Radio Station Apps no more?

[ahasver]

I read on a German Macsite that Apple no longer approves apps that just play one radio stations. Does anybody have any info about that. That would be a big deal for me because most German public radio stations have an app and I love that. Does that means no more NPR and no more TAL? What is wrong with them?

 

[JulianL]

I read on a German Macsite that Apple no longer approves apps that just play one radio stations. Does anybody have any info about that. That would be a big deal for me because most German public radio stations have an app and I love that. Does that means no more NPR and no more TAL? What is wrong with them?

More info here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/11/24/apple_rejects_single_station_iphone_radio_apps/

It sounds authentic, and a wierd decision. The guy quoted in the article above "Barcus" seems to be an app developer who customises his app individually for lots of different radio stations and it sounds like Apple have deemed this "spamming" with lots of almost identical apps but that seems pretty crazy to me.

If, just because somehow Apple have taken against one developer, the fallout is to block really serious organisations like the big German, UK or US radio stations (to name just 3 countries) from having their own app then that's madness. Where do they stop? No banking apps that serve only a single bank so banks can't make apps to give their customers convenient access to their online accounts? No social networking apps that serve only one social network (goodbye Facebook app)? No news apps that only access one provider (goodbye BBC News app)?

I hope this ends up being a bit like the situation a few months back when Apple banned all apps written using third party frameworks (i.e. apps needed to be native Objective C++ or similar). The position was defended quite robustly by Steve Jobs but I believe (and I could be wrong on this) that they've now softened that stance somewhat and it seems that it was Flash apps that were really in their sights. Maybe this is just the opening salvo and the position will soften somewhat.

- Julian

 

[ahasver]

Users need to complain

I think the way they listen is usually when outside pressure increases. But it worries me that they even try something like that.

 

[a.jfred]

I think there's more going on here than is being represented in the article. In the article (and others I've read, when trying to confirm this), "Barcus" makes no mention of what his apps do, beyond stream a single radio station. Like others have mentioned, a lot of station apps do more than stream the radio ... several have twitter & facebook integration, some even give you the option to tag the song and purchase later via iTunes.

So is Apple rejecting single-purpose apps (ie, *all* they do is stream music and nothing else), or apps that do more than that?