After 5 Rejections, Apple Accepts App That Tracks U.S. Drone Strikes

Persistence, it turns out, does pay off. After rejecting it five times, Apple has finally approved an app that tracks every U.S. drone strike and sends a push notification to users every time a flying robot carries out a deadly mission around the world.

Josh Begley, the data artist and developer who made the app, finally got through Apple's careful approval process on Friday, more than a year and a half after the first rejection by the company's App Review Team

It took persistence, but it took also some semantic trickery. Begley got the app approved because he removed the word "drone" from the name of the app and from its description. For the first three attempts, it was called Drones+, then Dronestream for the last two. This latest, successful time, it's called Metadata+, and Begley initially submitted it with no content or functionality, adding the archive of strikes later Read more...