectionable content" in the form of the album "The Downward Spiral". Reznor speaks out [explicit language] about the issue and apparent hypocrisy of the policy:

Now, "The Downward Spiral" the album is not available anywhere in the iPhone app. The song "The Downward Spiral" I believe is in a podcast that can be streamed to the app. Thanks Apple for the clear description of the problem - as in, what do you want us to change to get past your stupid ******* standards?
....
You can buy The Downward ******* Spiral on iTunes, but you can't allow an iPhone app that may have a song with a bad word somewhere in it. Geez, what if someone in the forum in our app says **** or ****? I suppose that also falls into indecent material. Hey Apple, I just got some SPAM about ***** THROUGH YOUR MAIL PROGRAM. I just saw ***** right there in Safari! On my iPhone!

Come on Apple, think your policies through and for **** sake get your app approval scenario together.

Reznor later posts [explicit language] that he's a fan of Apple's products and specifically the iPhone, but that he wants to draw attention to the "ludicrous approval process". He also states that "if Apple doesn't get it together", they will make the app available to the Jailbreak community.

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