Rogue Amoeba becomes the latest developer to quit the App Store in frustration over Apple’s lengthy review process. The developer “no longer has any plans for additional iPhone applications, and updates to our existing iPhone applications will likely be rare,” according to a Friday blog post.
On Thursday, Joe Hewitt, developer of the iPhone Facebook app, announced he’ll stop developing for the iPhone out of a “philosophical opposition” to the reviews. Like Hewitt, Rogue Amoeba developer Paul Kafasis told App Store customers the Cupertino, Calif. company was “acting as a gatekeeper” and preventing developers from getting software to users.
Kafasis said Apple took four months to approve a bug fix of the developer’s popular Airfoil Speakers Touch app which lets iPhone or iPod touch owners send audio from a YouTube clip out through speakers. Apple initially balked because the app used “Apple-owned Graphic Symbols” in its navigation. The developer charged Apple’s review process included “slow replies, delays and dithering.”
“All the while, our buggy and supposedly infringing version, was still available. There’s no other word for that but ‘broken,’ wrote Kafasis.
Kafasis said he’ll now focus on developing software for the Mac.
[Via 9to5Mac, iClarified and Rogue Amoeba Blog]
Ed Sutherland is a veteran technology journalist who first heard of Apple when they grew on trees, Yahoo was run out of a Stanford dorm and Google was an unknown upstart. Since then, Sutherland has covered the whole technology landscape, concentrating on tracking the trends and figuring out the finances of large (and small) technology companies.
