Big Dogs/Little Fish ⇥ oleb.net

Ole Begemann:

What does it say about Apple’s priorities when app review spends its time policing developers for building features that are innovative, useful, and entirely opt-in anyway?

At around the same time, Twitter announced that their app is now spying on users in a new way, using a public API for a purpose it was clearly not intended for. I would argue that this practice, if not against the letter of the Review Guidelines, is much more harmful to users. It’s stuff like this that should warrant action from the app review team.

Things like Begemann’s Twitter example and putting a U2 album on everyone’s iPhone are clearly more detrimental to user experience than having a calculator in Notification Centre. It’s undeniably frustrating for developers to be given a shitload of great new APIs only to be told through subterranean channels that they cannot be used in ways which are innovative, interesting, and ultimately make the platform better.