Apple Wrongly Rejects iPhone App for Use of Private APIs

After waiting 33 days to hear from Apple after submitting their app Peeps to the App Store, Plausible Labs found out the app had been rejected. Here’s what Apple told them in the rejection notice:

Upon review of your application, Peeps cannot be posted to the App Store due to the usage of a non-public API. Usage of non-public APIs, as outlined in the iPhone SDK Agreement section 3.3.1, is prohibited:

“3.3.1 Applications may only use Published APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any unpublished or private APIs. “

The non-public API that is included in your application comes from the CoverFlow API set.

The problem? According to developer Landon Fuller, they didn’t use any private APIs — they created their own Cover Flow implementation using the public APIs.

So, Google can publicly admit that their iPhone app uses private APIs and that’s OK, but a small indie developer gets rejected for cleanly creating a feature that looks like Cover Flow.

★ Friday, 12 December 2008