I haven’t had the opportunity to compare an Android device to iPhone – I use the latter.

I regard my phone as ‘consumer electronics’ – although powerful, it isn’t a ‘PC’ (in the broadest sense). I want it to ‘just work’ and I want it to do this in the nicest possible way (an aside, this is how I’d regard an iPad as well were I to buy one)

Although I can see some issues with Apple dictating what is ‘good design’ and exercising such tight control over design aesthetics – overall I think this is what it takes to deliver a high quality experience on this type of platform. If Apple were in a more dominant market position (and I realise this may happen), then I would be more worried – but we shouldn’t forget that most platforms have at the least ‘good practice’ guidelines for interface design and the predominant aesthetics for computer interaction are driven by the design of Windows.

I don’t really have very strong views on Flash – I tend to agree that the arguments against it don’t stack up that well, and I’d like to see it working on the iPhone – but then I couldn’t believe it when Mac discontinued the floppy disk drive, so what do I know?

However, what concerns me much more is the approach Apple is taking to approving (or not approving) apps based on content.

This is censorship, plain and simple (I wonder if we will see First Amendment challenges to this in the US?). Not only that it is censorship applied on a odd an inconsistent basis. We’ve seen a twitter app censored for containing inappropriate language – when this was actually in a tweet that could have appeared in any twitter app. We’ve seen a dictionary censored for the same reason. We’ve see a swimwear catalogue taken down, while Sports Illustrated remains available. We’ve seen apps containing political satire rejected.

This isn’t just censorship – it is ill-thought through and incompetent! I’m worried that if this isn’t dealt with soon we will see it insiduously creep into other areas of the platform – is this the start of age ratings on books via the iBooks app? Or will some books be ‘banned’ by non-inclusion?

In the end if anything drives me to use a less polished, less well designed, less usable, product, it will be Apple’s seeming wish to control what I read – not how I read it.