Google voice search breaks iPhone App Store rules and gets away with it

Stephen Withers
Friday, 28 November 2008 06:49

IT Industry - Market

All this doesn't really matter to users. There is a possibility that a subsequent release of the iPhone software will change the API and break Google Mobile App, but that would only be a short-term problem.

If Apple didn't publish the API (and put everyone on an equal footing in this regard), the Google engineers that figured how it worked once would presumably be smart enough to do it again, and an updated version would soon be forthcoming.

Don't forget that the application is free, so you couldn't complain too loudly if you were without it for a while.

When all's said and done, it's up to Apple to decide which iPhone apps it decides to sell and which it knocks back.

But arbitrary decisions like this put the developer community offside. As we've seen following some previous questionable decisions, some developers are nervous about investing significant effort in creating an application that Apple - seemingly on a whim - may refuse to put on the market.

For example, Fraser Speirs, the developer of Exposure (which he describes as "Flickr in your pocket") has publicly stated "I will never write another iPhone application for the App Store as currently constituted."

Among the applications rejected by Apple are MailWrangler (deemed to duplicate the functionality of Mail, even though it has capabilities missing from the built-in application), Podcaster (deemed to duplicate the functionality of iTunes when it in fact was able to download podcasts directly to the handset), and Pull My Finger (held to be in bad taste).