Anyone who has already paid and had their phone or iPod registered will still be able to install and use it, though. Apple has apparently given no explanation with its latest stomping on the app, though it's not like the rationale is obscured by a dense fog of WTF. Unlike its past rejections, however, the straightforward argument that "more open is more betterer," while applicable generally, in this situation is slightly gimped by the complexities of the specifics in this instance.

The initial blockage of Podcaster was ludicrous, absolutely no question there. But, here, Apple has been exceedingly clear that the App Store is the sole (legitimate) way to get and distribute apps. Is it within their rights then to aggressively shut down unofficial distribution channels, especially when it actually makes use of their own system?

The counter-argument, part of the larger one that they should be more open and less outrightly draconian (it's scary when someone controls the hardware and the software, no?), is that this is a justified act of civil disobedience, moral codes over legal ones, that kind of thing. (Or hell, not even "open," just less opaquely capricious and more transparent. Supposedly, now you can't even talk about why Apple killed your app.) After all, that's largely the spirit of the iPhone app black market, which amazingly seems to only look more critical as this wears on since from all outward appearances, Apple has no intent of relenting.

Either way, they're doing a damn fine job of making Android look good. [Podcaster via Phone News via AppleInsider]

According to Podcaster's blog, Apple at least explained why it booted Podcaster from the App Store: "Since Podcaster assists in the distribution of podcasts, it duplicates the functionality of the Podcast section of iTunes."

The funny thing to David Chartier at Ars—who broke the news—is that so many other approved apps duplicate Apple-made functions, like the calculator and the stopwatch.

The funny thing to me is that podcasting was a grassroots thing that Apple coopted only after it had blown up on the internet. This has nothing to do with playing back copyright-protected music—it's just a manager for freely distributed internet content. What next, Apple bans other people from building software to access third-party web pages via the iPhone? Oh wait... that's pretty much already happened.

If you still want to check out the Podcaster app, you can sign up here, and the developer will e-mail you back with instructions. They say it will be distributed ad hoc—so no jailbreak required—for a donation of $9.99, but if it gets popular, we don't know how the ad-hoc distribution system would hold up. (I thought there was a limit of 100 for that, but maybe I'm wrong.) [Ars Technica]