• Ars Technica, Tuesday, November 17, 2009 3:30 PM

While iPhone apps remains a popular pastime for many developers, Apple continues to alienate a greater share of the broader developer community. One reason? Apple's control over the App Store "seems arbitrary at times," according to Ars Technica. As a result, Facebook's Joe Hewitt, Second Gear's Justin Williams, and long-time Mac software developer Rogue Amoeba have all recently washed their hands of the iPhone app game, which, according to sources, "could spell a troubling future for the App Store."

True, it has over 100,000 applications, but how many of them are created with the kind of care and passion we take for granted in the Mac software world? For one, Hewitt, a respected Web developer who previously worked on Firefox and its highly regarded developer plug-in Firebug, recently handed off responsibility for Facebook's successful iPhone app to another engineer at the company. Hewitt cited his frustration with Apple's approval process for the move.

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