Apple breaks its own rules...to fight AIDS.

If you’ve opened the app store on any Mac or iOS device, you’ve notice that Apple is in the middle of a massive campaign to honor World AIDS Day. This is on the Apple Store website at the time of writing:

Today, we’re contributing a portion of the proceeds from every product, accessory, and gift card we sell at the Apple Retail Store and Apple Online Store to the Global Fund to fight AIDS. And when you buy or make in-app purchases in any of the special Apps for (RED) through December 7, we’ll donate 100 percent of the proceeds.

Apple also decided to send out a push notification to get the word out. It simply reads “Get great apps and help (RED) fight AIDS.”

Marco Arment argues that by doing so, Apple is technically breaking its own App Store rules.

He wrote his today in a blog post.

Regardless of the cause, this is clearly a promotion, will annoy thousands or millions of people, and is in direct violation of the least-enforced rule in the App Store.

He’s right that it’s clearly a promotion. He’s probably right that it’s a violation of a poorly-enforced rule in the App Store. However, I’m not sure a lot of people are going to be bothered by this.

After all, this is part of a campaign to fight AIDS, a truly terrible disease. If Apple does this sort of thing once a year, I don’t see the need to make a huge fuss about it. If Apple did this weekly, monthly, or even quarterly, then I can maybe see the need for conversation.

A lot of people called Marco out via Twitter. Some agreed with him, while others, including myself, all thought Apple was doing this for a good cause.

This is where, I think, his argument got truly off track:

This is just a poor argument. A person walking into your house is in no way comparable to an unwanted push notification. One of these things is a crime, while the other is maybe annoying to some people.

Apple probably does need to work on stopping apps from using push notifications to send advertisements and other forms of marketing, but I think Marco could have chosen a better path.