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Camera+ iPhone app sneaks in useful feature, Apple gets a-banning

August 12th, 2010 10:47am Leave a comment Go to comments

Camera+ iPhone app developers slip in useful feature, get quickly booted off iTunes

We have to admire the cheek of iPhone developers TapTapTap who, clearly frustrated with Apple’s restrictions on what apps can and can not do, decided to ‘hide’ a feature that users have been crying out for ages – a hardware shutter button.

Here’s how they did it

An updated version of their Camera+ photography app successfully passed through Apple’s checking procedure, only for the makers to reveal a hidden feature.

A swiftly pulled message on Twitter alerted users to a handy hidden feature that would make it possible to take photos using the volume buttons on the side of the iPhone instead act as a camera shutter button – something that is strictly verboten in Apple’s world.

Camera+ iPhone app developers slip in useful feature, get quickly booted off iTunes

Sneaky activation

To activate the feature, users had to visit a specially formatted URL in Mobile Safari and then they were free to snap at will using the hardware buttons.

Not surprisingly, the folks at Apple weren’t too chuffed at these cheeky upstarts sneakily bypassing their strict rules, so Camera+ was unceremoniously hoofed off the App Store at high speed and taken around the back of the bike sheds for a good pummelling.

Not chancers

Interestingly, TapTapTap aren’t a bunch of here-today-gone-tomorrow chancers but a fairly established development team producing a range of quality apps.

Indeed, their Camera+ app was featured by Apple as an “App Of The Week” recently, but we wonder if Apple’s notoriously ruthless ban boot will be heading down on their operation shortly to stamp in the faces of their coders forever.

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  1. Moses Humberstone
    August 12th, 2010 at 16:14 | #1
    Reply | Quote

    So what’s Apple’s beef with a hardware shutter button then?
    Can anyone enlighten me?

  2. Piers Gibbon
    September 9th, 2010 at 17:37 | #2
    Reply | Quote

    yeah – for crying out loud Apple..give us a hardware shutter button !….tapping the camera to take a picture is lame and wobbly

    (one way to minimise the wobbles is to press the screen shutter button and RELEASE to take a photo – less wobbly than tapping!)