According to ZDNet, a leaked roadmap for Microsoft’s ‘Gemini’ wave of Office updates indicates the suite will arrive on the iPad—in 2014. I wonder whether anyone will really care by then. For at least the last two years—and really for longer than that—Microsoft has played a dangerous game, training people to realise they don’t need Office.

On the iPad, a mobile platform where people happily pay for apps, and where Apple ably demonstrated you could build Office-like apps, Microsoft did nothing for so long. Subsequently, Apple’s own Pages, Numbers and Keynote apps sold well, and various other Office-compatible apps appeared. Others gravitated towards apps that supported Google Docs while some writers simply used plain text editors for writing work. Four years in, will they suddenly scoot back to Office, or just stick with what they’re currently happy using? (With Android‘s growth, Microsoft’s making the same mistake on that platform, too.)

Online, Microsoft sat and watched as Google scooped up everyone who wanted an ‘everywhere’ Office-like suite and gave it to them for free. In my tech writing, ‘Google Docs’ as a phrase now seems more prominent than Office. Microsoft’s now fighting back in this space, but just as people were once snared by the ‘must have Office’ mentality, plenty are now happily nestled in Google’s amble online bosom. (Google also showed that the majority of people don’t need Office’s entire feature-set—just the basics for rapidly creating and sharing text, documents and presentations.)

Even on the Mac, Microsoft’s dropped a ball, in the form of Office for the Mac App Store, which, as you’ll notice on visiting said store, does not exist. There are likely technical and business reasons why this is the case, but the net result is that new Mac users visit the Mac App Store, do a search for ‘Office’ and are immediately presented with Pages, Keynote and Numbers, which are temptingly affordable.

It’s a baffling path for Microsoft to have taken. Perhaps the company didn’t have the resources to deal with iOS, Android, the web and the Mac App Store, or perhaps it simply didn’t have the vision. Maybe it was banking on pivoting from ‘Office everywhere’ to ‘Office on Windows and Microsoft’s mobile platform’, to secure marketshare. Whatever the reasons for Office’s appearance on popular platforms stalling, this in hindsight looks like a major oversight.

Note that I don’t for a second believe Office is ‘doomed’ or that it won’t continue to be important for many people (not least businesses); however, where Office was once a default in pretty much everyone’s mind, now it’s not—and that’s a dangerous end result for Microsoft.

A couple of years ago, Panic built Status Board, providing insight into ongoing projects and useful info. Yesterday, it got released as an iPad app. It costs £6.99/$9.99 and already there are complaints about how expensive the app is, which I find a pity. The App Store really has destroyed people’s sense of value when it comes to software and games. While £6.99/$9.99 would be expensive for a one-note throwaway app, it seems perfectly reasonable for a productivity aid you might use daily.

On this subject, iMore’s Rene Ritchie yesterday asked an interesting question:

If, in 2008, the lowest selling price for apps had been $10 instead of free, how different would the App Store economy be today?

Under the assumption that free apps also wouldn’t have been allowed, a much higher tier-one price-point would have made things play out very differently on the App Store.

First and foremost, it wouldn’t be so full of junk. I rifle through new-app and new-game lists a lot and most of the content is awful. Anyone can make an app and then anyone can attempt to sell it at a low-low price. However, this also means that anyone can make an app and then anyone can attempt to sell it at a low-low price. In other words, despite what some people would have you believe, this isn’t always a terrible thing—some of the low-cost apps in the App Store have been indie marvels that have subsequently propelled the authors on to greatness. (It would of course be nicer if all the gems floated to the surface rather than too many of them sinking in the App Store sludge, but if life was all sunshine and roses, Brits wouldn’t be able to constantly moan about the weather. Or something.)

Secondly, the app revolution would have been slower rather than an explosion. People were clearly very happy to impulse buy at the low App Store tiers, but that wouldn’t have been the case had everything started at $9.99. Instead of iPhones full of apps, most people wouldn’t have gone beyond stock apps, and more tech-savvy users would have been considerably choosier. This would have had the knock-on effect of eradicating many one-shot utilities and probably the majority of games. There’s an expectation with higher-cost content, after all. I doubt Apple would then have been issuing press releases with the kind of huge sales and app-download numbers we’ve seen since the App Store’s launch. (One benefit, however, is that those apps that did become very popular might have been more likely to result in a viable business, compared to products that sell plenty of copies for a dollar and still don’t provide enough income to the developer.)

