Private API Stalking Robots Confirmed On The App Store : Troubles

We've told you recently about Apple rolling out an automatic solution to scan apps submitted to the Approval process. Well, Joe Hewitt, the former Facebook app developper confirmed it :

I got a phone call from Apple today about this issue.  They asked me to remove simulateTapAtPoint and related code due to their static analyzer automatically flagging it and rejecting apps.

What happened actually is that the Three20 framework, developed and published by Hewitt, contains private API's (not allowed functions). Before the static analysis tool those functions which are included for example in the iPhone Facebook app, would normally still make it through the approval process undetected, well it's not the case anymore. Following the call Hewitt corrected a part of his framework, unfortunately there are still some parts that are not "App Store safe" and if you're a developer that happens to be using it, you're gonna have to start using one of the available "safe" forks. Another problem with Apple's new scanning tool is that it actually automatically rejects any app that contains any of the "banned" words in its code. Postage by Roguesheep was rejected last week for example over a false positive. They used the name of a private function in their app, which was then refused. I'd like to hear some positive news about the approval process someday, can't you make an effort Apple ?

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