Apple asks developers to drop USB app syncing, new official support coming soon
The current iPhone OS SDK contains no official API support for USB syncing apps, but that hasn’t stopped persistent developers from getting around the issue by dropping their files into the iPhone’s DCIM folder and using private APIs to allow desktop apps to access your iPhone’s contents.
It was a hack, and developers knew Apple wouldn’t tolerate it forever, which makes it no surprise that several developers (including the makers of the popular e-reading app, Stanza, are now reporting that Apple is asking them to remove USB syncing capabilities from their apps.
This is a temporary inconvenience, but not really a bad thing. The beta SDK for iPhone OS 3.2 has official APIs for accessing an on-device shared storage folder, which will allows an iPhone to be mounted as a readable and writable disk when plugged into a computer through USB.
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End result? Official, less buggy USB app syncing support come the end of March. Just don’t upgrade any apps that currently use the DCIM method of USB syncing until iPhone OS 3.2 hits iTunes.
John Brownlee is news editor here at Cult of Mac, and has also written about a lot of things for a lot of different places, including Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, Gizmodo, Kotaku, Lifehacker, AMC, Geek and the Consumerist. He lives in Cambridge with his charming inamorata and a tiny budgerigar punningly christened after Nabokov's most famous pervert. You can follow him ![Read "Why You’ll Probably Never Own A Mac With An ARM Processor [Feature]"](http://cultofmac.cultofmaccom.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/macbookairarm-300x250.jpg "Read \"Why You’ll Probably Never Own A Mac With An ARM Processor [Feature]\"")
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