It's very simple. You can't make people register for no reason just to use an app. (e.g. just to harvest their information.)
Twitter, facebook, evernote, all have account features so they were approved. Apple was crystal clear explaining this.
The poster's muddled logic and inflamatory reaction shows me why Instapaper by Marco is a vastly superior product.
My guess is the author is using a fake controversy to drum up attention for his product. Astroturfing, methinks.
'Astroturfing' seems an odd choice of words, too, for someone who seems to have just created an account to call someone else an idiot.
A P.S.-ish edit - I know he recently wrote an opensource iOS library to simplify integration with various sharing services and seems to have added it to the latest version of his iPhone app. Pure speculation but I wonder if the reviewers saw that the app can potentially ask you for authentication information for a bunch of different services and some 'password harvester' alarm went off.
>>It's very simple. You can't make people register for no reason just to use an app. (e.g. just to harvest their information.)
>>My guess is the author is using a fake controversy to drum up attention for his product. Astroturfing, methinks.
I think you're being unduly harsh on this developer.
"Read it later" is an instapaper-like app and it makes perfect sense for the app to need an account.
My understanding is that read-it-later collects no personal information other than their read-it-later username and password.
The app has been around for more than a year. The free version of read-it-later is ranked 22nd in productivity. I think that the developer is genuinely concerned about the rejection and don't see this as astroturfing.
Why do you suspect the developer of harvesting user information and astroturfing ?
[edit: The parent post was at 10 points around 40 minutes ago. Now it is at -4. That is really interesting :) ]
Applying "never ascribe to malace what can be more simply ascribed to incompetence", I expect this is just a bad, baseless rejection. Apple is clearly not going to stop in-app login and registration, so this post is mainly FUD.
I can see how App Store rejection can drive a developer to these thoughts though.
If the primary functionality is the syncing between multiple devices, then this rejection is invalid and I understand the developer's dismay since an account would absolutely be necessary.
If the primary functionality is "save this article to read later", then I can understand the reviewer's rejection. In theory, you could implement this software locally for single device, which wouldn't require any registration. And then you would only need an account if you wished to enable the "secondary" syncing functionality. I think this was the reviewer's frame of mind.
So I think this is simply a case of miscommunication and misunderstanding that will be corrected shortly.