It’s happened again. Apple has officially rejected an app that at first blush seems harmless and fun. This time it’s a Commodore 64 emulator from Manomio that offered a realistic joystick and keyboard, portrait and landscape gaming, and a fully licensed C64 emulator code. It was all on the up and up. Apple seemed excited. But then Manomio got the dreaded rejection mail:
Thank you for submitting C64 1.0 to the App Store. We’ve reviewed C64 1.0 and determined that we cannot post this version of your iPhone application to the App Store because it violates the iPhone SDK Agreement; “3.3.2 An Application may not itself install or launch other executable code by any means, including without limitation through the use of a plug-in architecture, calling other frameworks, other APIs or otherwise. No interpreted code may be downloaded and used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple’s Published APIs and built-in interpreter(s).”
So basically they ran afoul of the rule that says you can’t run your own code – or emulated C64 code – over the OS. Well heck, that seems fair?
But what about Golden Axe and Sonic, two games that essentially emulate old game ROMS… which is exactly like emulating C64 games except on the C64 you could potentially type in BASIC code.
This probably won’t end here. We’ll keep our eye on the story.
This story seems to be mere copy of whats on TouchArcade. How about giving it little more credit than a simple link with no mention of their name? Also there is a better discussion in comments there already.
http://toucharcade.com/2009/06/20/full-commodore-64-emulator-rejected-from-app-store/
PS: I am not associated with toucharcade. But I do think what you are doing is slippery slope.
yeah. clearly three internal links isn’t enough.
John,
It would have been nice if you mentioned TouchArcade. The story was there for almost a day. It appeared on reddit top page:
http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/8uah7/full_commodore_64_emulator_rejected_from_app_store/
It always nice to give credit where its due explicitly. If I start copying all your posts and provide a link somewhere in details to your original post, how would you feel?
I am not trying to accuse you of something. I am just trying to point out that its not a good practice.
Kumar,
How come you are so sure that TouchArcade was the first who published the story? Also, are you sure that TC got these news from TouchArcade?
The way you’re asserting your point, it seems you are very much associated with T.A.
I am sure if I am associated with TechArcade It can be easily figured out :).
I don’t know if they stole the story somewhere else but that’s where I saw the story first. BTW I found them only today through Reddit.
Please JOUST elsewhere. The Princess is not here!
Way to go john!! plagiarise a story and then be sarcastic when caught!
Duh. TC isn’t about substance. They are the mcdonalds of tech news. Get it out as fast as possible to increase the churn. If you don’t have to originate everything from scratch and do analysis, all the better towards reaching the churn goal.
They seems low on the uptake with this one since this story has been floating around TechMeme for at least a day.
Its a filler post for the slow weekend. The site has to feed the users something to keep ad impressions going.
I think it is good to forget arguments and talk about the actual story. Is is not strange that Apple is repeating this rejection episode again and again? Each time it rejects a worthy application, there is a lot of noise about it, which then slows down to a murmur and later nothing is said, until another new rejection story appears…
Is this Apple’s way of making its Apps store unique and extraordinary (also peculiar) where sometimes very good apps get rejected while very, very bad ones are accepted and hailed?
This shows how clueless the application author is. If they simply bundle all of the rom’s inside the binary and call it a day, it will be no different than any other game. Sheez.
Like LifeHacker, TC is a news aggregation services as well as original content. I don’t have time to read hundreds of other blogs so I’m appreciative when TC and LifeHacker consolidate the stories and offer links if I want additional info or to see the original story.
In regards to this story – Apple is in business to make money. Period. By allowing apps like this one would be counter-productive since you could just download old C64 (and likely other emulator games) for free rather than for a fee from the App. Store pulling both traffic and revenue away from Apple to other services.
Similar to iTunes, the App Store is just one more “Service” which it’s devices consume to drive revenue. Give away the Razor and sell the blades…. It’s really nothing new.
