According to MacRumors, Apple has removed non-customer reviews from the App Store. When the store first arrived, anyone could review any application, which, far from being a democratising process, merely resulted in idiots ‘reviewing’ applications they’d not downloaded. For example, ProRemote, a remote for people in busy recording studios, got slammed for costing £60+, via a number of quintessential “I haven’t used this app, but…” reviews.

Although removing these braindead comments doesn’t make App Store reviews perfect (every time an app’s price drops, users who bought at a more expensive price flock to the App Store to deploy one-star reviews of doom, and many other ‘reviewers’ don’t seem to understand how a five-star rating system works, offering surreal glowing one-star reviews), it does make it less broken. I’m sure Apple will get slammed by some, arguing the new system is more of a ‘closed garden’ but, frankly, every online reviews system should be like this.

As someone who reviews items professionally, I often find consumer reviews troublesome, since few people have the experience to make worthwhile comparisons. With a DVD, videogame or CD, that’s perhaps not the case, but few people will have used enough monitors, web-design apps, washing machines, TVs or ovens to have a truly informed opinion about where their shiny new purchase fits in the scheme of things. But when you allow non-customers to review anything, the result is always a car crash. Amazon is the most obvious example, with reviews appearing long before items become available (those for upcoming consoles are particularly absurd—a flurry of five-star reviews from the ‘pro’ camp and one-star opinions from the ‘anti’).

So, Apple is to be applauded for its decision. And if the company can deal with keyword-spamming and its underperforming store search over the coming months, the App Store will finally ensure users and developers do a happy dance, rather than grudgingly trudging through the mire for hours, in search of gems.

Apple sinks to new levels of stupid in South Park App Store row

Ever since the App Store opened for submissions, Apple’s been—and this is perhaps the most charitable description—inconsistent. Although I disagree with the regular statements from Apple’s competition about walled gardens (and Ballmer recently arguing, without a hint of irony, that iPhone is stifling innovation, and if only everyone was using Windows Mobile, they’d have more choice), whoever at Apple is dictating policy regarding App Store submission needs a good swift kick in the nuts.

Apple hit the news when it denied Podcaster entry to the App Store last September. The bizarre argument was that it duplicated functionality of an existing Apple app, but not one on the iPhone—instead, Podcaster wasn’t allowed distribution because, in part, it duplicated functionality in the desktop version of iTunes.

Now, however, Apple has descended to new levels of stupid. In development since last autumn, the South Park app has now been rejected without ceremony. Apple’s reasoning? The content is “potentially offensive”.

In itself, this is understandable. But when you look at the iPhone ‘ecosystem’, the decision is nothing short of batsh*t crazy.

Reason 1: South Park episodes are available to buy in full in the iTunes Store, and they happily play on—you guessed it—an iPhone.

Reason 2: South Park may have plenty of somewhat offensive and puerile moments, but that is at least a veneer over a satirical and cunningly intelligent cartoon. That, however, can’t be said of the slew of boob-jiggle and fart apps that Apple’s happily allowed into the App Store of late. Way to be consistent, Apple!

Reason 3: I’m an adult. No, really. Lots of people who own iPhones are also adults. No, no, it’s actually true. To that extent, it’s a bit rich of Apple to take the ‘offensive’ line with a cartoon that’s shown on television—it’s not like Parker and Stone thought: “You know what? Let’s change South Park, just for iPhone! Its new name shall be Gimp Chainsaw Blood Gouge Sex Death Park!”.

So, Apple, with a slightly edgy but perfectly safe app, let people decide for themselves whether to buy it. After all, I suspect the vast majority of people buying a South Park app are actually going to be South Park fans, and they’ll only take offence if it’s rubbish.

The App Store is undoubtedly iPhone’s killer app, but if Apple keeps indiscriminately knifing apps for no real reason—and high-profile ones at that—it’s going to be iPhone’s killer. It’ll only be so long before rivals start to catch up, and although I’ve no doubt that the Microsoft App Store won’t be as good as Apple’s, it’ll be ‘good enough’ for many. If Apple’s still playing the stupid card when that happens, a whole bunch of people will be yelling “screw you guys,” ditching their iPhones and going elsewhere.

