I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard friends lamenting on this very issue: they managed to buy some questionable App from the iOS App Store before Apple (or the app’s own developers) got around to pulling it, only to accidentally lose it while updating their firmware or because their handset took an unexpected, all-expenses paid vacation to Shattering-on-the-groundsville before they got to back things up.
We’re not quite sure if this is just a soon-to-be-erased mistake or not, but it looks like the new iCloud features built into the App Store in OS 5 allow you to re-download applications that have been booted from the store since you purchased it. CDFXApps noticed that they could download the now ban-hammered iDOS application, while our brothers-from-another-mother over at Engadget confirmed that they could still download the Tetris-clone Tris. Yeah, remember Tris? Didn’t think so. It got the boot way back in August of 2008, just a month after the App Store launched.