TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

David McGavern posted yesterday that Apple rejected his iPhone application because:

I called Apple Developer Technical Support to find out what was going on with the review process, and to see if my earlier comments had been received. They then told me the shocking news that writing an iPhone app that requires a desktop “companion” app was prohibited.

This is absolutely ridiculous. Apple has two applications on the App Store that are completely dependent on desktop applications — the iTunes and Keynote remotes. Both are completely and utterly useless without their respective desktop applications.

I am sure this was an error in the review process, but regardless, these arbitrary rejections are jerking Apple’s biggest asset — developers — around, and causing confusion among others. Wil Shipley is not sure if he’ll be able to put his iPhone application on the App Store.

Update: Apple contacted McGavern again:

The person from Apple made it clear to me: iFlash Touch was not rejected because it requires a companion desktop application (the person from Developer Technical Support was wrong about this). It was rejected because the reviewer downloaded the public version of iFlash for the Mac, which did not have support for iPhone exporting. I explained that to the person from Apple, and emphasized that the reviewer should download the unreleased iFlash 2.8 instead. He completely understood, tried it out himself over the phone, and assured me that it would get into the store.

Good news.