14 DAY TRIAL // Josh Begley, a graduate student at New York University took data on American drone strikes and used it to code an iPhone app that featured an interactive map. Apple rejected it, citing “objectionable” content.
Earlier this month, The Guardian ran an interactive map of American drone strikes showing the locations in Pakistan where missiles struck suspected terrorists from unmanned aerial vehicles.
Sourcing its data from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in Britain, the map was made available through The Guardian’s iPhone app.
Developer Josh Begley caught wind of the newspaper’s initiative and decided to use the same data to create an iPhone app of his own – Drone+.
However, Drone+ featured an interactive map and was dedicated exclusively to the drone strikes, complete with notifications on when such strikes occurred.
Apple rejected Mr. Begley’s app because, in the iPhone maker’s opinion, it went against its well-established rules regarding objectionable content within iOS apps.
“I wanted to have a more granular sense of what drone strikes really did look like out of genuine curiosity.” Begley told the New York Times.
Contacted on the matter of rejecting Mr. Begley’s app, Apple spokesman Tom Neumayr simply said the software was removed for violating Apple policy. Neumayr declined to elaborate on what exactly they found ‘objectionable’ in Mr. Begley’s Drone+.
The developer also said, “I didn’t actually expect anyone to download the app. People don’t want to hear about drone strikes But that’s kind of the point. Even if we have access to the data, do we really care to be interrupted by it?”
While iOS handset owners are restricted from downloading Drone+, Android phone users are free to download and use the app without problems.
Apple is known for its stringent rules in approving and rejecting third-party software in its iOS App Store.
A video demonstration of Drone+ in action can be found below.
Drones+ iPhone App from Josh Begley on Vimeo.