MacBlogz – One Stop Apple News - Bridging the Apple Community and Keeping Tabs on the Rumor Mill.

Latest App Store Victim: CastCatcher by Return7

Apple has rejected an application called CastCatcher by Return7. The application allows you to stream radio directly onto your Phone. Apple claims that the application is transferring excessive volumes of data over the cellular network, essentially using too much bandwidth.

MacBlogz has contacted Amro Mousa, co-founder of Return7. He has been very helpful in recounting the story, scenario and process for us. For the sake of CastCatcher’s current users, and future downloaders, and for Return7 in general, we sincerely hope this decision gets reversed by Apple.

Amro Mousa explained to MacBlogz, “As far as the experience, Apple has generally been helpful in the past. They sent the rejection letter on November 5th and have not responded to our request to reconsider. To their credit, it hasn’t been very long, but it’s still very frustrating to have someone reject an update in a seemingly arbitrary and inconsistent manner. I’ve never been able to get through to their 800 number.”

It’s too bad that Apple remains closed and hard to establish a connection with, especially from the development community. Not only are they creating an unnecessarily negative spin on their own development platform, but the corporate wall they claimed wouldn’t exist, has even further been established. This is a prime example of why a clear, concise and well-documented set of guidelines needs to be set in place by Apple. Developers could follow the documentation and understandably not develop features that would be rejected by Apple, into their applications.

“My main frustration with this whole CastCatcher debacle is the fact that there are at least half a dozen other applications streaming music in one form or another (Tuner, AOL Radio, Pandora, Radio Javan, FStream, etc.) and all of them are allowed to use the cell network, just like we have up until this point. This release added the ability to set audio buffer size (a requested feature), some minor bug fixes, and experimental (read not so functional on iPhone 2.1) AAC+ support. It did nothing to increase the bandwidth used by CastCatcher,” Mousa continued.

“If we have to choose between releasing new features and screwing our users or leaving the old version up, we’ll take the later as we believe our users should be able to stream music via 3G. I understand the carrier’s concerns about network overload, but most of the streams are of low bit rate (128kbps or less),” Mousa explains.

In a concluding email, Mousa explains that Return7 “would love for Apple to let us release the latest build so our users can get the features they requested.”

Return 7’s blog explains: CastCatcher Internet Radio cannot be posted to the App Store because it is transferring excessive volumes of data over the cellular network, which as outlined in the iPhone SDK Agreement section 3.3.15, is prohibited

Apple has been under fire for the way it runs the App Store. Many people believe the store is run like a high-end application boutique, where Apple picks and chooses who makes it through, and who gets approved. The entire situation has caused strain on the iPhone development community as many are weary of investing resources into the development of an application that may not even get accepted. As we’ve previously explained, “after Apple banned MailWrangler, PodCaster and NetShare, and Trism raked in $250k, our hopes of seeing genuinely useful applications in the app store kind of diminished a little bit. Credit Card Terminal is a major step in the right direction. So maybe some hope still remains.

It’s truly an unfortunate situation when a grassroots development crew like Return7, who have clearly devoted many hours, resources and passion into the iPhone development platform, gets the cold shoulder and a rejection from Apple’s App Store. Even worse, is the frequency in which we’re hearing of the situation. To Return7, we are sorry for the misconstrued communication you are dealing with. Let’s hope this gets reversed.