Thirdly, at the very high end I doubt a great deal would be different in terms of general quality. The very best apps and games on the App Store are phenomenal, despite (or in spite) of the current pricing structure. Stepping into a world of ten-dollar minimums wouldn’t, I think, make those very best apps any better. It would, though, probably cut down on the range and experimentation on offer, given that fewer people would be buying; and in the current market there’s always that possibility of a sale when you need to boost your app’s visibility on bargain sites. There’s more scope for risk with varied pricing.

A final thought is that perhaps a high App Store tier-one would have also galvanised web apps much earlier (almost immediately). Many cheap apps (and even games) we now see on the App Store would have been created online instead, using web standards. For advocates of ‘free’, ‘open’ and interoperability, that would have been a huge win, but it’s hard to see how in a world of free and dirt-cheap apps how people will be dragged away to web apps (well, unless they’re as good as Forecast). For Apple, though, this would have been a loss—its primarily “there’s an app for that” differentiator would have been largely meaningless if all the apps were online and ably supported by rival platforms. (Open web advocates would argue this is where we’re headed anyway in the long term. I remain a little sceptical of that, unless the open web can boost product discoverability and deal more ably with monetisation of web apps.)

My thinking, then, is that I’m mostly glad Apple didn’t force a high tier-one price-point. However, I do wonder whether it should have gone for more of a middle-ground. Indie dev Jeff Minter of Llamasoft recently said he’s pretty much given up on iOS, because it’s not sustainable for him to make games on the platform and sell them at tier-one or tier-two prices. He was hoping people would gravitate towards the ‘price of a pint’ for their games. Unfortunately, evidence suggests people now even baulk at paying anything at all for an app or game (although some are subsequently happy to buy lots of in-app purchases once snared). Since 2008, developers have been concerned about a rush to the bottom—to the 69p/$0.99 price point that makes survival tough; now, they have to deal with potentially receiving nothing at all for their work, and figuring out how to get some income from microtransactions. Perhaps by injecting more perceived value into apps by raising prices a little, this can, to some extent, be avoided, but ‘free’ now almost seems like an inevitability; on that basis, it’ll be interesting to see how the battle plays out between free native apps and free web apps.

I earlier today wrote about Saga issue 12 being banned from the App Store and how Apple was being inconsistent (and sometimes hypocritical) in its treatment of content within apps and therefore needed to update its parental controls. The assumption I—and everyone else made—was that Apple had banned Saga. The assumption the comic’s co-creator made was that this had something to do with the depiction of gay sex within the issue. It turns out pretty much everyone was wrong.

On the Comixology website, CEO David Steinberger revealed what really happened:

In the last 24 hours there has been a lot of chatter about Apple banning Saga #12 from our Comics App on the Apple App Store due to depictions of gay sex. This is simply not true, and we’d like to clarify.

As a partner of Apple, we have an obligation to respect its policies for apps and the books offered in apps. Based on our understanding of those policies, we believed that Saga #12 could not be made available in our app, and so we did not release it today.

We did not interpret the content in question as involving any particular sexual orientation, and frankly that would have been a completely irrelevant consideration under any circumstance.

Given this, it should be clear that Apple did not reject Saga #12.

After hearing from Apple this morning, we can say that our interpretation of its policies was mistaken. You’ll be glad to know that Saga #12 will be available on our App Store app soon.

All’s well that ends well, then, apart from the thorny issue that this kind of thing is going to keep on happening. People will make assumptions regarding what happened surrounding an Apple-oriented incident because Apple’s press centre pretty much never responds to request for comment. Similarly, developers will either self-censor or get censored because Apple’s rules are opaque and vague.

I certainly don’t think Apple should communicate in the manner that some hacks demand: “Tell us everything about all your future plans!” But that the company now essentially refuses to answer anything is part of the reason things like the Saga issue become so widespread, and the net result will be that lots of people read about ‘evil Apple censoring content’ but not necessarily ‘oh, that wasn’t Apple after all, but the comics distributor everyone was feeling sorry for’.

Update: On the basis of comments here and elsewhere, it seems I need to be a bit clearer about a few things. First, yes I got this one totally wrong. I fully admit that. Hell, the title of this post is “leaping to conclusions”, which is a bit of a pointer. Also, I updated both previous posts very obviously to state that Apple did not in fact ban anything.

