
Apple pulls iTether from App Store - raganwald
http://www.loopinsight.com/2011/11/29/apple-pulls-itether-from-app-store/
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tptacek
Awfully hard to feel much sympathy for a team that builds and submits to the
app store an application which overtly contravenes one of the very first terms
of the AT&T wireless terms of service.

Intuitively, I believe AT&T's tether pricing to be a travesty, but rationally
I also know that it's their network and their terms are going to be their
terms, even if I find them odious. Both intuitively and rationally, an
application that exists solely to bypass their most basic terms of service
seems more like an elaborate troll than a real offering.

~~~
crazygringo
But there are hundreds (?) of carriers worldwide, all of which support the
iPhone. AT&T is just one of many.

So I don't see what the AT&T TOS has to do with Apple's App Store. Five years
ago, sure, but not now.

~~~
tptacek
It directly violates Verizon's terms of services too.

We could (unproductively) relitigate whether Apple should police submissions
to the app store at all, but as long as they do, they're obviously going to
reject applications that violate the terms of the vast overwhelming majority
of their US users carrier contracts.

~~~
jonknee
If they're set on policing, why not filter available apps by the capabilities
you have? Going to the lowest common denominator seems like a bad compromise.
They already filter by country and know who your carrier is, the parts are
there.

~~~
tptacek
They _are_ set on policing, so let's not pretend there's a debate to have
where there clearly isn't one.

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leoh
Just wondering: if I paid the $99 bucks to become an Apple Developer, could I
write and then self-sign a tethering app that would run on my phone (without
jail breaking)?

~~~
nkvoll
Yes, that would work.

~~~
sigjuice
Don't self-signed apps expire in three months? If yes, it would be really
inconvenient.

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raganwald
OT, but I saw this on John Gruber’s site... Showing once again that he _is_
capable of criticizing Apple, especially as pertains to his pet peeves of
design inconsistencies and app store approval insanity...

~~~
tvon
Gruber criticizes Apple often enough, it just doesn't make Hacker News.

(Though I don't see any criticism in this story, except that he is reporting
it, but then I'm not sure what there is to criticize, I don't know how the app
got into the App Store in the first place).

~~~
pyre
Well, you _could_ criticize that the App made its way onto the AppStore in the
first place as an example of how arbitrary (and possibly ineffective) the
approval process is.

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robryan
Interesting that tethering is part of the standard plan on Telstra in
Australia. What's the reasoning behind the restriction on some carriers? As
long as I stay within a data cap what does it matter whether it is done on the
phone or tethered?

~~~
technomancy
Reasoning? Surely you jest.

"We can make more money this way" covers pretty much everything when it comes
to telcos.

~~~
tptacek
When considering rates for services, you will often (as is the case here) be
better off thinking about it in terms of _who_ pays, not _what_ is paid for.
Every fee extracted from tethering users creates money that the carrier can
use to improve their general data rate and thus attractiveness in the market.

You can be irritated that this nickel-and-dimes you, but what you're dealing
with is an allocation decision, not an evil effort to defraud you. AT&T is
about as up front about the tethering issue as they reasonably can be;
"tethering" is a product option every data customer is presented with when
they sign up.

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bphogan
I think my biggest problem with this is that these sorts of things should be
rejected before they get on the store, before people pay money for things. I
don't like the precedent that's set by "oops we decided we don't like your
thing so it's going bye-bye".

If Apple can't stop stuff like this at the onset, you have to start asking
other questions, like how closely they are looking at the apps they let in. Is
it really a safe walled garden?

Or is it simply "Hey we don't like that app anymore. It competes with us
somehow. So get out."

Sadly I suspect both of those cases are true.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
_"my biggest problem with this is that these sorts of things should be
rejected before they get on the store, before people pay money for things."_

If you bought it, you get to keep it. I actually have a half dozen apps that
after I bought it have since been removed from the App Store.

~~~
bphogan
I do too. But I have to restore from my backups. I don't get to grab it from
the store again. And bugs won't get fixed, OS incompatibilities (read: iOS 5
fixes) won't get in there either.

If only there were a way around the Apple store.... some way to install any
app I wanted....

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jpdoctor
Waiting for

1\. An open source iTether

2\. An open source way to hide it in an otherwise innocuous application
(iJpDoctorClock) as an easter egg

3\. 10,000 submissions to the app store.

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beej71
Why was this approved in the first place? Of course it's going to burden the
carrier network--it's the raison d'etre for the whole thing. Weird that it was
ever there at all.

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danso
I only vaguely knew the details of how iTether worked, but with the app
pulled, does this impact users who've already installed it and the computer
client software? That is, was there any need to touch base with iTether's
servers?

~~~
davidblair
The app still works as of 8:00 PM ET on my AT&T iPhone.

Based on what I've read about others tethering apps, Apple will not remotely
disable Tether.

The only major downside is that I will never see any updates. It's only a
matter of time before an OS upgrade breaks the app permanently.

