Jonathan Zittrain has an interesting rant here about the way that app stores and sandboxing constrain the creativity of application developers. I think where this essay fails is that it does not give proper weight to the security benefits associated with some of the things that it rails against.

Prior smartphone platforms with open application development and distribution models, like SymbianOS, have significant amounts of malware infestation. Thus far, iPhones and Android devices have avoided this plague in spite of much wider distribution. That is a significant victory.

There has been some Android malware this year, but most of it has been distributed in third party app stores and does not affect the vast majority of end users. I think that we'll see more malware for these devices in the future, but thus far the security model has proven to be effective and that is important.

However, the fact that you are controlling applications for security reasons does not mean that you need to control applications for content reasons.

When Exodus International—"[m]obilizing the body of Christ to minister grace and truth to a world impacted by homosexuality"—released an app that, among other things, inveighed against homosexuality, opponents not only rated it poorly (one-star reviews were running two-to-one against five-star reviews) but also petitioned Apple to remove the app. Apple did.

Apparently Apple has a rule against offending people:

An Apple spokesperson told the Huffington Post that Apple had removed the Exodus International app because it "[violated] our developer guidelines by being offensive to large groups of people."

That is s a pretty hypocritical position for a company that encourages people to "think different." Now, I can see removing this app because telling people that Jesus will cure them from being gay is thought to be harmful and predatory, but thats not the rationale here, and rationales matter. This rationale apparently applies to examples of clearly political speech.

An iPhone application denouncing gay marriage is apparently history after thousands of people signed an online petition urging Apple to remove it from its App Store.

The application, called Manhattan Declaration, was a "call of Christian Conscience" that advocated "the sanctity of life, the dignity of marriage as the union of one man and one woman, and religious liberty," according to its website....

In a statement, Apple said, "We removed the Manhattan Declaration app from the App Store because it violates our developer guidelines by being offensive to large groups of people."

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