Crudebox Renamed PrudeBox, Goes All the Way on the Third Try

It would be like preaching to the choir if anyone were to complain about the disappointment of having an app initially denied from the iTunes App Store. With hundreds of new applications released each week, there are sure to be a handful of apps Apple fundamentally disagrees with. It’s quite disheartening when your app falls into the latter category. However, there’s no greater success than beating Apple at its own game.

Alkali Media, LLC is run by three recent college grads. For three guys fresh out of college with business and advertising degrees, the iPhone marketplace is one of the best places to apply four years of textbook knowledge. Alkali Media’s foray into the iPhone market has been focused on branded soundboards. The first of many soundboards has been deemed the “Crudebox.” Crudebox consists of 16 high-quality and mildly disgusting sounds. However, it does not contain any sounds more disgusting than the 30+ “I shit myself” applications currently found in the iTunes App Store. Naturally, it was assumed that the Apple would approve our application soon after it was submitted.

Six days after the first submission of Crudebox, we received an email stating:

We’ve reviewed CrudeBox and determined that we cannot post this version of your iPhone application to the App Store because it contains objectionable content and is in violation of Section 3.3.12 from the iPhone SDK Agreement which states:

“Applications must not contain any obscene, pornographic, offensive or defamatory content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, etc.), or other content or materials that in Apple’s reasonable judgement may be found objectionable by iPhone or iPod touch users.”

Apparently the seemingly tame soundboard, bodily sound effect application was far too offensive for Apple’s strict moral guidelines. We unanimously agreed that maybe it was the female orgasm sound that set the app over the edge. The orgasm was replaced with a cartoon-like spring sound. The kind you hear when a male cartoon character finds himself awkwardly aroused. The application was submitted a second time. Seven Days later we received word that once again Crudebox was too obscene and offensive for the iTunes App Store. After moving past the inevitable feeling of frustration towards Apple, we decided to poke some fun at Apple’s app approval team. What if we were to submit the same sounds as before, except this time around we make the app look extra flamboyant and change the name to the ironically appropriate, Prudebox?

Eight days later we would received an e-mail from Apple stating that our recently submitted application, Prudebox, has passed the approval process and is now ready for sale. After a name change, and an overtly flamboyant reskin of the application (complete with a pink bunny and a a fleeting sunset), we were able to get our app approved. To this day, we’re still questioning what sort of quality assurance is in place for Apple’s quality assurance team. I’m sure you can only imagine what other quality apps you’ve been missing out on thanks to Apple’s ever-so-stringent approval process.

You can check out our flamboyantly fabulous Prudebox application in the iTunes App store by clicking here.

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