Box Office is back. Only it’s been rebranded as Now Playing. Only you can’t find Now Playing in the App Store. But you can find Box Office. In iTunes. But not on the iPhone. Sorta.

Confusing much? We’re right there with you. We figure the name change is messing with the search systems, which will hopefully sort themselves out shortly. In any event…

Rumors have swirled since Apple pulled Box Office a few weeks back, covering everything from the name “Box Office” itself creating trademark issues, to Rotten Tomatoes objecting to their data being scraped, to the “donate” button violating the SDK, to Steve Jobs hating the exact shade of gray used for the inner bevel of the 3rd line down. There doesn’t seem to be any hard info yet on what the real reason was, though developer Cyrus “Metasyntactic” Najmabadi pegs the long (re)turn around time squarely on Apple (via Ars Technica):

I’ve gotten confirmation that they’re working to restore my app on the store, and I got an apology for the length of time it took to respond to me. I’m very happy by this turn of events, and I’m glad that apple will be letting me stay in the store

Najmabadi also promises several more improvements when (and hopefully not if), version 1.3 is released.

Don’t care about the why and what, just want to get it? Hit up the App Store (iTunes link) and let us know how you like it!

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Box Office Now Playing (Again) in the App Store

For the last week or so I’ve been beta testing a well known iPhone application. Beta testing involves using the 100 iPhone “Ad Hoc” distribution method first outlined at WWDC 2008. I was planning on writing up the process, and my experiences being involved in it (all straightforward, all great — all definitely far more work for developers than testers) when, thankfully for all involved, one of the foremost iPhone devs, Craig Hockenberry of Twitteriffic fame, went and did it the way it should be done.

Interested in Ad Hoc distribution and how iPhone beta testing works? Get you to reading over at his site, Furbo.org.

Meanwhile, Erica Sadun over at TUAW presents a very well though out essay on how Apple could (and should?) improve the App review process with more objectivity, consistency, and transparency.

In [redacted] NDA land, John Gruber over at Daring Fireball offers an interesting theory, via a reader: what if it’s all about patent protection? Seems Apple might start the clock ticking when the NDA is lifted, and the technology gets published, and their lawyers may not have all the dots and crosses in place yet.

Finally, is it time to put BoxOffice on a milk carton yet?

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

State of the Apps: Ad Hoc Distro and Beta Testing, a Call For Review Sanity, and NDA All About Patents?

Box Office is missing. No, we’re not talking about the gross from the latest Eddie Murphy “film”, we’re talking about the iPhone App. While NetShare remains in its very own little Schrodinger’s App box, some carriers’ (AT&T, Rogers, etc.) prohibition against tethering and Nullriver’s Installer.app/Cydia roots makes the drama at least somewhat fathomable. What about Box Office?

Box Office is (was?) an App that used either manually entered or CoreLocation derived positional information to show you a list of theaters and movies playing within a user-definable radius (e.g. 10 miles). Users could “favorite” certain theaters to bump them to the top, and quickly click through the RottenTomatoes or MetaCrytic reviews, movie information, etc. In other words, it was a useful piece of software in the otherwise incredibly high noise to signal ratio (i.e. CrApps to quality) the initial App Store land rush has given us.

And now it’s gone.

Yup. For the last couple days, clicking on the Box Office link returns an iTunes error saying the app is not available in (your country) store. Posting on the MacRumors forums, developer Metasyntactic, claims not to know why it was pulled either (after the jump):

Apple pulled the app yesterday without giving my any notification that they were doing it, or what their justification was for removing it.

I’ve tried to contact them about the issue, but it’s been a complete dead end. If anyone has a useful contact number for apple, please let me know.

I’m in regular contact with all my data providers, and none of them have had an issue with my app. Indeed, the response was the exact opposite. They like my app and have even asked if i would do custom application work for them in the future. Furthermore, all the data i use is licensed by the owners as ‘free for non commercial use’. i.e. precisely what BoxOffice is.

So i’m stuck here not knowing what has happened, or what i can do about it. If any of you have any ideas, please let me know. You can respond here, but i’d actually appreciate a reply at cyrusn@stwing.upenn.edu since i probably won’t check back here that often.

While Apple has been slowly improving their communications with MobileMe issues and download counts for developers, and has been getting more and more Apps online, the seemingly random length of the approval process and capricious nature of take downs really needs to get some transparency enhancements, at least for the developers.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Apple Pulls Box Office from App Store?