Secondly, I also stand by the other point I made, in that when someone asks Apple a question, the fact a response is almost never forthcoming is a problem. I’ve been writing about Apple for 13 years now, and I’ve lost count of the number of press requests I’ve made. I recall maybe getting any response whatsoever perhaps a dozen times and literally once getting something beyond “no comment”. (This also seems a peculiarly non-US thing. For some reason, Apple’s much happier confirming or denying reports to US-based writers. In the UK, it appears much harder to get a response.)

Thirdly, this wasn’t a total loss, because it enabled me to formulate some thoughts on Apple’s parental controls that I’ve been meaning to get written down for a while. Regardless of who thought Saga should or should not have been on the store, such mature content points to the fact iOS could really do with a much simpler to activate but also much more granular ‘kid mode’ of some kind.

Still, when writing, I agree with those people who’ve argued—even when blogging—facts should be thoroughly checked. In this case, pinging Comixology’s PR too would have made sense, and I regret not doing so. Contacting press teams from all those involved is something I always do when writing for a commercial publication, and a blog should ideally hold itself to the same standard. For various reasons, this personal blog to me has usually been a home for more off-the-cuff trains-of-thought, and I’ve never considered this place particularly influential, given that its traffic levels aren’t very high.

Nonetheless, this incident has made me think considerably and very carefully this evening about how this blog will operate in the future and the kind of content it will carry; right now, I imagine there’ll be less ‘rushing to judgment’ and also ‘just less’. That should be good for everyone, in the long run.

Update: Comixology revealed that it had in fact self-censored and Apple put it right. I write about this in a new post that also talks about how Apple’s silence regarding the press isn’t helping matters these days.

Earlier today, I wrote about Apple’s latest slice of censorship. In short, a couple of small images of gay sex in an issue of Saga meant Apple banned the comic. Initially, I was undecided about the incident—Apple has recently been heavily criticised regarding kids getting hold of iOS devices and doing things with them that they shouldn’t. However, it turns out that previous issues of Saga have included similarly explicit images (just of straight sex) and so the company at best comes out of this looking inconsistent; at worst, Apple’s censorship appears to be homophobic.

Ultimately, if Apple comments (which isn’t likely), it will most likely revert to two of its common arguments when it comes to content for sale and what won’t be allowed past its gatekeepers:

1. Apple will “know it when it sees it” regarding what should or should not be censored.
2. Certain types of material are not fit for consumption by children and should therefore not be available within apps.

The first of those things is no longer good enough—not that it really ever was. Apple’s rules need to be more clearly defined. The second was always nonsensical, and is best summed up by Apple’s comments on rejecting the Endgame: Syria strategy title:

We view Apps different than books or songs, which we do not curate. If you want to criticize a religion, write a book. If you want to describe sex, write a book or a song, or create a medical app. It can get complicated, but we have decided to not allow certain kinds of content in the App Store.

Why are apps subject to more stringent restrictions than books? In the specific case of Saga, why is a comic within an app that includes a store subject to more stringent restrictions than a comic within iBooks (effectively also an app with a store)? It smacks of Apple not considering the long game and letting personal prejudices regarding app content (i.e. extreme violence = OK; porn = bad; political satire = very bad) get in the way of objectivity.

Most often, the argument then dovetails into the inaccurate but often stated reasoning that comics and games are primarily for children, and therefore apps in particular should be clean of such ‘evils’ as porn or ‘difficult’ humour/statement such as satire. But if the net result of this is people not being able to access certain types of content in apps, but being able to access it elsewhere—even in one of Apple’s own stores—it makes a mockery of any system Apple’s set in place, and it suggests one form of media is less important than another.

I think this all points to the fact Apple really needs to face up to iOS devices needing parental controls that are far easier to access and much more granular in terms of what they enable you to do. In iOS 6, a parent can visit Settings and go to General > Restrictions and disable a small number of Apple applications and purchase actions, along with defining content that has specific ratings applied. What’s needed in iOS 7 is a massive button that a parent can prod that in an instant blocks everything under a user-defined age limit. In addition to this, a more granular ‘kid mode’ could be implemented, building on the current Restrictions settings, providing the means for parents to enable/disable on a per-app basis. This should then be a top-level setting, not buried half-way down the screen in General.

