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People get angry about this, but if they do they don't understand what iOS is.

iOS is a console platform.

Developing for iOS is a bit like developing for XBox, Nintendo, etc. It is a fundamentally different platform from Windows, Linux, and MacOS.

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That just means consoles and console makers are also horrible: it does not exonerate Apple in the least.

The main difference is that I (and most of HN) don't have to deal with consoles as developers and probably not even as users. On the other hand, I bet there are a ton of mobile developers and that almost everyone has a smart phone of some sort. So that's why there's more outrage over Apple's detrimental behavior than the console makers'.

Please.. help me agree with you by naming one game that was on XBOX for YEARS, which was subsequently removed from XBOX because it was too similar to an upcoming, unreleased feature?

The issue here is they used the encryption keys from the leaked ROM.

However, Apple should do a better job communicating that.

How do you know this but the app developer does not?

What is sure is that they include the key. From [0]:

> The other major feature in Airfoil Speakers is the new Enhanced Audio Receiving option. With an inexpensive in-app purchase, your iOS device becomes a full-fledged mobile AirPlay receiver!

This is only possible with the leaked AirPort ROM private key. As soon as I saw the title on HN I thought that was the most likely cause of the removal. Occam's razor and all. Including the Apple private key in Airfoil Speakers Touch was, if not stupid, at least a very bold move from Rogue Amoeba.

[0] http://rogueamoeba.com/utm/2012/04/25/turn-any-ios-device-in...

Assuming RA included this key and they probably suspect this is the reason but it stands to reason that they can still play dumb and say they haven't been told why the app was yanked.

note: followed lloeki's link above into the comments and there's this from RA's Paul Kefasis (italics mine)...

"There should be no legal issues here whatsoever.

Airfoil Speakers on the Mac and PC has had this receiving functionality for years now, and now it’s on the iOS platform as well. Airfoil Speakers is a clean-room implementation of the AirPlay protocol. Further, as you note, Apple approved the app after review. So, we don’t anticipate any issues here."

It's not a matter of playing dumb. It would be foolish to simply assume that the rejection is due to a particular thing when Apple doesn't say what it is. They haven't been told, that's the truth, and why would they say anything else?

I'm not sure how being a "clean-room implementation" of the protocol helps if part of the functionality requires a non-clean-room copy of Apple's key.

I mean, unless the app is doing a brute-force crack of the key on first run. Which it most likely isn't.

I don't understand what could be wrong with using the key. It's a random string; it's not something that was created by the labor of Apple.

The fact that Apple has shitty quality control in their initial approval process so that they more often have to remove apps subsequently to approval doesn't mean that in the big picture it's at least as permissive (if not far more so) than other console development arrangements.

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