Banking, it seems, isn’t the only career where you can just make crazy sh*t up and get paid for it. Yet again, this week saw an analyst banging the ‘cheap iPhone’ drum. This time, RBC’s Mike Abramsky said we’d see a distinct $99 ‘entry level’ iPhone this summer (source: Silicon Alley Insider).

The things Abramsky claims could appear in the device are pretty funny, and somewhat akin to Apple (a company that, remember, gets off on selling high-quality, high-end products for suitably high price tags) shooting itself in the foot, then the kneecap and then the balls, for good measure. They include:

• A lower-resolution camera. This would require special effort from Apple, as anyone with an existing iPhone will know. The camera is already dreadful. About the only way it could get substantially worse is if Apple removed it entirely, and just made the Camera app snap black rectangles.
• No 3G or GPS, thereby knifing two of the most important aspects of the new iPhone.

To compensate, an updated iPhone would include a screen with 720 x 480 pixels (shoe-horned in, presumably, by someone pushing really, really hard) that would instantly annoy every single iPhone developer and knacker the App Store (given that developers would have to cater for multiple devices), and video.

So, where has this analyst heard the news from? Tim Cook? A recovering Steve Jobs? Nope. He’s just pulled it out of his butt, in the special way that analysts do. This kind of thing wouldn’t be so bad, but people actually listen to these guys. When they say “Apple will release an iMac for $5 that will give you a back massage on demand”, the industry laps it up, and then demolishes Apple when it doesn’t deliver. And these guys get paid lots of money for spouting whatever comes to mind.

Still, I’m sure us mere mortals can take solace in the fact that analysts will probably be first up against the wall when the revolution comes. Even before the bankers.

The BBC reports that Tom and Jerry is to be turned into a live-action movie. Apparently, Warner Bros claims to be “spurred on by the success of live action hit Alvin and the Chipmunks”, although I imagine the absurdly high box-office takings for the utterly dreadful Garfield movies were more of a factor.

As if turning basic cartoons into feature-length films isn’t a bad enough idea, Warner Bros has also gone entirely insane regarding how the Tom and Jerry film will work (or not work, as will most likely be the case). Taking a cue from every other rubbish movie, they want to follow tedious convention and explore motivation (and, presumably, have the ‘heroes’ overcome their problems and kiss at the end, which will require Tom or Jerry to have a swift sex change). In short, the movie will “concentrate on how Tom and Jerry met and their subsequent rivalry”.

Now, perhaps I’m a little bit simple, but here’s how I see it: Tom is a cat and Jerry is a mouse. Cats don’t like mice—in fact, they eat them. And that’s it. We don’t need backstory. We don’t need to figure out why they don’t like each other. One is a cat and the other is a mouse. It’s like exploring the motivation behind why a lion hunts a gazelle. Presumably, in the upcoming Yogi Bear movie, they’ll be exploring the motivation behind the lead taking a dump in the woods…

Having been happily reading the wonderful Complete Peanuts, I only hope Charles Schulz’s classic strip doesn’t get the Hollywood treatment, otherwise I shall get very cross indeed. I may even write a letter.

British Gas has just announced it’ll drop its standard tariff gas price by 10% from 19 February, and I’ve already received some overtly jaunty spam from the company about this. I’m told British Gas will be ‘providing [me] with cheaper energy’. Technically, this is true, but, as ever, the timing sucks.

That the price-drop is occurring in the middle of February, after the worst of the winter’s cold, is no surprise. It’s disappointing, what with oil prices tanking many months ago, but par for the course. After all, British Gas has already made its huge profits for the winter, and can now ‘afford’ to cut its prices and try and grab itself some decent PR while doing so.

The question is whether the company will get away with this cynical business step, and Ed Mayo of Watchdog Consumer Focus has already noted that “Energy price cuts are likely to be too little and too late to help consumers with this winter’s fuel bills” (source: BBC News); also, the 10% seems suspiciously low compared to the drop in petrol prices.

I’d say we can expect another drop around June—and a much bigger one. After all, British Gas will need another chance to crow, and dropping prices by a quarter or more during summer will barely hurt the company. After all, it can (and almost certainly will) hike prices up again come October anyway, ready for another cold winter.