Apple Removes Wi-Fi Finders From App Store 461
jasonbrown writes "Apple on Thursday began removing another category of apps from its iPhone App Store. This time, it's not porn, it's Wi-Fi. Apple removed several Wi-Fi apps commonly referred to as stumblers, or apps that seek out available Wi-Fi networks near your location. According to a story on Cult of Mac, apps removed by Apple include WiFi-Where, WiFiFoFum, and yFy Network Finder."
I wonder (Score:5, Interesting)
Is Apple actively trying to destroy any developer relationship that they had, and are they trying to show the community that they are not up to the challenge of hosting an app store?
As a software developer that owns an iPhone 3GS owner, and a first generation iPod touch, I feel like I am reminded every day as to why I do not drop $100 and write an application for my own phone.
Can Apples Wifi chipset work in adhoc mode? (Score:3, Interesting)
Just somewhat related: Can Apple's Wifi chipset be somehow set to work in adhoc mode?
i.e. Can an IPhone/ITouch app (even a Jailbroken one?) let you communicate with the other 50 IPhone /ITouch users in the train you're on, without paying the cell companies?
Re:Why? (Score:3, Interesting)
It is only a temporary glitch of the failures of all other mobile OSes at the time (Windows Mobile, Symbian, That crappy Java-Based OS, etc), large portions of the phone being paid for by phone carriers and the like that let the iPhone get even a small marketshare. If Google ever gets their act together, Android can easily crush the momentum from the iPhone. If Palm can saturate -all- carriers and not just CDMA ones with WebOS phones, WebOS can get decent marketshare. It would really help Apple if they didn't piss off their developers and users. They might be number one now, but they were number one with the Apple II and look at how quickly they lost that lead.
Re:Fouling the well (Score:4, Interesting)
You're probably right. I bought a MacBook last year (having used Debian for the last 9 years), and while I don't dislike it, I'm not keen to buy more Apple products given dumb shenanigans like this. So they are alienating some users.
So don't use those products you have to put up with these shenanigans. I'm typing this on my MacBook Pro, when I replace it the replacement will probably another MBP or its replacement, and if Apple were to release a bigger iPad (say 17") that runs the full OS X like my MBP does I may get one. I might also get a Mac Pro, but I do not plan on getting an iPhone or iPod.
Actually I plan on setting up my MBP to dualboot, OS X and Ubuntu, and if I were to get a Mac Pro I'd do the same with it. Now if Apple were to get as restrictive with Macs as they are with iPhones and iPads I'd move over to Linux compleatly.
Falcon
Re:walled garden (Score:3, Interesting)
The irony of course is that Apple initially refused to approve fart apps.
Re:Great News !! (Score:5, Interesting)
This is the only way developers and users will learn never to trust a closed platform.
As a developer, I like the enforcement of the "no private frameworks" rule. I don't want to have to compete against other developers who can implement things I can't implement, because they are willing to stay up for three weeks reverse-engineering some undocumented interface. It's kind of like doping in the Olympics. If everybody was allowed to do it, soon it would be impossible to be competitive UNLESS you were doing it, and the result would be an incredible mess where every application was doing things using undocumented interfaces. And on top of that, Apple would have to be extremely careful whenever they want to alter their "private" APIs because it would risk breaking a huge number of applications -- and guess who the end user is going to complain to? (Hint -- not the application developer.)
If you don't like the restrictions, fine. Jailbreak your phone. Or choose a different platform. I'd rather work with something stable where the playing field is somewhat level.
doesn't add up (Score:3, Interesting)
If the issue is that the Apps used a private API, how did they get approved in the first place?
I'm not sure why anyone would develop for the iPhone, apparently you not only face a capricious approval process, but they may revoke that approval on a whim.
Re:Really? (Score:2, Interesting)
This is something that worries me and will likely keep me from developing any apps using Flash CS5. Apple could one day just up and decide they don't approve of Adobe's reverse-engineer method of publishing apps from Flash, and POOF, goodbye to all apps originating from Flash.
Re:Great News !! (Score:3, Interesting)
You don't want to compete with people who put in more effort into coding their apps than you?
No, what I want is to not have to be an expert in reverse engineering in order to compete with other developers.
Re:walled garden (Score:3, Interesting)
The builtin one is way worse though. It can't find wifis with no SSID and has a much higher threshold on the signal strength. No SSID might be a misconfigured wifi, but for example on a bus trip there's not much I can do about that as a passenger.
Re:What's next? (Score:3, Interesting)
Agree with Apple's policy on various things (drm, itunes app store, etc) or not - Jobs has been responsible for some pretty revolutionary products, and just plain "cool" stuff. I'm talking NeXT, OS X, iphone, ipod, etc.
I mean, look up the NextStep demo on youtube. Thats from 1993! The PC world was on Windows 3.1 or DOS, while Jobs is sending voice annotated email, developing a GUI database app with drag and drop (virtually no code), etc.
Sure, NEXT machines were expensive, but the capabilities were (at the time) just out of this world...