Nod to transparency a welcome change of pace—although Phil Schiller places the blame for the controversy squarely at the developer’s feet.

Earlier this week, Daring Fireball's John Gruber posted a story about an iPhone developer with a program, Ninjawords ( a Wiktionary-based dictionary) that got caught up on the wrong side of Apple's App Store approval process. The article was about how the developer needed to nix "objectionable" words to make it onto the App Store. Like Gruber, we (as did many others) used this incident to further illustrate (as the rejection of Google Voice did the week before) Apple's often confusing and seemingly capricious standards for acceptance into its storefront for iPhone and iPod touch applications.

Well, surprise, surprise. To its credit, Apple did not sit silently on the sidelines this time around. Rather, Apple senior VP Phil Schiller (see picture from Apple) sent a lengthy e-mail to Gruber explaining his company's actions.

While Schiller did address the Ninjaword's incident in detail, doing a good job of setting the record straight, he, unfortunately, did not use the opportunity to comment on the myriad of other problems faced by developers with the App Store's submission and approval process—although Schiller did admit that the process isn't perfect and there is room for improvement.

As for the Ninjawords case, it turns out the Apple reviewer did not require the developer, Matchstick, to remove the objectionable words. Yes, it intially rejected Ninjawords because some words, in Apple's view, went beyond the swear words found in other approved dictionaries. But rather than ask the developer to filter words, Apple suggested Matchstick wait and resubmit Ninjawords when a ratings system with parental controls was put in place with the debut of iPhone OS 3.0.

Here’s what Schiller said in his e-mail:

Contrary to what you reported, the Ninjawords application was not rejected in the App Store review process for including common “swear” words. In fact anyone can easily see that Apple has previously approved other dictionary applications in the App Store that include all of the “swear” words that you gave as examples in your story.

The issue that the App Store reviewers did find with the Ninjawords application is that it provided access to other more vulgar terms than those found in traditional and common dictionaries, words that many reasonable people might find upsetting or objectionable. A quick search on Wiktionary.org easily turns up a number of offensive “urban slang” terms that you won’t find in popular dictionaries such as one that you referenced, the New Oxford American Dictionary included in Mac OS X. Apple rejected the initial submission of Ninjawords for this reason, provided the Ninjawords developer with information about some of the vulgar terms, and suggested to the developer that they resubmit the application for approval once parental controls were implemented on the iPhone.

As Matchstick did not know exactly when this would happen, the developer decided it could not wait due to competitive reasons. So it filtered out the words in question to get Ninjawords up on the App Store sooner than later, as Schiller points out:

The Ninjawords developer then decided to filter some offensive terms in the Ninjawords application and resubmit it for approval for distribution in the App Store before parental controls were implemented. Apple did not ask the developer to censor any content in Ninjawords, the developer decided to do that themselves in order to get to market faster. Even though the developer chose to censor some terms, there still remained enough vulgar terms that it required a parental control rating of 17+.

Huh. It still required the 17+ rating? There's no reason that even after Matchstick removed the objectionable language Apple found offensive that it should still have received the 17+ rating, especially since it had approved  other dictionaries with those words. Somehow Schiller places the blame for the rating on the developer, however:

You are correct that the Ninjawords application should not have needed to be censored while also receiving a 17+ rating, but that was a result of the developers’ actions, not Apple’s. I believe that the Apple app review team’s original recommendation to the developer to submit the Ninjawords application, without censoring it, to the App Store once parental controls was implemented would have been the best course of action for all; Wiktionary.org is an open, ever-changing resource and filtering the content does not seem reasonable or necessary.

Schiller's chiming in on the matter is a move in the right direction for Apple. Let's hope it is an opening salvo towards increase transparency regarding the App Store on the company's part.

See here for Schiller's full e-mail.