It appears Apple has finally sobered up and revised the terms of service that govern its iOS developer program to reflect growing outrage over the plethora of DUI-avoidance apps that populate the App Store.
In March of this year, several prominent US Senators, including Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), and Tom Udall (D-N.M.) joined forces to send a letter expressing “grave concern” to Apple.
The lawmakers were astonished that Apple had permitting the approval of applications designed to notify motorists of where police commonly patrol in search of drunk drivers.
“With more than 10,000 Americans dying in drunk-driving crashes every year, providing access to iPhone and iPad applications that alert users to DUI checkpoints is harmful to public safety,” the joint letter to stated. “We know that your company shares our desire to end the scourge of drunk driving and we therefore would ask you to remove these applications from your store.”
Apple has finally responded to the letter and to the outpouring of encouragement to do something about these irresponsible applications.
The App Store Review Guidelines now contains a clause regarding this particular app genre. “Apps which contain DUI checkpoints that are not published by law enforcement agencies, or encourage and enable drunk driving, will be rejected,” a spokesperson for Apple admitted on Wednesday.
At this time it isn’t clear if Google will follow a similar course and ban all DUI checkpoint apps from the Android Market.
