Rogue Amoeba has announced that it no longer has any plans to release new iPhone applications following a four-month delay in getting a bug fix release of its app Airfoil Speakers Touch approved by Apple. In a blog posting on the company site, Paul Kafasis writes that version 1.0.1 of Airfoil Speakers Touch was submitted to Apple in July, only to be repeatedly rejected due to the use of Apple-provided images of both computers and applications logos, which were included in the original, approved release and were used to identify what computer and application was supplying the audio to the iPhone app. Notably, these images were not contained within the iPhone app itself, but were instead gathered on the connected Mac using Apple-provided APIs, and then sent to the iPhone for display.
Rogue Amoeba eventually removed the functionality, instead replacing it with a link to a page explaining the situation and urging users to donate to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
“In the future, we hope that developers will be allowed to ship software without needing Apple’s approval at all, the same way we do on Mac OS X. We hope the App Store will get better, review times will be shorter, reviews will be more intelligent, and that we can all focus on making great software.
Right now, however, the platform is a mess,” Kafasis writes. “The chorus of disenchanted developers is growing and we’re adding our voices as well. Rogue Amoeba no longer has any plans for additional iPhone applications, and updates to our existing iPhone applications will likely be rare.
