A small independent iPhone app development team has accused one of Britain’s largest motoring associations, the AA, of breaking iTunes app store rules.
What’s more, the president of the AA’s response on Twitter was far from constructive, telling the developers to “Get a life”.
Stardotstar is the team behind an app for locating UK car parks called Nosey Parker (we previously covered it here). When the AA launched its own car park locator app this week, it could have been simple healthy competition. However, Stardotstar suspected foul play.
You see, a search for “Nosey Parker” on iTunes was also bringing up AA Parking as a result. Stardotstar says that the only way this could be achieved is through the AA entering “Nosey Parker” as a keyword for its own app, a practice that is against Apple’s iTunes rules.
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Apple’s developer guidelines state (PDF link): “Do not include keywords of other applications or use terms, product names, brand names, or entities that are registered trademarks which you do not own the rights to.”
Annoyed at the AA’s move, Stardotstar turned to Twitter to get its message out. After seeing a tweet about the problem, the AA’s president Edmund King replied:
“@NoseyParkerApp Get a Life. Happy Easter. Don’t understand you RT?”
Now, poor grammar aside, clearly Mr King didn’t understand the problem but telling someone with an obvious grievance to “Get a life” doesn’t seem very presidential to us.
Despite the long Easter weekend, the Stardotstar team have managed to contact the AA app’s developer directly about removing the offending keywords from iTunes. The keywords haven’t been removed as of yet, but it’s a happy ending of sorts. However, we think Edmund King still owes Stardotstar an apology.
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