Whatbird.com

We submitted all of our apps to the Apple developer system on Friday (which is a ton of uploading, took 2 days). Then yesterday I got a email that basically said they were all rejected because they allowed unfiltered access to the internet and had to be rated as 17+ only (which is the same as porn apps). The reason? Birdipedia. If you hit a Home link at the bottom of a Birdipedia page you can get to a search box in Wikipedia and from there you can enter terms that may bring up mature content. The only choice we have is t remove Birdipedia (and probably Flickr since it allows access to some photos that may be mature) and remove the online support link (e.g. remove all ability to access the internet from inside the app, or give it a 17+ rating. We think 17+ is a bad rating to give software that children love so we are now delayed as we decide what to do.

Before you slam Apple because you can access mature content via there won Safari app, keep in mind that parental controls can be turned on to prevent Safari from being used. If we could hook that into our app so when it was enabled our web pages would react the same, that might be another solution but I dont know if Apple would accept it. Any thoughts?

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iBird Explorer: Finally a field guide as light as a feather. See it at http://www.ibird.com

I'm sure you already thought of this, but what if all the iBird apps had a parental control button like the Safari does?  You have to go to the settings anyway to "remember location" and the default setting would be ON for parental control and I can't imagine why Apple would object to that as a solution.

 It's either that, or go back to having the internet stuff open in the Safari app... although I never did like that and avoided hitting Flickr or Birdipedia while in the app.

 It would be a shame to remove the Flickr & Birdipedia from the apps because I definitely miss them when I don't have 3g or wireless access when birding in the wilderness.

Not knowing what is possible, coding wise, is it possible simply to lock out the search bars when Flickr or Birdepedia open from iBird?

I'm guessing this restriction is going to apply to linking to the photographers' websites too. Although those links are so hidden that I doubt children would find them.

Currently, you have iPhone settings that disable some of the buttons (Favorites and Flickr) in the current version of iBird. Couldn't you use the same thing to disable the Birdipedia button?

 I think you said you took those settings out of the new version. Perhaps that's what lead to the rejection.

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Julianne Bockius

juliboc:

I'm guessing this restriction is going to apply to linking to the photographers' websites too. Although those links are so hidden that I doubt children would find them.

Currently, you have iPhone settings that disable some of the buttons (Favorites and Flickr) in the current version of iBird. Couldn't you use the same thing to disable the Birdipedia button?

 I think you said you took those settings out of the new version. Perhaps that's what lead to the rejection.

Julie thanks for those ideas, which are all good. However I dont think the photographer's web sites are an issue because they dont provide a way to search the net as far as I can see. And I dont think Apple would be happy with the disable approach, its kind of like of trying to pull one over on them.

We actually changed the default to turn Birdipedia and Flickr on when we updated to 1.6.1 so I dont think they missed it. More likely the reason it came up is that Apple is getting nervous about all the bad press about kids being exploited and is over reacting. They appear to not have put together a very cohesive plan for how to deal with it. For example if they just changed the API for the webview so it was hooked into the iPhone's parental controls there woudl be no issue - a parent could disable Safari and it would cascade to all apps that used Safari. Another way out is to make the buttons to Birdipedia take you out of the app but that is so user unfriendly.

We think we have a solution which is to disable any links in Birdipedia to the wiki home page and its search box. I am waiting to hear back from Apple if that would do the trick for them.  To see how absurd this has become check this link that tells a similar and baffling story about the app instapaper

http://db.tidbits.com/article/10436.  

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Mitch Waite

BABW:

Not knowing what is possible, coding wise, is it possible simply to lock out the search bars when Flickr or Birdepedia open from iBird?

Flickr is not an issue because its already filtering mature content. But your idea is essentially what we are checking on, if we did that there would be no way for a customer to type anything into Birdipedia and mature content woud no longer be an issue. 

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Mitch Waite

I agree with all your ideas.

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Mitch Waite

Dear Mitch, Thank you so much for your wonderful product ( iBird Pro)

                 My wife and I use it all the time. I know all of  the iBird users will hang in their with you and your team untill Apple approves your update. Again many thanks,Archie Janvrin Jr.