Brian X. Chen of Wired has done some interesting digging about one of the highest up people in Apple’s App Store, and it turns out he makes Fart apps on the side:
Phillip Shoemaker, director of applications technology at Apple, who runs the App Store process, sells iPhone apps in the App Store under the company name Gray Noodle. Titles include a fart app called Animal Farts, a urination simulator called iWiz and a refrigerator-magnet app called Medical Poetry.
Shoemaker has been mentioned in a number of news articles as the head honcho when it comes to approving or disallowing apps. According to Apple, he was hired partly on his background as a developer, which they see as giving him valuable perspective.
Apple policy only allows employees to develop apps before they started working for the company, but a number of Shoemaker’s apps arrived after he’d starting working for Apple.
While none of the apps he’s worked on are beyond the pail of what Apple usually allows, given how fickle Apple can be about “objectionable material”, it’s odd to see a creator of this sort of application running the show, and a conflict of interest.
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