by Conor » Wed Jul 08, 2009 8:13 am
Pocketpedia was one of the 530 apps that launched with the App Store. At the time there was no mention of mobile in the API, but it appeared sometime in the fall of last year when I can only assume they started work on their own iPhone app. It's our responsibility to monitor the agreement but of course it's tough to stay informed of all the changes. We only found out about it later that year when we got an email from a fellow developer who wanted to do some cool things on the iPhone with the API and wanted to know how to get permission. He had come across it when he read the agreement for the first time in the fall. Since then we have been waiting for the Amazon email to stop making Pocketpedia available for distribution. Since Pocketpedia had already been in the store for 6 months, we shifted development to catch up with our to do list on the desktop Pedias but could not bring ourselves to remove Pocketpedia as it's such a great app that we where quite proud of. When we started focusing on Pocketpedia again to include the two way sync, improve the firewall blocking issue, expand the internal search, work on the edit ability and many more refinements. Even though Delicious Library is our competitor we are sad to see them have to remove their app. It is the lack of alternatives (or no option at all if we have to pull Pocketpedia) for an iPhone catalog app that will make the iPhone OS platform a poorer place. We love the Amazon API, it has created an entire ecosystem of thousand of useful desktop and web apps and on their side made them the default online shopping portal. We hate to see Amazon go the way of the App Store and become a more closed system instead of embracing the more open philosophy of their other information services. It is a service they provide and they have the final word. But if there is one person who can make a big fuss it's Wil Shipley, lets hope it results in a change of the policy. For now we are going to hold off on our planned update.