The Problem

I’m an Apple fan, and user, and developer. As such I have an iPhone and I use it, and I develop for it. Well, I try.

When I say: “I try” I don’t mean that I don’t have the skills necessary to develop an iPhone application, I mean that despite the application I’ve developed (with a friend) works, has been checked against memory leaks, is snappy and, I believe, useful, well, despite all that, Apple rejects it.

Now, since I don’t doubt my developer skills, and since Apple of course couldn’t find anything done badly in the application, the question is: why does the application gets rejected?

The Intro

First of all, µMonitor is a simple application with some views, populated with some tables that shows (N.B. SHOWS, you cannot [up to now] add torrents to download, just monitor [as the name implies] the status of your µTorrent instance), by connecting through the µTorrent web API, the torrents that you’re downloading/seeding/whatnot on your µTorrent instance running somewhere over the net. It’s very simple, the webui of µTorrent hasn’t been developed to be shown on a small-screen device therefore the native application shows the same results just in a more iPhone-like ui/experience. There are optimized version of the web-ui for smaller-screened devices (link, link), but why not having a native application? Exactly! That’s why I’ve developed one!

The issue

The application has been submitted to Apple for revision the 13th of January 2009:

µMonitor submitted the 13th of January 2009

A few days later the dreaded e-mail arrives:

from : devprograms@apple.com
to: …
date Fri, Jan 16, 2009 at 4:17 AM
subject: µMonitor: Application Submission Feedback

Please include the line below in follow-up emails for this request.
Follow-up: <0ed out>
Dear Claudio,
Your application, µMonitor, is requiring unexpected additional time for review. We apologize for the delay, and will update you with further status as soon as we are able.

Thank you for your patience.

Regards,
iPhone Developer Program

After a while, a long while, the rejection email:

from: iPhone Developer Program
to: …
date: Mon, May 18, 2009 at 3:56 AM
subject: µMonitor 1.0: Application Submission Feedback

Please include the line below in follow-up emails for this request.
Follow-up: …
Dear Claudio,
Thank you for submitting µMonitor to the App Store. We’ve reviewed µMonitor and determined that we cannot post this version of your application to the App Store at this time because this category of applications is often used for the purpose of infringing third party rights. We have chosen to not publish this type of application to the App Store.

If you believe you can make the necessary modifications to bring your application in compliance with iPhone Software License Agreement, we encourage you to do so and resubmit it for review.

Regards,
iPhone Developer Program

Astonishment

• How’s it possible that it took them 4 months to come to this conclusion?
• What difference is there between Safari, which through the web-ui allows for full-interaction with µTorrent enabling much more than µMonitor provides, and µMonitor itself which just shows the current torrents?
  
  

  On the left the µMonitor interface, and on the right the built-in Safari interface

• As a generalization: since Internet might be used for “infringing third party rights” why is it enabled on the iPhone?
• What kind of “necessary modifications” could I apport to the application to make it suit this weird Apple constraints?

Rant

I’m really dazzled by the decision, and even more by the motivation, given by Apple about µMonitor, and here’s my rant-post.

What can I do? What can we do, torrent users? I will review any suggestion. For now, I’m astonished.