We are very excited to announce that Calitics now has an iPhone app! We’ve teamed up with Notice Software, a great mobile developer, to bring you the application. It’s currently available only for the iPhone, but we expect a version for Android, the Google mobile OS, within a few days. The software offers some great flexibility for Calitics users with iPhones. You can easily search for posts and tags, making your Calitics daily fix easier than ever.
As a side note, apparently Apple rated Calitics a 17+ application. I guess California politics is no place for kids? I mean, what stake do they have in it? It’s not like they need to know how much money is being cut from K-12 and higher education, right? I totally understand a PG-13 kind of rating. On occasion we are known to use a curse word or two. However, there’s nothing on Calitics that a high school student shouldn’t see. I can’t really influence Apple’s decision on this, but it is a little bit disappointing.
You can download it for just 99 cents from the iTunes app store today. The Android version should be in the Android Market by the middle of the week.
Slightly incorrect. Apple’s ratings are based on information the developer submits. The developer entirely determines the rating of their own applications via a ratings matrix. Apple will return the application and reject it for sale in the AppStore if they determine that the application should be rated higher than it is, but does not reject an application for an overly high rating. Consequently most developers inflate the ratings on their applications in advance to push content to the AppStore faster.
Apple’s system admittedly has some flaws, but your assertion that they personally reviewed and rated Calitics content as 17+ is completely untrue. There are some dumb policies like any application which contains an unfettered ability to access the web must be 17+ as it could be used to browse inappropriate content (exactly like the in-built browser… but hey), but if these elements were stripped out and the application was indeed dedicated to just showing Calitics content with a developer who was willing to work with Apple (which can be a frustrating process) to get the application rated appropriately, I have little doubt the app could achieve a rating lower than 17+.
Perhaps you should correct your entry to reflect that your developer marked the application as 17+, not Apple.
As a side note, 99 cents? Why would you put a price on convenient access to this site’s informative views on the workings of the state?