About a week ago an Italian app named Future Mail was approved, even though it makes use of private APIs. As Steve Jobs said, the use of private APIs is no longer accepted due to some problems users have had (and could have in he future). This is the email from apple explaining the situation:
During our review of your application we found it is using a private API, which is in violation of the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement section 3.3.1; ‘3.3.1 Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. ‘ While your application has not been rejected, it would be appropriate to resolve this issue in your next update.
Another similar case appeared this December: Knocking was approved by Apple when Steve Jobs himself intervened. This approval is a big deal because it is the first time live video streaming is allowed in an iPhone app. While that could be seen as a move to re-gain trust from the developers and to create massive buzz around it, the italian approval can’t, because most of the non-italians (and this is a large part of the market) will never know about it.
In conclusion, we can’t know what’s really behind these decisions. They could be the sign that the policies of the appstore are slowly changing and becoming more tolerant, or they could be one-time events that won’t happen again. We’ll wait for an answer.
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TAGS: approvals process, AppStore
