App Store approvals & rejections

Apple has denied RSSPlayer from the App Store yet again, this time for the same reason as Rogue Amoeba: containing a picture of an iPhone. In it's previous life as Podcaster, the app could subscribe to, download, and listen to podcasts directly on the iPhone. Apple rejected it for duplicating the services provided by the podcast section of iTunes and the iPod app, but later let it in after a name change and a slight change in functionality.

Apple is intentionally prolonging the approval of three DJ applications from three different developers: Touch DJ from Amidio, Sonoasaurus from Pajamahouse Studios, and DJ Player from Musicsoft Arts. In protest, an ongoing online petition was organized, asking Apple to accept the apps for sale.

Apple "recently" started running all new App Store app submissions through a filter that checks their code for the use of private APIs. Private APIs, which have been prohibited in the developer agreement section 3.3.1, restricts the use of private APIs in apps. While the rule was always in place, it was impossible for reviewers to comb through the code of every application. Now, all apps with private APIs will be filtered out by machines.

Long time Mac developer Rogue Amoeba has announced that they too have decided to stop developing software for the iPhone. Their reason, like Facebook developer Joe Hewitt, is Apple's "broken" App Store approval process. Specifically, it took three and a half months for a minor bug fix to Airfoil Speakers Touch [App Store] to hit the App Store, all thanks to Apple.

The initial update submitted to Apple simply changed a bit of code to make the app work better although it was rejected for using "Apple-owned Graphic Symbols."

Joe Hewitt, the man at Facebook behind the wildly popular Facebook app for iPhone [App Store] has just announced that he's left the project. "Time for me to try something new. I’ve handed the Facebook iPhone app off to another engineer, and I’m onto a new project," said Hewitt earlier today on Twitter. Over the life of the Facebook app, Joe's essentially been the only dev working on the app, making this an extremely significant move. He's moved on to another project a Facebook, although we haven't heard who Facebook plans to put in his place.

After the announcement, TechCrunch caught up with Hewitt where he said that the move was due to Apple's approval policies:

Just when we thought they couldn't get any more absurd, Apple has given us another App store rejection for the books. According to a tweet by Jason Snell, Macworld Editor-in-Chief, Apple has rejected an e-book app version of "Macworld iPhone Superguide," a reference manual about the iPhone, for containing the word iPhone.

According to App Shopper, Apple has approved more than 100,000 apps for the App Store, 100,867 to be precise (at the time of writing this). Of course this number is somewhat misleading as there are only 92,310 currently live in the App Store. This is, of course, due to some applications either being pulled by their respective developers or by Apple. Regardless of this fact, it's pretty great to see how quickly the store has grown in just over one year.

Apple's most recently reported App Store download count was two billion with 85,000 apps in the store, reported in late September.

Apple has approved an official Vonage VoIP application to give users the ability to make voice calls over WiFi, as does the Skype app for iPhone. The restriciton to WiFi only is part of an agreement with AT&T to not allow customers to use their network to initiate VoIP sessions.

If you were doubting the probability of a TomTom Car Kit for the iPhone, Engadget is reporting that the company just received full FCC approval for the device.

Apple has banned a publisher of over 800 apps from the App Store after receiving third-party intellectual property complaints on more than 100 of his applications. It appears that Khalid Shaikh, the developer in question, merely pulled subject material from the web without providing unique content of his own, and without the owner's permission.