Anatomy of a Rejected App: Mr Poot

by Eric March on October 12, 2008 at 1:44 am

Before Podcaster, before Slasher — before even Pull My Finger, there was Mr Poot. Indeed, before any of the controversy over Apple rejecting iPhone apps for arbitrary reasons started floating around the blogosphere, Iron Square felt the sting of Apple’s rejection.

The app is pretty well exactly what you think it is, and predated Pull My Finger by some time. Its rejection never made the rounds on the blogosphere at the time because they didn’t make a stink about it. (Sorry. Had to.) It wasn’t a project of any significance; for coder Jeff Farand and artist/brother James, it was quite literally a quick 3-hour jaunt from IDE to iPhone that was initially suggested by their father, himself a fan of scatological humour, and they decided to use it as their debut app just to test the App Store’s waters.

While at least the male half of the Farand family was in touch with their mischievous, giggling inner child, the shirty, politically correct misanthropes who sat with perfect posture on the app review board had evidently let their striped ties strangle theirs to death. The rejection notice stated that “Bodily functions aren’t worldly acceptable behaviour,” an edict typed no doubt by someone whose farts can only be heard by dogs.

The app is fairly simple, though surprisingly (or perhaps absurdly) has a number of options. The main screen is the “Poot Board.” It presents the user innocently enough with a screen full of clouds. Tapping on the slightly darker foreground clouds will sound off different fart noises. (Each cloud is assigned a specific one — 12 in all.) The second screen is the “Poot Shaker.” Here you simply shake your device and it will play a random fart noise. Finally, there is the “Poot Timer.” Enter a time delay interval in seconds and it will play a random fart noise when the timer runs out. Jeff himself has apparently had some fun with the timer function on elevators — and I have to admit to snickering at the thought of that. Hey, even as an adult, farts, and in particular, people’s reactions to them, can still be funny.

So sure, it’s a very simple fart generator — but it’s a very nice looking and well-designed fart generator, as silly as that sounds. I’d probably have even given it a pass in my normal Free App Store Reviews back on Touch Podium for being more than just the most basic of sound boards — it was certainly a far cry from the simplistic Pull My Finger, anyway.

So was Apple right to reject it? I really don’t think so. Slasher could be excused because, in its own way, and hanging on the fringe of political correctness, it did kinda-sorta dance around the outside of advocating violence. (I hesitate to use the word “advocate” here because clearly it wasn’t saying “go out and stab someone, it’s fun!” However, depicting a knife, even a virtual one, where the app’s intent was obviously to make stabbing motions ala Psycho, it does poke at the boundaries a bit, even if it’s in a manner that is several dozen times removed from the real thing.) The “Duplication of functionality” rejections were just absurd — if someone can do something Apple already did, only better, or offering different functions than what were available internally, then they should be allowed to do so. But even that doesn’t really surprise me; Apple doesn’t like competition from anyone smaller than they are. That doesn’t make it right, but it’s possible to see through their side of the looking glass on this.

But the idea of Apple as gatekeeper to the land of all that is “worldly acceptable” is even more absurd. To begin with, who in any land that that has or will eventually get the iPhone hasn’t giggled at a fart? Maybe some, like those on Apple’s review board, have forgotten about such silliness when they breached adulthood. That’s fine, whatever, chacon son gout and all that. But shouldn’t suitability and acceptability be left up to the consumer? (Within certain broadly accepted limits, of course.) I have to wonder if a belch generator would have been similarly accepted. Are people as offended by spontaneous public eructation? I mean real people, not socialites who have never seen the inside of a taxi, think beer is vulgar, and think “work” is something you only do when you’re poor. They don’t live on the same plane of existence as everyone else.

Sure, Mr Poot is puerile, but it’s supposed to be. It evokes that childish giddiness we’ve all felt as a kid whenever someone trumpeted lustily into the crook of their arm or cupped their armpit and flapped. (Admit it, there’s at least the hint of a smirk trying to climb up your face right now.) Those who are not amused by it can easily avoid being offended by not downloading it in the first place. It’s not the sort of thing that could cause harm to anyone by way of depicting something that is widely considered taboo. Mr Poot doesn’t even depict images even remotely connected to the act of passing wind except by vague suggestion.

Sure, it’s Apple’s game and you either play it or take your ball and go home. Still, they need to stop thinking the world is populated by glass people who shatter at the slightest whiff of anything untoward. (Those people all live in Utah.) Farts are some of the least offensive of the crass things I could think of, and it isn’t like making fart sound generators available in the App Store would set them sailing down a slippery slope; there’s a great deal of difference between farts and other bodily functions (belches notwithstanding) or material that’s broadly taboo. It’s a fart. And these don’t even stink. Hell, Bill Cosby did one of the funniest stand-up routines about his father’s flatulence ever — and he did that back in the 70s. It was released on an LP for cryin’ out loud, and without any parental advisory warnings either.

But anyway, I didn’t intend for this to turn into an op/ed piece. Frankly, I don’t think the App Store is any worse off for having lost this app, but I think the real point here is that there are a lot of other apps whose disappearance would certainly make the App Store better. Hey, Apple, if you’re looking for help deciding which apps you should reject, I’ve got a laundry list you can use as a template. Free of charge, naturally; I’d just be happy to do this service for my fellow man. Trust me, you’ll anger fewer people and make even more happy for not having to be subjected to card carrying crap — most of all me.

By the by, if any further proof was needed as to Apple’s inconsistency in their reasons for rejecting apps, Pull My Finger wasn’t canned because it made fart noises. It was canned because it didn’t make use of any of the iPhone’s special features.

(via Frapstr)