The saga of the Commodore 64 emulator, the iPhone, and the app store continues, once again highlighting the problems that surround the Apple iPhone application approval process.

In yet another bizarre chain of events, the long-awaited Commodore 64 emulator for the iPhone was approved and appeared in the App Store over the weekend, but was removed after just a couple of days in the limelight. There was, of course, a reason. Although developer Manomio swears that it was unintentional, the approved app contained a backdoor that allowed access to the Commodore BASIC interpreter. That feature was the reason that Apple did not approve the app in the first place, and when users discovered the backdoor, the app was quickly removed from on-sale status.

Apple feels strongly that anything capable of accepting program code, thus possibly enabling the generation of an offshoot app, could be a security risk to the iPhone operating system and thus its users, according to a CNET story. Apple has said that it simply will not allow such capabilities in iPhone applications. Developer Manomio believes that if the BASIC interpreter is implemented properly and in a secure sandbox environment, the interpreter does not represent a threat of any kind.

The app which was finally submitted and approved was not supposed to allow access to the BASIC interpreter, but the developer said some test code was left in that allowed a series of operations to bring up the BASIC language. Stuart Carnie of Manomio says, “Unfortunately, with all the submitting and changing we made for Apple, we inadvertently re-enabled the Reset button. And since all the games have a custom control panel, we completely missed the keyboard issue. I’m not sure how we can address this…It was actually quite a surprise that the release happened on Saturday.”

Obviously, developers bear much of the responsibility for fiascos like this one. Still, Apple was very insistent that the interpreter not be a part of the app, and apparently they knew how it could be invoked but did not check, or somehow otherwise let the app get through with the feature it had said it would not allow. While both Apple and the developers need to try harder and work smarter, it is clearly Apple’s job to enforce their own rules. Every time a situation like this crops up, it throws a very public light on the flaws in the approval process.

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Entry was posted on Wednesday, September 9th, 2009 at 12:23 pm under Games, iPhone, iPod Touch.  Print This Post

Read more entries by Michael W. Jones.
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