I bought Tracey a Creative TravelSound i50 Speaker for iPod shuffle and then found myself on the Apple Store website writing a review.
Which was automatically rejected before I could post it, with this message:
Some words in your review cannot be published. Please revise your review. (please limit to 300 words)
I checked in BBEdit and found I only had 216 words.
Here are the rules for writing a review on the Apple Store:
Review Tips
- Explain why you like or dislike the product, focusing your comments on the product’s features & functionality and your own experience using the product
- Limit your review to 300 words or less
- Avoid single-word reviews, bad language, contact information (email addresses, phone numbers, etc.), URLs, time- sensitive material or alternative ordering information
- Avoid comments about non-product related issues such as service and support, resellers, shipping, sales policies, other Apple partners or Apple topics not directly related to the product’s features or functionality
- Check back in five business days to see your review
- Read complete terms & conditions for the online Apple Store
While I chuckled as the “bad language” (I assume they mean profanity, although perhaps incorrect spelling and grammar could count too):
Here’s the original review. See if you can spot the problem:
(begin) My wife loves to listen to audiobooks.
She’d put the CD in the stereo and turn it up loud enough that she could hear it as she worked around the house.
Which meant *all of us* ended up listening to it.
First I bought her a pair of not-inexpensive wireless headphones, but even in our fairly small house, the interference was annoying and she had no way to pause it without running back to the stereo if the phone rang, or if someone started talking to her, etc.
So I bought her a shuffle.
The problem is that her car only has a CD player, no tape deck. FM transmitters can be a pain to use, so I bought her this instead.
She loves it.
It’s also small enough that she can drop it in her pocket and listen in her office (her job sometimes involves a lot of time doing fairly monotonous filing).
I was a bit concerned about the price (it’s almost as much as the shuffle!) but it works great for her.
Oh! One more thing :-)
You can’t see it in any of the pictures here, but it also comes with a little carabiner that lets it hook onto a belt loop, backpack strap, etc. She seemed to like that part too.
(end)
Did you spot it?
Me neither.
I looked for words that might seem to be triggering their automatic filter (note: this rejection was happening as soon as I pressed submit so I knew it was a computer, not a person, doing the rejection).
I suppose saying that “FM transmitters can be a pain to use” might be seen as a “off topic” but I doubted that the parsing script was that sophisticated.
I wondered if the “:-)” was the problem, so I changed it to “:”.
Still rejected. So I put the smiley face back in.
Then I changed:
Which meant *all of us* ended up listening to it.
to
Which meant all of us ended up listening to it.
and it was accepted.
That’s fairly odd, IMO.
Using * as emphasis around words in ASCII text has been around for as long as I can remember, but apparently Apple wants no part of it.
So now you know.
(P.S. - By the way, you can get it for a couple bucks less at Amazon.com where it is listed as in-stock and Amazon Prime compatible. Apple.com says 2-3 weeks for delivery, but I found one in our local Apple Store.)
UPDATE: As pointed out in the comments, this is probably Apple’s way of making sure you don’t try to subvert their “bad word filter” using an asterisk.