Apple had already solidly cemented its reputation as the confused, identity crisis-stricken, moral dilemma-having lord ruler of the App Store with its
recent approval of a number of browsers that would seemingly violate its "duplication of functionality" policy, but now it's doing some
serious soul-searching with this latest move. Remember
Podcaster? The on-the-go podcast downloader predated
Apple's own mobile download capability by months -- but Cupertino struck the thing down for encroaching on iTunes' territory, seemingly dooming it to a life of ad hoc installs and jailbreaks. It's just been given a fresh lease on life, though, emerging as "RSS Player" and killing off Podcaster's built-in directory of casts; Apple's suddenly cool with the revised app, giving it two thumbs-up on the way to the App Store, but it's not clear if the directory functionality was the problem, there's a policy change in play here, or the name change simply fooled the App Store admins into giving the green light. At any rate, in case you're wondering why you'd shell out $1.99 for the pleasure of this "duplication of functionality," RSS Player will let you blow by iTunes' 10MB limit -- and, of course, you can download any feed you like. Thanks, Apple. [Warning: iTunes link]
[Via
UNEASYsilence]
posted Jan 26th 2009 9:58PM
if M$ did something like this "duplication of functionality" thing, there would be hell to pay. Steve Jobs is a great, great businessman. Convinces everyone that the "other guy" is the real crook.
Uh, what?
Your argument is that if Microsoft pulled what Apple did with the App Store batshit-crazy rules, they would have gotten... just as much hell as Apple did for this on the net? Okay. Gotcha. That's to be expected, since Apple got skewered on most every onlne news source for the draconian restrictions.
It is interesting to see that this is all happening now, after the success of Android (The G1 has sold quite a few handsets and it's developers are working overtime on features and things) and the announcement of the Palm Pre and it's WebOS. Both of the non-Apple sets allow you to really open up the floodgates for what is possible on a mobile handset without the limitations of what the officers of XYZ Carrier think you should have to pay to get... Or the duplication of an Apple-branded, Apple-Approved app,
Hooray Android and it's groundbreaking and open-source apps! As an iPhone user, I am especially envious of the new memory-erasing app that is loose on the streets.
http://www.informationweek.com/news/internet/google/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=212902676
Good thing those developers are "working overtime". Jobs. What a tool.
OK Engadget Mobile, when are you going to embed the new Podcasts into YOUR RSS stream? I can add the link, but there's nothing there, guys......