November 13th, 2009
Rogue Amoeba: App Store 'broken'
Hot on the heels of yesterday’s story about how Joe Hewitt, developer of the Facebook app, is leaving the project in protest of Apple’s ridiculous review process comes another high-profile defection.
This time Rogue Amoeba has announced that they will no longer develop apps for the iPhone following frustrating treatment by the App Store team.
Rogue Amoeba’s Airfoil Speakers Touch 1.0 app (pictured) was approved months ago, after discovering a bug the company submitted an update to the App Store. The update took Apple three and a half months to approve because the company used Safari logos and Mac images as part of the User Interface.
The company contends that the logos and images were only used as navigational elements - usage that’s permitted in Apple’s Mac development rules.
Paul Kafasis, CEO of Rogue Amoeba, said it this way:
We urge you to do two things. First, be aware that Apple is acting as a gatekeeper, and preventing you from getting the software that developers such as ourselves are trying to provide you. We wanted to ship a simple bug fix, and it took almost four months of slow replies, delays, and dithering by Apple. All the while, our buggy, and supposedly infringing version, was still available. There’s no other word for that but “broken.”
Kafasis goes on to say that Rogue Amoeba won’t develop additional apps and that updates to its existing iPhone applications “will likely be rare.”
The iPhone platform had great promise, but that promise is not enough, so we’re focusing on the Mac.
Tip: 9 to 5 Mac
Jason D. O'Grady is the editor of PowerPage.org, which has been publishing daily mobile technology news since December 1995. For disclosures on Jason's industry affiliations, click here or to view Jason's full profile click here.
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