Having recently had this application rejected, Fraser Speirs, developer of the popular iPhone app ‘Exposure’ has quit the App Store business. Apple recently rejected his application “Podcaster” because it “replaces a feature in Apple’s own software”. Fraser has gone through what must be countless days creating this application only to have it rejected at the last moment.
The application in question downloads podcast episodes directly to the iPhone over Wifi, eliminating the need to dock the iPhone to the computer for the same. It is a non-malicious application, non-pornographic, and it isn’t a bandwidth hog as it uses Wifi for data transfer.
One might defend the case of Apple, that the SDK documentation clearly mentions that the App Store will not allow any applications that are competitive to that present on the iPhone, and podcasts is part of those applications. But lo and behold, as there are a hundred different weather applications that clearly take the case of Apple’s own weather widget. Then there’s the Calculator apps, the notes, and a lot more if one puts some time in. So how is a developer supposed to know that the application is acceptable or not?
The App Store, at least when it comes to developers, is broken. They cannot speak about the apps due to the non-disclosure agreement of the SDK, they cannot moderate the reviews on the iTunes store, they have to wait weeks before updates are worked into the store, and, they have to bank on Apple’s good mood before starting to write new applications.
Frasier will continue to provide support and updates for Exposure, but as for creating something new, he’s out.
