Update: According to our tipster, Airfoil Speakers Touch wasn’t yanked arbitrarily, but instead because it duplicates functionality in the still unreleased and officially unannounced iOS 6. Our source says that in iOS 6, an Apple TV, for example, can pipe sound from a movie to an iPod touch, iPhone or iPad, and any iOS device will be able to beam audio to another. We’re trying to get more details, and have reached out to Apple and Rogue Amoeba for comment. Original post is below.
Update: 2: We’ve added Rogue Amoeba’s official comment at the bottom of this post.
Rogue Amoeba are some of the good guys. They’ve released some of the Mac’s coolest audio apps, including Airfoil, Audio Hijack Pro, Piezo, Pulsar, Nicecast and Fission, and we’ve long been a fan of their version of Airfoil for iOS. Called Airfoil Speakers Touch, the app allowed you to stream audio over AirPlay from your Mac, PC or iDevice to any iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. We’ve been rocking it since 2009.
Now Airfoil Speakers Touch is dead, killed for unspecified reasons by Apple’s App Store review team while the guys at Rogue Amoeba scratch their heads.
Writing on the company blog, Rogue Amoeba’s Paul Kafasis writes:
Since 2009, Airfoil Speakers Touch has made it possible to send audio from your Mac or Windows machine to your iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad, using Airfoil and its audio streaming capability. Last month, we introduced Airfoil Speakers Touch 3, which added the ability to receive audio directly from other iOS devices, as well as iTunes. Users and reviewers alike have loved Airfoil Speakers Touch, particularly the new version. For our part, we’ve been thrilled to be able to provide this much-desired functionality.
Today, we’ve been informed that Apple has removed Airfoil Speakers Touch from the iOS App Store.1 We first heard from Apple about this decision two days ago, and we’ve been discussing the pending removal with them since then. However, we still do not yet have a clear answer on why Apple has chosen to remove Airfoil Speakers Touch. Needless to say, we’re quite disappointed with their decision, and we’re working hard to once again make the application available for you, our users.
As far as we can tell, Airfoil Speakers Touch is in full compliance with Apple’s posted rules and developer agreements. We’ve already filed an appeal with Apple’s App Review Board, and we’re awaiting further information. Unfortunately, Apple has full control of application distribution on iOS, leaving us with no other recourse here.
Is this justice?!? Attica! Attica! Attica!
It seems like a pretty arbitrary and unfair move on Apple’s part, but as Kafasis notes, it’s possible that this is just the strange whim of some gray, nameless cog in the App Store Review team. In fact, Airfoil Speakers Touch has been rejected from the App Store for fairly arbitrary reasons before, only to be let back in when Rogue Amoeba posted about it. Let’s hope something similar happens here, eh?
Either way, it really highlights one of the unavoidable problems of the App Store. You might do great work, you might play by all the rules, but Apple has no problem changing the rules on you and never telling you what you can do to make it all better.
Update: Rogue Amoeba has responded to our request for comment:
“We’ve seen that theory floated by a few folks as a wild guess, but there’s certainly no hard evidence that iOS 6 will contain audio receiving functionality. Anything’s possible, but I can’t say it seems likely that iOS 6 will turn iOS devices into AirPlay receivers.
Even if that is the case, however, iOS 6 isn’t here yet nor even announced. The timing on pulling Airfoil Speakers Touch now, a month after it was approved but before iOS 6 has even been made public, seems to make little sense with regards to this possibility. It’s certainly not something Apple has done before.”
Source: Rogue Amoeba
Via: TUAW
