Apple approves BitTorrent iOS apps by mistake, bans them all to hell again

Apple has never approved of BitTorrent iOS apps and thus none have ever been available for the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch, at least not on the official Apple App Store. Yet TorrentFreak noticed on Friday (via a search for “BitTorrent”) that two such apps had managed to sneak in, seemingly undetected. The publication speculated: “Could it be that Apple has lifted its BitTorrent ban, or were these apps given the green light by mistake?” It turns out that sadly, no. Apple has banned the apps in question and reiterated its stance that BitTorrent is a no-no.

The app Transmission RPC allowed users to control the mufti-platform BitTorrent client Transmission and the app Conttrol did the same for uTorrent. In other words, neither were full BitTorrent clients; they were just remote apps for clients that ran on desktop computers.

Still, hope that times were changing at Cupertino have been dashed. Apple has previously told developers that their apps were not allowed because “this category of applications is often used for the purpose of infringing third-party rights.”

As such, when Apple caught wind of these two apps, it called the developers and banned their work. “Got a call there a little earlier from California,” Craig Donnelly, developer of the Conttrol app for uTorrent, told TorrentFreak. It seems Apple are not ok with apps that have anything to do with BitTorrent. The nice girl on the other end of phone said that Conttrol had been approved by mistake and Apple were sorry for the inconvenience but apps of this nature are not allowed in the store.”

So these apps given the green light by mistake, and Apple is back to showing the red light to anyone who dares to utter the word “BitTorrent.” This reminds me of the story from yesterday, which noted Google had started censoring The Pirate Bay domains in Google Instant and Autocomplete.

See also: BitTorrent quietly releases uTorrent beta for Android, has no plans for iOS

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