Apple has relented in the face of public pressure and has finally approved James Montgomerie's Eucalyptus iPhone app for sale in the Apple store, an app which will allow people to read "Project Gutenberg" books straight from their iPhones.

The app will be available without any content filters, a decision which means a full victory for Montgomerie and all the other outraged supporters who rallied to Montgomerie's cause earlier this weekend.



The Eucalyptus app had previously been banned for obscenity because "Project Gutenberg" includes Sir Richard Burton's translation of the "Kama Sutra." As a result of mass interdignation about this ban, Apple rushed Montgomerie's claim to the top of their "fix" list and called him up, wringing their pork-pie hats and letting steam escape from under their collars.

From Montgomerie's blog:

"Earlier today I received a phone call from an Apple representative. He was very complimentary about Eucalyptus. We talked about the confusion surrounding its App Store rejections, which I am happy to say is now fully resolved. He invited me to re-build and submit a version of Eucalyptus with no filters for immediate approval, and that full version is now available on the iPhone App Store.

"Since my previous post, I've been so pleased with the overwhelmingly positive articles, blog posts, comments and tweets -- and also the emails from those of you who felt so strongly about the issue you wanted to contact me directly. They were all much appreciated. Thanks for all the support. It's been a roller coaster of a weekend!"

Eucalyptus will compete against the Stanza, eReader, and Kindle apps that have been charging per book for these public domain works. Eucalyptus is only charging for the reader (ten bucks) and will let people read the books (20,000 or so) for free.

Right now, somebody at Apple is wearing an iron glove and stroking a white cat.

Now they are curling their iron glove into a fist and bringing it down hard on a pink plastic computer console. There are sparks!

A henchman cowers!

"Did you make the call?"

"I made the call."

"Did you tell him it was an honest mistake?"

"I said those words."

"And now his app will be available in our store?"

"Indeed."

"What can we do about it?"

"Nothing, yet. We can wait. We can tinker. We can 'innovate.'"

"Aha."

"We'll need a new platform."

"Yes..."

"With new rules."

"Very good."

"But for now?"

"For now, we must bide our time. Tick tock. Tick tock."

"By damn, we had a schedule! It was all going to be so perfect!"

"Patience, milud. Patience."

Posted by miracle on Sun, 24 May 2009 03:43:05 -0400 -- permanent link