The fun’s over, folks*. About a week and a half ago, iPhone developers TapTapTap pushed an updated version of their Camera+ photography app to the App Store, and all seemed well. Just yesterday, however, they revealed (via a message on Twitter that was pulled about 30 minutes after it went out) that this latest build had a hidden feature: by visiting the URL camplus://enablevolumesnap in Mobile Safari, one could make the volume buttons on the side of the iPhone instead act as a camera shutter button — something which Apple had already said was a no-no.
Hidden features and tricks that circumvent Apple’s rulings don’t fly for very long — and sure enough: as of right around midnight this morning, Camera+ has been pulled from the App Store.
We were able to get the App’s product page to come up once, but attempting to purchase it spit back the standard “The item you tried to buy is no longer available” error that shows whenever anyone’s wrists are being slapped.
It’ll be interesting to see just how Apple responds to this in the long run. TapTapTap is a fairly prominent development team; hell, Apple even just featured Camera+ as an “App Of The Week” just a while back. Previous tricks like this have earned their respective developers year-long bans from the app store — will TapTapTap’s fairly clean history and positive reputation keep them from being walloped by the ban hammer?
* Unless you already downloaded the app. Then the fun can continue forever. Or at least until you accidentally erase or overwrite the App.