5000 Apps Banned – The New Rules for Specific Health Apps

Apple have kicked another specific App out of the Appstore.

The top selling app ChilliFresh and Health & Fitness 101 got as high as number 1 in Australia and I think they were in the top 10 on Monday in the USA.

Today it is nowhere to be seen and a message on their website tells the story. Those guys would be pissed.

WooHealth App was banned 18 months ago – and reinstated about 1 week later after we removed a diet transformation of a woman; WooHealth has no inappropriate images – YES, WOOHEALTH IS IN THE STORE. Incidentally, they get a solid 5-star rating for their latest version. Furthermore, 95% of their users rate it five stars – that has got to say something! Of course, WooHealth is also available on Android.

As you may know, WooHealth is a company that concentrates on developing health supplements, weight loss, anti-aging products such as HGH or what is usually known as Growth Hormone, as well as bodybuilding and fitness supplements. This app also recommends the most effective HGH supplements that anyone can easily choose from their lists.

Recently I had noticed that the Apps getting approved by Apple, especially in the health and fitness category, were more and more risqué – and I was seriously starting to question why we had to make all the alterations to WooHealth 18 months back. I mean, really, Apple had their rules, and recently they got slack on enforcing them. The makers of Health & Fitness 101 should have been told when they submitted the App that it wasn’t appropriate.

They would have been doing about 10,000 sales a day minimum when they were pulled – and believe me after being there – that has got to hurt!

Let’s do a query on iTunes for the words “fitness and health” – I get 360 results.

Let’s do another search, this time for the word “weight loss” – I get 18 pages of 180 Apps – that’s 3240 apps, amongst those Diet Tips, Nutrition Secrets, 300+ Healthy Cooking Recipes – most of these have controversial headlines about how you have to be old enough to download the app, ALL of them allude to weight loss content – and nearly all of them have hundreds and hundreds of 1 star reviews – because they are all complete bullshit. Apple doesn’t allow sensitive content in Apps, if they did the store would be a cesspit, the top 10 would all be fitness content.

However, there are massive unforeseen consequences of Apples Ban Hammer.

Combine Apples prohibition with people’s innate desire to view body sensitive material and you get demand with no supply. These apps are unable to actually deliver anything people want, but given the huge sales possible by saying your app contains this material there will always be developers who are loose with the truth. Who is the big loser here? Why, the customer of course – those that don’t read the reviews get ripped off. I mean, look at the Crazy Diet app with 181,603 1 star reviews!!! From a total of 331,142.

In comparison, WooHealth Premium has had 14,434 total reviews – reviews normally equate to total sales – so since we have had 1.2 Million sales I’d expect that this app with the crappy reviews might have sold 25 million copies!!! (and 54% of them thought that it wasn’t worth the bandwidth!)

So… what is the solution?

Apple should enforce their rules.
Apple should open a new section in the store for specific content
Apple should block this content from any top lists
Apple should block this content, including viewing of the whole section from kids and enforce parental controls, just like the explicit label in music.

I’m all for parental controls, I don’t like the fact that an app “300+ Best Cooking Recipes HD is at number 2 in entertainment, this is the same as putting the Big Fat guy mags next to the cash register in a supermarket. What’s more it isn’t even sensitive, it just pretends it is and as a consequence every customer that buys it feels ripped off.

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