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A comment on Apple Watch Series 5. Parent comment

Re:Apple Watch Series 5 by rahoulb on Tuesday September 10, 2019 @03:17PM (#20932306)
There was a third party app called Apollo for the Apple Watch. It used the cellular or Wifi connection of the watch to stream directly from the Spotify API.

Spotify issued a cease and desist within days. I still have it installed on my phone and watch - it's a long way short of perfect (when it loses its connection it hangs and there's no easy way to reset it) - but it does work.

So it's not Apple stopping the release of this functionality.

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Re:Apple Watch Series 5 by colordrops on Wednesday September 11, 2019 @02:18AM (#20937086)
why would spotify issue a cease and desist to an app that keeps people from abandoning their service?
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Re:Apple Watch Series 5 by rahoulb on Wednesday September 11, 2019 @04:11AM (#20937661)
No idea, the developer said he was told they were violating the terms of the Spotify API agreement by using non-standard hardware. The only thing I can think of is Spotify had/has one of their own lined up and haven't released it.

I assume this is all tied up with their campaign about unfair treatment on the App Store, but it still makes little sense to me. Apollo was written by a single developer in their spare time, it works (although not perfectly - still good given it's a 1.0 and they were working alone with no support) and has been released for almost a year.

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