Has Apple's VP Phil Schiller blocked video camera app, to announce Apple's own at WWDC?

Today I received an email from GP Apps pointing me to their website where they have published a series of emails between themselves and Apple. These emails make interesting reading and further emphasises the inconsistencies in the AppStore's approval process, and the unfair treatment some developers are getting from Apple.

To read the full transcripts head over to GP Apps website.

Comments

[hendrik]

I think the answer to the question posed in the title is a clear 'No'.
Apple's response in this email exchange has been completely clear and reasonable.
As they say, they have been extremely clear from the beginning that use of undocumented APIs is not allowed. The notion of 'implicit publishing' of APIs is nonsense.
If others do something illegal (say for example stealing) and do not get caught, you can try the same and hope to not get caught as well. However you can not claim that others not getting caught effectively legalized the action itself.

[Glyn Evans]

Hendrik

You are absolutely right, and the developer should have halted development of this app, then petitioned Apple. This developer is not the only developer suffering from false signals from Apple, as the developer of the now well established QuadCamera is having problems getting the latest release approved due to the same API issue, and the developer of Mobile Photobooth had to remove key functionality brought to the app by this same API.

There does seem to be more than a fair share of developers falling foul of this API, so Apple should either close of this API, or make it 100% clear to ALL developers that this API is out of bounds, and check for usage of this API before approving.

What will be interesting, is what will Apple do now with all those apps they have approved, that they clearly should not have, based on the usage of this API?