I’ll be surprised if Apple does this, and as I’ve previously said, it still wouldn’t stop tat like the Daily Mail running stories about how ‘evil Apple traumatised our little baby’ when a kid gets handed an iPad that the parents didn’t bother to put into ‘kid mode’ first. However, it would make the tools for parental-based content management more prominent, and potentially enable Apple to relax a bit on what it allowed within apps. Without this, Apple merely continues to bury itself in terrible press, becoming a magnet for criticism surrounding inconsistent censorship, puritanical views, and, worse, homophobia—intentional or otherwise.

Update: Comixology revealed that it had in fact self-censored and Apple put it right. I write about this in a new post that also talks about how Apple’s silence regarding the press isn’t helping matters these days.

Issue 12 of mature comic Saga has been banned by Apple. It will not be for sale in Comixology’s iOS app, and will have to be purchased elsewhere. This is a minor inconvenience (not least given Comixology’s lack of on-device subscriptions), but the decision’s already being slammed as another example of overt Apple censorship, and some kind of proof that Apple will destroy the comics industry.

Rarely for me, I’m not sure what to think about this. Although I have the first trade of Saga, I’d not read the current issue on hearing about the story. To that end, I wasn’t sure exactly what Apple had a problem with, bar various websites reporting on “explicit gay sex”, and co-creator Brian K. Vaughan countering that this was actually “two postage stamp-sized images of gay sex”. Vaughan added:

This is a drag, especially because our book has featured what I would consider much more graphic imagery in the past, but there you go. Fiona and I could always edit the images in question, but everything we put into the book is there to advance our story, not (just) to shock or titillate, so we’re not changing s**t.

Vaughan also pointed out:

If all else fails, you might be able to find SAGA #12 in Apple’s iBookstore, which apparently sometimes allows more adult material to be sold than through its apps. Crazy, right?

Sort of. Although that does look like hypocrisy, and Apple does need to figure out a way to enable adult/mature content in the App Store, Tap! deputy editor Matthew Bolton pointed out the following on Twitter:

Apple declines to directly sell comic showing three penises ejaculating on someone’s face in a store currently being criticised for making it too easy for kids to buy anything. It continues to have no problem with you buying this content another way. Can’t feel outraged, sorry.

And this is the problem. People are outraged about issues relating to children using IAP and having access to content they shouldn’t via the App Store. Then they’re outraged by Apple performing any censorship on the App Store. Apple can’t really win. (And, no, multiple accounts wouldn’t be the solution, unless you really believe we wouldn’t then see a slew of the exact same stories but from parents who’d ‘forgotten’ to switch accounts before giving their iOS device to a child.)

The (not safe for work) preview of Saga 12 on CBR shows what all the fuss was about, involving two frames of gay sex on a robot character’s TV head. It’s really a bit ‘blink and you’ll miss it’, and having now seen it, I’d say Vaughan definitely has a point; in earlier episodes I’ve read (that are still available via the iOS Comixology app), depictions of sex were certainly a lot more obvious—although Apple might argue you never saw ejaculate. Others might then point out plenty of comics ‘approved’ by Apple show countless people getting blown to pieces in a shower of blood, and so banning a couple of tiny frames of man-on-man action (or men-on-man in the second) in an age-rated adult comic (17+) seems on the crazy side. (But, again, would a parental lock make any odds? People assume comics are for kids, and so I can imagine the Daily Mail screeching: “Horror as child sees penis in children’s comic on Apple iPad set to children’s account, WHY WON’T ANYONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN?”)

So I’m more confused about this than anything and not really outraged, other than being outraged about not knowing what to be outraged about.

I hate you, Apple.

UPDATE: As Alex Hern notes on Twitter:

My big problem with it is the homophobic element. If Apple treated gay and straight sex the same, they’d just be prudish.

He links to another Saga (NSFW) image that’s, if anything, more explicit than the banned ones, and I now think Apple got this one wrong. This all rather smacks of Apple’s “we’ll know it when we see it” attitude to what’s allowed and what isn’t, but any suggestion of homophobia is hugely disappointing and also quite strange coming from a company that has strongly supported gay rights. That all said, perhaps if this were all pointed out to Apple, it’d just remove the issue including that second linked frame too.

Twitter user ‘superluminescence’ counters:

Apple’s policy seems pretty clearly equivalent to “what would get on TV”. Those images aren’t exactly grey area.

To some extent, that’s true, but then the image Hern linked to also wouldn’t be acceptable on television.