Apple approves Pulitzer winner’s iPhone app; cartoonist now free to mock the powerful on cell phones
Big update on the Mark Fiore story: His editorial cartoon app, NewsToons, is finally available for sale in the iTunes App Store. The app — smartly marketed as “the app Steve Jobs was talking about!” — is available for download here, for 99 cents.
For those who missed our post Thursday, Fiore is this year’s Pulitzer Prize winner for editorial cartooning. But he couldn’t get his iPhone app past Apple’s app review process. In December, Apple rejected NewsToons because, as Apple put it, his satire “ridicules public figures,” a violation of the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement, which bars any apps whose content in “Apple’s reasonable judgement may be found objectionable, for example, materials that may be considered obscene, pornographic, or defamatory.”
After our story, Apple faced a wave of criticism from around the web, and the company invited Fiore to resubmit the app for approval on Friday. Apple CEO Steve Jobs called the initial rejection a “mistake,” but critics still worry about the editorial control Apple has over the content sold in the App Store, on iPhones, iPod touches, and iPads.
