Aug 11

Another One Bites The Dust!

While this has nothing to do with Queen's great hit, "Another one bites the dust" describes perfectly what just happened with PhoneSaber. It all started happening a few days ago, when Apple decided to impose a dictatorship over the App Store, removing various programs already listed there as they wished. Now, before moving on, let me remind you that we talked about PhoneSaber on the 26th of July, in the Top 10 iPhone Programs article. Back then, I wasn't thinking we would see this application go away, but this has just happened, and here's the story...

First, I Am Rich was removed only after being available for a day on the App Store. According to Armin Heinrich, the creator of this application, claims his work does not violate Apple's terms of service, and they didn't give any official reason for taking his program out of the App Store. Apart from this, other applications, such as BoxOffice or NetShare have been removed without any explanation, and now we see PhoneSaber going down as well.

The worst part of this is that PhoneSaber was a completely free application, and even worse than that - a lot of iPhone 3G users installed it. After all, there are plenty of Star Wars fans out there, so this shouldn't come as a surprise, although the application itself isn't quite useful. Fortunately, this time there's an explanation, so here you have it:

"As of now, PhoneSaber will no longer be available, I’ve had a chat with a guy from THQ Wireless (who own the rights for Star Wars apps on mobiles) and as we were always expecting, PhoneSaber is not allowed to be on there. It was a very friendly chat, and the future of PhoneSaber was discussed.

They want to do some sort of official, Star Wars branded version of PhoneSaber, and will be working with us on that one. We’re really excited about this - it means that PhoneSaber has the potential to be even better than it originally was! I don’t know any information beyond that, whether they plan to charge for it, advertise with it or what, but we’ll keep you updated on as much as we’re allowed to tell you.

Apologies to everyone who loved PhoneSaber, we didn’t really have much choice in the matter, but we’re certain that the new, official, PhoneSaber will be even more great than the original was!"

OK, I get it - Star Wars franchise-related stuff, need to pay royalties and such...so probably the new PhoneSaber will be "even more great," but will also come for a price. If I am wrong with this, please let me know, I really wish to see this app showing up again, and free as before, but I guess there are only a few chances for this to happen...