Joe Hewitt’s Three20 Framework and Private APIs

One consequence of Apple’s crackdown on the use of private API calls is that some apps are using them, or at least including them in their binaries, without knowing it. One popular open source framework, Joe Hewitt’s Three20 (linked here on DF back in March), played a bit fast and loose with private APIs, and so now there are numerous developers with apps getting flagged for private API calls made from the Three20 framework. This Google Groups thread covers the problem and the work that’s being done to create a branch of Three20 that’s free of private API calls.

(Hewitt, of course, was in the news last week after he quit as lead developer of the Facebook iPhone app citing frustrations with the App Store process. It’s reasonable to wonder whether this had anything to do with Apple’s crackdown on private APIs, because the Three20 framework was originally extracted from the Facebook app. I exchanged a few emails with Hewitt on the matter, and that’s not the case — his frustrations with the App Store process lie elsewhere.)

★ Friday, 20 November 2009