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]
http://www.engadget.com/2009/01/26/apple-throws-another-curveball-approves-podcaster-for-the-app-s/
