Applications Apple Has Removed from the AppStore

Some sites are starting to track iPhone applications that have been denied or removed from the AppStore. Apple's dubious rejection of applications that are deemed of little utility or duplicative of built-in functionality has drawn harsh developer criticism.

Apple most recently rejected Angelo DiNardi?s MailWrangler, because it "duplicates the functionality of the built-in iPhone application Mail.?

In a post to his blog, DiNardi says his application, which allows users to add and access multiple Gmail accounts "simply directly loading and showing Gmail inside of an application," adding "How you can confuse Gmail with Mail.app I?m not sure."

MailWrangler also lets users see threaded views and google contacts, archive (quickly), star messages and more?functionality missing from Apple?s Mail.app.

Apple previously rejected Podcaster, an iPhone application that lets people download podcasts directly to their devices without going through iTunes-?from the App Store. It also removed NetShare, an application that allows the iPhone to be tethered (used as a wireless modem), encouraging some users to jailbreak (enable unofficial application installation) their phones and install the easy-to-use iPhoneModem tethering tool.

Jailbroken iPhone software market is completely unrestricted. Google's Android marketplace claims a similar unfettered approach. The unrestricted mobile application market is ground already tread by Palm, where concerns over malicious software and feature encroachment have been virtually non-existent.

A posting on boredzo.org reads:

"When Apple bans an application from their App Store (especially an application that the developer was selling), they effectively kill the application. Dead. It has no practical future on the iPhone OS." Among the rejected apps listed by boredzo:

• I Am Rich: a useless $999 application.
• Freedom Time: shows a pair of clocks, both analog and digital, counting down to the end of George W. Bush's Presidency. Apple's reason: "Defaming, demeaning, or attacking political figures..."
• Slasher "showed a picture of a knife, and if you shook the device, it played a scream."

Applications have also been removed from the App Store because they allegedly infringe upon extant copyrights.