∞ Apple rejects iPhone app for using its RSS feed

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Apple rejected apps in the past and after looking at some of them, I can see their point. Apple has rules and they have the right to accept or reject whatever they want. However, on Friday Apple rejected a movie trailer app because there is no public API for trailers. Well, that’s true, but it’s an RSS feed — how many apps are in the App Store that use RSS feeds in one way or the other.

Jonah developed an app to access the Trailers’ feeds and display the results in a much more enjoyable iPhone-optimized interface. You can read descriptions, stream trailers, check out the movie poster and share the trailer. It’s interesting, and it looks good. It could be one of those apps Apple promotes on the App Store front page.

Apple Rejects Trailers App…For Using Apple’s Public RSS Feeds [MacStories]


  • http://tewha.net Steven Fisher

    He probably just needs to resubmit and tell them he’s using the RSS feed. Apple can’t always tell where apps get data from.

  • Grammar Police

    “…Apple rejected a movie trailer app because their is no public API for trailers.”

    “there” instead of “their”

    Cheers!

    • Jim Dalrymple

      Yep, stupid mistake on my part.

  • Chanson de Roland

    Apple’s SDK rules prohibit the use of the iOS’s private APIs, so the author of the app at issue knew or should have known that Apple would reject his app. In addition, I think that Apple makes the movie trailers available to its iOS and OS X devices pursuant to licenses with the studios. That license probably does not grant Apple permission to let third parties stream the trailers, which may be why the API for the movie trailers isn’t among the iOS’s published APIs. Thus, licensing consideration may also have played a part in Apple’s rejection of the app.

    To get around this, Apple would not only have to publish the iOS’s API for movie trailers, which is easily enough done; it would also have to negotiate a licenses that allowed third party apps to stream trailers, and that, I would think, would be a very difficult thing to do, so difficult, in fact, that it wouldn’t be worth it.

  • http://www.safedev.com.com sunnylove6