Developers desert iPhone App Store

The company introduced its Airfoil Speakers Touch 1.0 app for the iPhone months ago, but sent in an update when it detected flaws in the programme.

This took Apple three and a half months to approve, because of its use of “Apple-owned Graphic Symbols”. Rogue Amoeba is now focusing on the Mac.

Developer Paul Kafasis warned other developers thus: “Apple is acting as a gatekeeper, and preventing you from getting the software that developers such as ourselves are trying to provide you.

"We wanted to ship a simple bug fix, and it took almost four months of slow replies, delays, and dithering by Apple. All the while, our buggy, and supposedly infringing version, was still available. There’s no other word for that but “broken”.”

This follows comments from former Facebook app for iPhone developer, Joe Hewitt, who resigned his job for similar reasons.

However, he tweeted: “For every dev that leaves iPhone in frustration, 1,000 new ones join up. iPhone is an unstoppable train regardless of how much we complain.”