App Review Rejects Information Superhighway ⇥ twitter.com

Kyle Hughes:

Y’all, I fear that Information Superhighway is dead.

It was rejected by App Review twice for not meeting the bar of minimum usefulness and having no native iOS features (4.2 & 4.2.2).

I escalated the second rejection to the App Review Board and the rejection was confirmed.

Information Superhighway is this great little app that Hughes has been working on. It presents an infinite feed of randomized Wikipedia article summaries; you can tap on any article to read more, and you can open locations of interest in Maps. It is a perfect app to fiddle with when you’re stuck in an elevator with people you don’t want to talk to, sitting on a train, or just taking a moment to yourself.

I’ve been using it for months. It is one of the few apps on my phone that brings me genuine joy every time I open it — it feels more delightful than, say, scrolling through Twitter or a news app. I was looking forward to a day when I would be able to recommend it here.

It is a simple app, but it is a very good simple app. I could point to the large number of trash applications that have sailed through App Review, including the myriad fidget spinner apps that do far less, but Information Superhighway should be approved on its own merits. It’s fast and fluid, integrates well with other parts of iOS, and is extremely nice to use. I don’t understand how rejecting it is supposed to benefit the App Store or iPhone users. Unfortunately, Hughes has little recourse, so consider this the App Review equivalent of an amicus curiae. Also, Hughes didn’t ask me to post this; like a jerk, I didn’t even ask first.

Update: As of September 1, Information Superhighway is available in the App Store.