This Is Not Hard to Understand

Bill Ray for The Register, on the Wi-Fi scanning apps removed from the App Store last week:

Wi-Fi detection is something of a niche: there were never more than a handful of such applications in iTunes. But now even those have vanished as Apple decided they were using a “private framework”, and has pulled them off the shelves without explanation or apology. […]

“We received a very unfortunate email today from Apple stating that WiFi Where has been removed from sale on the App Store for using private frameworks to access wireless information,” explains one developer, though Apple has apparently declined to explain exactly what rule the scanning applications are breaking.

Uh, the rule against using private frameworks?

Update: Worth noting that this is the same Bill Ray who, in December 2006, a month before the iPhone was unveiled, wrote “Why the Apple Phone Will Fail, and Fail Badly”.

★ Sunday, 7 March 2010