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Applications Apple Has Removed from the AppStore
Some sites are starting to track iPhone applications that have been denied or removed from the AppStore. Apple's dubious rejection of applications that are deemed of little utility or duplicative of built-in functionality has drawn harsh developer criticism.
Apple most recently rejected Angelo DiNardi?s MailWrangler, because it "duplicates the functionality of the built-in iPhone application Mail.?
In a post to his blog, DiNardi says his application, which allows users to add and access multiple Gmail accounts "simply directly loading and showing Gmail inside of an application," adding "How you can confuse Gmail with Mail.app I?m not sure."
MailWrangler also lets users see threaded views and google contacts, archive (quickly), star messages and more?functionality missing from Apple?s Mail.app.
Apple previously rejected Podcaster, an iPhone application that lets people download podcasts directly to their devices without going through iTunes-?from the App Store. It also removed NetShare, an application that allows the iPhone to be tethered (used as a wireless modem), encouraging some users to jailbreak (enable unofficial application installation) their phones and install the easy-to-use iPhoneModem tethering tool.
Jailbroken iPhone software market is completely unrestricted. Google's Android marketplace claims a similar unfettered approach. The unrestricted mobile application market is ground already tread by Palm, where concerns over malicious software and feature encroachment have been virtually non-existent.
A posting on boredzo.org reads:
"When Apple bans an application from their App Store (especially an application that the developer was selling), they effectively kill the application. Dead. It has no practical future on the iPhone OS." Among the rejected apps listed by boredzo:
- I Am Rich: a useless $999 application.
- Freedom Time: shows a pair of clocks, both analog and digital, counting down to the end of George W. Bush's Presidency. Apple's reason: "Defaming, demeaning, or attacking political figures..."
- Slasher "showed a picture of a knife, and if you shook the device, it played a scream."
Applications have also been removed from the App Store because they allegedly infringe upon extant copyrights.
OK, what's dubious about this? They said (too late, I agree) that they wouldn't allow applications that duplicate what built-in apps did. MailWrangler performs a subset of Mail functions (because you can have multiple accounts in Mail, so it's duplicative.
?How you can confuse Gmail with Mail.app I?m not sure.?</i>
Is the developer trying to be clueless or disingenuous? That was not the reason given nor the objective for the program.
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By definition, developers do new & interesting things and detest a nanny looking after them. But they also want and sometimes need support from Apple to deal with the many little kinks in a software environment. I am amazed at how seamless the iPhone environment seems to be, especially given how both Apple & MSFT are constantly patching their mainstream OSs. Part of this must be from VERY TIGHTLY controlling what apps can do, and where Apple spends its support dollars.
If we ignore the "I used to be rich" type junk, your other examples are all ones where Apple is actually scrambling to get functionality right (think, push [email] services), or where they need major functionality tweaking (e.g., better integration such as cut'n'paste).
So yes, "harsh criticism" from some. But don't pretend it's one-sided. Devs also care about stability, support and enhanced services that most rapidly expand the platform's attractiveness.
- by lleachie October 14, 2008 6:45 AM PDT
- If anything, I wish Apple rejected MORE apps. Who, for example, would miss the nth iteration of "Days til'"? Or the 42nd flashlight app? Of course, I understand that once you let one flashlight app in, you have to let the others in or else you're being discriminatory, but it gets harder and harder to find the gold among the dross in the App store.
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