You know guys, you're not really doing yourself any favors at this point. We've seen plenty of stories thus far detailing the company's absurd, reactionary, and typically confusing application rejections or changes for its App Store, but the treatment given to dictionary app Ninjawords seems particularly telling. In essence, the program, a simple and fast reference tool -- a straight-up dictionary -- has omitted a handful of common words seen as objectionable by the Star Chamber of application reviewers at Apple HQ. What kind of words, you ask? Well, namely the same kind of words which you can find in any standard dictionary in just about any classroom in this country. John Gruber of Daring Fireball fame succinctly calls out what is patently obvious:But it's far worse than that.

Gruber went a step further and spoke with one of the developers, Phil Crosby, who had this to say on Apple's approach to the software:In essence, you would have to already know the word in order to be able to look it up in the app -- your mind would have had to be already poisoned with the sinful idea.

After three rejections, the forced removal of a number of "illicit" words (many of which are common and innocuous -- "ass" for instance), and a mandatory 17+ rating, Ninjawords was finally admitted into the App Store... three months after it was first submitted.

Look, Apple, you don't seem to get it. You may have admitted 55,000 applications into the Store with little or no problems, no bumps in the road, but it's these kinds of decisions which are quickly defining your policies -- and those policies seem like garbage to us. Censoring content, keeping applications out of your store which "duplicate functionality" of bundled software, and rejecting submissions for things like unsavory search results isn't helping to protect end users: it's making the company that asked everyone to "Think Different" look like a company that can't think at all.

Yesterday's story about Apple censoring the Ninjawords dictionary seems to have made some waves in Cupertino -- none other than Phil Schiller followed up with Daring Fireball's John Gruber to provide Apple's perspective on the situation. According to Phil, Apple's objection to Ninjawords was that by using the free Wiktionary.org dictionary, it "provided access to other more vulgar terms than those found in traditional and common dictionaries," and that the App Store reviewer initially suggested the developer resubmit when iPhone OS 3.0 was launched with parental controls. Since 3.0 hadn't been released yet, the developer censored some of the words in an effort to get onto the store early, and that's how Ninjawords ended up both censored and rated 17+. Sure, okay, except that Gruber points out that the App Store reviewer flagged some pretty generic swear words, not the smack-your-momma vulgarities Phil claims are the issue. Still, the larger message remains the same -- the App Store review process is maddeningly inconsistent and in dire need of reform -- and on that note Phil says Apple intends to "learn and quickly improve," so it sounds like there's hope yet. Check the read link for more of Phil's response, it's an interesting read.