As of today, AirFloat is no longer available on the App Store.
AirFloat is – or should I say was – an app, that allowed you to send audio to your iPhone, by emulating the AirPlay audio protocol. It is written from the ground up. Almost 10.000 lines of code was written – as a full time project over the course of three month.
The app has been hugely popular. Not in sales, but in reviews. The app has gotten only 5-star reviews on the App Store. People were praising it. And I was in the final stages of getting my marketing campaign rolling.
Needless to say. I got a call from Apple friday, telling me the app was being taken off the App Store. Even though they have initially approved it, they somehow along the lines – changed their minds.
Their reason for this, is they believe I violate their App Store Review Guidelines. Even though that is their claim, I will have to look into that. I cannot further comment the case with Apple, as I will be investigating the matter over the next couple of days.
That being said… this has huge impacts – being self-employed – on my private affairs. As previously stated – having spent three months in development – it currently looks like AirFloat won’t pay off. The implications of this is not yet determined. But as of now, it is possible, that I will be forced to shut down my app businesses. But that’s the risks you run, when competing with the company guarding the gates of your market.
I really do regret this on behalf on my customers. It looks like it was highly appreciated amongst you. Sadly – as it looks – the app won’t have the change to satisfy others.
Being this is kind of sudden, I would like to thank everyone who enjoyed AirFloat. Thanks for your great feedback – both to me personally, on e-mail and on the App Store.
I’ll keep you posted, if anything emerges.
Put it on Cydia Store.
100% better than just leave the project.
Today was released the 5.1.1 untether jb for all iDevices, so there will be a lot of newcomers.
Good luck to you and your app
Doesn’t “emulating the AirPlay audio protocol” require you to use that cracked airplay private key that’s floating around? What did you expect to happen?
Same thing as happened to Rogue Amoeba’s Airfoil app. You reverse engineered, and are emulating a private and undocumented Apple protocol (AirPlay). It never occurred to you that Apple might not be cool with that? A bit risky, even careless, to risk your whole business with something that is so obviously something that Apple might ban.
Rush in to defend Apple’s actions Michael! Surely Apple needs you to come to an independent developers blog and criticize him after his business is crushed by the largest company in the world.
Michael, I am in direct opposition.
I do not believe either me or Rogue Amoeba – in my opinion – has done anything that violates any rules of Apple – nor any laws for that matter.
I and Rogue has implemented the RAOP protocol from scratch. The only thing that Apple implementation of RAOP and ours are that we are using the same private key in order to satisfy iTunes.
This key is publicly available, and be downloaded off the Internet by anyone.
Remember Apple didn’t invent AirTunes. AirTunes is a superset of the open RTSP protocol. Just with the addition of being able to handle encrypted streams.
We have in my opinion no way violated the App Store Review Guidelines or broken any laws. But we might be guilty in violating the fanboy code of conduct.
[Edited]
There are two separate issues here:
1. Should Apple do this
2. Should it be obvious that there is a very high risk that Apple would do this
I think the answer to (2) is an obvious yes. RTSP plus…encryption. RTSP plus an attempt to prevent you from doing what you were doing. Given Apple’s history of sometimes rejecting apps for rather arbitrary reasons, this outcome was entirely predictable.
Yes, the key is readily available. DeCSS is also readily available – I have it on a t-shirt. If I tried to ship a DVD player with it I’d get sued. I am sorry that you lost this much work, and I’d actually buy your app if it was still available – its a feature I want to have. However, I think that downloading a cryptographic key off the Internet should have given you a heads up and told you that you should research Apple’s history of arbitrary rejections before you bet your company on this.
My answer on (1) is that Apple’s policies on this sort of thing really, really bug me, and if I found an Android device that worked well enough I’d switch. A spreadsheet as good as Numbers is a requirement. Same with a GTD app as good as OmniFocus. So, I’m stuck for now.
Yup, same hack that RA used. Should have never been approved. But Apple should also tell you why it was removed.
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I have written an article with thoughts and history of the removal, which also gives some insights to what I found as the problem on Apple’s part. Read here http://devblog.thefamoussoftwarecompany.com/some-thoughts-on-the-removal-of-airfloat-and-airfoil/
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hi! this app is awesome. but it will be more awesome if this app can receive sound from Apple TV, and with headphones I can hear sound from Netflix movies, iTunes movies, music from radio, etc. like wireless headphone with my iphone. thanks