NDrive GPS App Disappears from Apple App Store

This article is a perfect time to lament the poor quality of many of these 'news' sites. Nowhere in the story does it say that Slashgear made any attempt to contact Apple and ask about this situation. Apple has an entire media department that you can call and ask (http://www.apple.com/pr/).

The worst case is that Apple will give you a no comment, or we'll get back to you. That you can report. But here all we have is a sentence wasted burbling And considering that NDrive isn’t the only GPS application available on the iPhone, or within the App Store proper, we’re not sure why Apple would choose now, or this app, to pull that lever.

At the start of the article they claim That would mostly be because Apple hasn’t had any reason to use it. Is that true? Did they ask Apple?

If you follow the blog chain backwards you'll come to someone who did call Apple, and has a possible explanation for why the application was removed: it appears NDrive may not have fully licensed the map data used in the application.

The entire article would be much more interesting if they'd called Apple and asked them a few questions. And then called NDrive and asked them about the map licensing, or called Teledata and asked them. You know, actually done some work towards the article rather than 'reporting' rumors.

Also, they need someone to look over their copy.

Several customers are reporting that the application called NDrive, which was developed by a small team to be a GPS alternative.

What did the customers do? Also, I'm pretty sure this small team did not develop an alternative to GPS. That would have required launching and maintaining a large number of satellites.

And then subsequently pulled from customer’s iPhones as well.

One customer or many?

Some months ago I wrote a blog post about baggage tags used on airlines (http://blog.jgc.org/2009/08/whats-on-baggage-tag.html). In it you'll see documented the work it took (with a little help from a friend) to get the answers I wanted.

And the other day I was writing something that appeared on The Times' web site and needed information about the status of the BT site at Goonhilly (http://timesonline.typepad.com/science/2010/06/sea-sand-sun-...). I simply called BT's media relations and they were very, very helpful. They even got me an answer on a day when half their staff were off on a training course.

This is not true. People still have the app.

See: http://www.razorianfly.com/2010/07/08/did-apple-just-use-the...

[Update] – Multiple users are reporting to us via Twitter and in the comments section that NDrive is still present on both their iPhone and respective computers, therefore we’re filing this one under: “Apple has -not- used the iOS kill switch … yet”.

The kill-switch URL isn't exactly secret: https://iphone-services.apple.com/clbl/unauthorizedApps

Note the lack of any applications being listed there.

Seriously, this is an easy one to verify; a reporter wouldn't even need to call Apple for a response. I'm no Apple fanboy, but there doesn't appear to be much to see here.

There is a long gap between stuff that gets pulled from the Appstore and stuff pulled from off your iPhone. In the later, stuff gets pulled from the store all the time. Either it's broken, violates a license agreement, or is malicious (ie. steals stuff from your addressbook). I've yet to encounter an app that was taken off the iPhone. I do have apps that were taken from the appstore.

Which is why I found this article a bit unconvincing. "Users reported...." How many? 1? 10? 10000?

So when Apple ganks an application like this, do people automatically receive a refund?

This is seriously weird, I hope Apple has a good reason for this that goes beyond 'we don't like this kind of apps anymore'. While Google also used it's kill-switch recently, it was against malicious software, while this App doesn't look particular harmful.

It's possible this may be due to false advertising. I bought the Canada maps version on June 16 for $4.99, and it turned out to be a two week evaluation edition, something that I did not see anywhere in the app description before purchasing it.

Something on their support page made reference to a spurious expiry message, so I thought this message might be a mistake; I wasn't sure until it actually did expire at the end of the month. By the time I'd noticed they'd pulled it from the store. The app was still on my iPad, and is still in my iTunes, so I don't think Apple killed it with the switch.

Pure speculation but maybe NDrive is improperly licensing and distributing the map data?

If that turns out to be the case, it's interesting to contrast the two different approaches in transparency that Apple and Google took in using their kill switches.