I still don’t have a clue why apple is not publishing its policies about app rejections. They have rejected some of our apps for legitimate reasons and some for very arbitrary reasons. I wish they will come up with a given set of guidelines dictating what kind of apps are not allowed to help us startups wasting a lot of time in making something which gets rejected later for no good reason.
Don’t be ridiculous. I think Apple’s app policies are stupid, and they do seem to occasionally reject apps for no reason. However, in this case, Apple has been totally consistent. Read the rejection letter quoted in the article. It’s right there in the agreement; no running outside code via a framework or downoaded executable. Therefore, no Flash, no Java, and no emulators of any kind.
The people who made this app are total morons if they thought it would get approved. The only way it would work is if they packaged all of the ROMs right into the app and prevented any sort of disk access. That would really defeat the purpose of an emulator, unfortunately.
I agree that the policy is bad, but this app clearly violates the stated policy.
I think that the point is that other apps in the store include emulators (like Sega’s apps), so there is clear inconsistencies.
…To say nothing of the fact that the developer contacted Apple before submitting the app, gave full disclosure, and Apple was “excited” and gave no indication that the app would be rejected.
More than anything, I hate people who will read a blog actively and still bash it every chance they get.
Sanjay and Kumar. You don’t like TechCrunch? Great. Get out and stop reading it.
Your comments don’t add anything…and for your information, if you paid the least attention to anything, you will find out that TechCrunch (and its associated network) break more stories than any other tech news organization.
Hardly the “McDonald’s” of Tech news, Sanjay. Get your facts straight before you bash someone.
umm….
where are the actual facts, relevant numbers to support this…
thanks
Did I say I don’t like Tech Crunch? I believe “Leave Comment” section exist so that readers can express their opinion. It doesn’t say one needs to be TC groupie to be posting a comment anywhere. Does it?
Kumar Mettu, i think you’re right about explicitly naming a source, and great you speak up. Others may disagree. What a nice world :-). TC is doing nice work, but that doesn’t mean they are flawless and hopefully they’re still welcoming & open for feedback and they give every bit of feedback some thought. If they still think not mentioning, in this case, a source explicitly is the way to go, they apparently wouldn’t mind, as you state it, if someone else does the same to their coverage.
It’s great to see people discuss standpoints based on mutual respect :-). Bashing is so easy…
@Hany, I love TC. Look, its a slow newsday for TC.
In regards to the McD’s comments, TC has some of the highest volumes on the web in terms of posting tech news postings. Sometimes, the depth of the content is light, but that’s ok because its all about volume. Same goes for McD’s. Churn in stories drives repeat visits, and that results in more ad impressions, which drives revenue. You don’t agree?
Will this still be available to jailbroken iPods?
I imagine it will show up on Cydia in a few hours. I will keep checking Cydia anyway. My iPhone is jailbroken and boots with the pineapple. I run it on T-Mobile and have Edge internet mobile access.
You are one conflicted individual.
There are ways to install this program anyway
I saw this on Digg like 12 hours ago. You’re a bit late, but still a good story.
It isn’t just C64, all emus are banned on iPhone and VMs are banned too. Otherwise people would have made visual basic like IDEs with their own VB style runtime to create iPhone apps more easily or from the web.
VMs and emus are discouraged, because they are counter productive to the revenue model.
It’s Sunday, sounds like someone needs a life.
So the plug-in architecture so called framework is going to be an innovative idea?
Cydia! Power to the people baby!
M.U.L.E on the iPhone would be AWESOME! :)
“Welcome Purple Packer”
More importantly, where is our LOGO emulator!
I demand satisfaction!
This will effect all apps written in phonegap, rhodes and all other emulator based framework, then.
Sad :( Apple = GOD. Let the developers launch this kinda thing. I dont see the issue to let it go through.
As a C64 user and lover from ages ago, this was sad stuff for me.
good idea for Commodore 64 fans. I want it :)