Apple hit the reject button again. The company has declined to give yet another iPhone application access to its popular App Store.
The application is called Offender Locator. Offered by ThinAir Wireless, the application uses the iPhone’s GPS capabilities to locate registered sex offenders who live in your neighborhood.
The banned software also highlights registered sex offenders who live near contacts in your iPhone address book. What’s more, the application serves up a photo of the sex offender and a list of the committed offenses.
Overblown Hype?
Some are suggesting that the application was pulled because it violated a California law prohibiting the sale of criminal information for profit. After yanking the paid version, the free version is still available for download on the App Store.
However, a similar application called Sex Offender Search remains available for $1.99, so it is unclear whether the competing application will also be pulled or if some other law is in question. Apple could not immediately be reached for comment.
Michael Gartenberg, a vice president at Interpret, said the hoopla over the App Store rejects is overblown. Of the 55,000 applications that have been approved, fewer than a dozen have been the center of developer outcry over the approval process.
“It’s not like we’re seeing Apple rejecting massive numbers [of] applications to the frustration of huge numbers of developers,” Gartenberg said. “It’s a non-story for the most part because it’s affecting a very small number of developers and applications. Any time you have a process that’s run by humans, there are going to be mistakes. But we’ve seen Apple constantly refining the process.”
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