Apple yanks Wi-Fi detectors from App Store

Re:Apple yanks Wi-Fi detectors from App Store by morisy on Thursday March 04, 2010 @10:09AM (#1167076)

There's so many possible explanations for why these apps were yanked (battery conservation, legal concerns over war driving, compatibility issues) that the lack of clearly naming at least one is a little frightening. With Apple yanking political apps, scantily clad apps, and now Wi-Fi apps, I really don't get the rush by media companies to secure a place on it.

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Re:Apple yanks Wi-Fi detectors from App Store by Groxx on Thursday March 04, 2010 @10:24AM (#1167109)

Well, they were told it's because they were using private frameworks. Which means not-locked-down APIs. That's just inviting them to be yanked at some point, as they're just waiting to break. Frankly, it's surprising they got through at all, Apple was being rather loose with their rules in this area.

Plus, they're duplicating functionality, which they've been rather explicit in the past about not allowing.

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Re:Apple yanks Wi-Fi detectors from App Store by morisy on Thursday March 04, 2010 @11:26AM (#1167265)

Not approving apps that are going to break because they use private frameworks makes sense, but pulling a wide variety in one genre after they've been published and found a foothold just sucks.

And while Apple has been "explicit" about not allowing "duplicate" functionality, that standard is incredibly vague in practice and incredibly arbitrary in enforcement.

In this case, one of what I presume is the banned apps (the article doesn't mention any, grr!) supported some non-duplicative features for war driving assistance, as well as a "radar" view. So yes, some features are duplicated, just like Pandora duplicates some features (playing, pausing music) that iTunes does.

WiFiFoFum's product review/description page on MacWorld, with 1,549 reviews: http://bit.ly/bF4gMP

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Re:Apple yanks Wi-Fi detectors from App Store by Groxx on Thursday March 04, 2010 @11:30AM (#1167280)

Sucks, yes, I'm not defending the suckiness of the app store. Few can deny that.

But its purpose is not to lower suckiness for developers, it's to lower suckiness for consumers. They're merely being consistent in that goal.

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