The update to FastFinder is still caught up in Apple’s approval process. It’s now facing the App Rating Squad who have rejected the update stating:

“we cannot post this version of your iPhone application to the App Store at this time because it is not appropriately rated.“

iPhone OS3.0 introduced parental controls and Apple requested developers to self-rate their applications. Apple did not seem to review those ratings, creating potential for inconsistencies and loopholes. It looks like Apple is now catching up by validating those ratings whenever reviewing the next update. So unless the reviewer agrees with your rating you won’t be able to release your update.
Unfortunately the reviewer did not seem to agree with our current 4+ rating:

“Our review indicates that the application content is not consistent with the current rating. FastFinder allows unfiltered access to the internet, where content with mature or suggestive themes can be accessed. Applications must be rated accordingly for the highest level of content that the user is able to access.“

This immediately made me think of a high-profile case a few months ago, where a newspaper aggregator application got rejected because it included ‘The Sun’ newspaper. And because that newspaper also has a page3 with some scantily clothed ladies the whole application got rejected. Rather than fight it, the developers decided to simply remove that newspaper.

I’m finding the whole thing a bit silly and inconsistent. Yes, because FastFinder has unrestricted access to all search engines, you could search for mature content as well. But that doesn’t make it a “mature” application, does it? And the silly thing is, as long as you have Safari on your iPhone, you can get to those search engines (and thus to “suggestive themes”) anyway. And I checked, even if you turn parental controls on, you can still access whatever you want through Safari. So the rating system would become pretty much useless unless every parent switches off access to Safari (which you can do in parental controls), but that completely neuters your iPhone or iPod. No kid will be happy with that.

The inconsistency comes from the fact that there are many similar apps in the Appstore that all have a 4+ rating. So Apple would have to fight every one of those applications on their next updates and pretty much force any app that has any internet access to a higher rating.
The only consolation at this point is that we’re not alone. The popular News Addict application has found itself facing the same problem. Its developer rightly states:

“Apple needs to rate apps based on what they actually contain not what they might be used for. This is the equivalent of putting 17+ ratings on TV sets because they have the potential to play R rated movies.”

We have now resubmitted the FastFinder update with a 12+ rating, let’s see if that satisfies the censors.

Thank you for the many positive responses to the release of FastFinder. Since its launch there have been major developments in the world of search. In recent weeks two major new search engines were launched, Wolfram Alpha and Microsoft’s Bing. And both are claiming to be the next frontier in intelligent search.

Wolfram Alpha launched under a big hype, and some were already predicting the end of the Google era. The reviewer at Trusted Reviews was probably more on the ball when he commented “I suspect it is Wikipedia, not Google, which might feel the pinch…”. It seems that the interest in Wolfram has faded as quickly as the hype, so it will be interesting to see what happens next. No offense to it’s founder but I personally still don’t like the name. It’s too complex, but then again the whole search experience feels a bit nerdy. But it will have its fans, so we have included WolframAlpha in FastFinder and have grouped it under ‘encyclopedia’, just under Wikipedia.

The second big launch was Bing, Microsoft’s attempt to finally get their search offering right. Reviews have been mostly positive. Personally I’m still confused on what the homepage pictures of rustic buildings and sweeping landscapes have to do with search and I’m not convinced that ‘Bing’ is a good name either. More problematic is the fact that the ‘decision engine’ part of Bing, which is supposed to show in the ‘intelligent’ sidebars, only seems to work well in the US. But you can be sure that Microsoft will keep investigating and most people seem to agree that it’s a major leap forward from the mostly failed Live search. “Live” has now been fully replaced by Bing, so we’ve updated the logo and the links in FastFinder to reflect this.

In addition to these new arrivals and in response to customer requests, we’ve also added support for del.icio.us (now delicious.com) and digg. We are planning to keep on top of developments in the search engine world and will keep adding and updating the engines in FastFinder accordingly.

The new version of FastFinder also includes a fix for a bug that’s showing under the new 3.0 iPhone operating system. The application re-uses the same UITableView both for displaying and editing search engines. Unfortunately, OS3.0 has implemented some stricter controls around the use of TableViews, which sometimes causes FastFinder to crash when pressing the edit button. The fix will solve this.

The new release was submitted to Apple 3 weeks ago, but unfortunately it seems that FastFinder has now also got stuck in Apple’s review process. We appreciate your patience while we wait for Apple and hope the update will get approved soon.

UPDATE 1-JUL-2009: we’ve now received the dreaded email from Apple stating:

“Your application, FastFinder, is requiring unexpected additional time for review.“

Without any further explanation. We’re hoping to receive better news soon.