Banned iPhone Apps

In your ongoing search to expand the functionality on your favorite touchscreen cell phone, you may have encountered more than a few banned iPhone apps. Since the official App Store is run by Apple, they have every right to decide what applications are and are not made available for purchase through its virtual store.

There are a myriad of reasons why Apple may have banned iPhone apps. Most of the applications submitted to the App Store for the iPhone are approved, but there are a few that either never see the light of day or are removed shortly after being published. Here are five of the best known banned iPhone apps.

One of the more interesting innovations that we have seen with the iPod lineup is the introduction of CoverFlow. This lets you flick through your music collection as represented by a series of album covers flowing across the screen. You get to use this in the iPod functionality of an iPhone and it looks great.

One developer liked the idea of Coverflow so much that he created a cell phone directory application that effectively displays your contact list in a Coverflow-like style. The application is called Peeps and it provides an animated photo album for your contacts.

Apple says this application was banned because it used a non-public API. Developer Landon Fuller feels that there has been some misunderstanding.

The Apple iPhone is able to provide one of the best mobile web browsing experiences of any cell phone, but not everyone is a fan of the pre-installed Safari web browser. Some people want more options, just like they have on their home computers.

Opera is a web browser that is available both for computers and cell phones, the latter in the form of Opera Mini. Jon Stephenson von Tetzchner, CEO of Opera, said that the company started development of an Opera web browser for the iPhone, but the development was halted when they discovered that Apple would not allow it.

The main reason why Apple would not allow the publishing of Opera Mini for iPhone was because Opera's functionality can replace that of Safari.

In addition to playing music files, the iPhone is also a great place to enjoy podcasts. Just as with Opera and Safari, a competing podcast application was developed that could effectively replace iTunes. Called Podcaster, this podcast application is actually more robust than iTunes in that it can download new podcast content over the air. By contrast, you would need to physically connect your iPhone to your computer to synchronize podcast content through iTunes.

If you are looking to get a wireless Internet connection, NetShare was the app to get for the iPhone. In effect, it could take the 3G wireless broadband connection of the cell phone and convert it into a Wi-Fi signal that could then be picked up by nearby laptops and other supported devices.

In short, NetShare allowed for what is known as wireless tethering. This uses the cellular connection of a phone to connect a laptop to the Internet. In the terms and conditions for Apple, AT&T, and Rogers Wireless, however, tethering goes against what is considered "fair use" of the wireless data. Thus, Apple pulled NetShare from the App Store.

Would you like to manage multiple Gmail accounts from your iPhone? One of the lesser known banned iPhone apps is MailWrangler and it allowed you to do just that. Created by Angelo DiNardi, this app is designed to provide mobile email, directly accessing several Gmail accounts inside the application. It allowed for the viewing of Google contacts, archiving, starring messages, and so on.

Apple felt that this infringed too much on the pre-installed "Mail" app, so it was banned from the App Store.

Even though the App Store is filled with many great free iPhone apps, there are quite a few applications that have been banned or removed as well. One way to get around this is known as jailbreaking. This removes these restrictions and allows you to run unauthorized applications on your iPhone. As expected, this practice is not condoned by Apple and you proceed at your own risk.

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