We have to admire the cheek of iPhone developers TapTapTap who, clearly frustrated with Apple’s restrictions on what apps can and can not do, decided to ‘hide’ a feature that users have been crying out for ages – a hardware shutter button.
Here’s how they did it
An updated version of their Camera+ photography app successfully passed through Apple’s checking procedure, only for the makers to reveal a hidden feature.
A swiftly pulled message on Twitter alerted users to a handy hidden feature that would make it possible to take photos using the volume buttons on the side of the iPhone instead act as a camera shutter button – something that is strictly verboten in Apple’s world.
Sneaky activation
To activate the feature, users had to visit a specially formatted URL in Mobile Safari and then they were free to snap at will using the hardware buttons.
Not surprisingly, the folks at Apple weren’t too chuffed at these cheeky upstarts sneakily bypassing their strict rules, so Camera+ was unceremoniously hoofed off the App Store at high speed and taken around the back of the bike sheds for a good pummelling.
Not chancers
Interestingly, TapTapTap aren’t a bunch of here-today-gone-tomorrow chancers but a fairly established development team producing a range of quality apps.
Indeed, their Camera+ app was featured by Apple as an “App Of The Week” recently, but we wonder if Apple’s notoriously ruthless ban boot will be heading down on their operation shortly to stamp in the faces of their coders forever.
[Via]
So what’s Apple’s beef with a hardware shutter button then?
Can anyone enlighten me?
yeah – for crying out loud Apple..give us a hardware shutter button !….tapping the camera to take a picture is lame and wobbly
(one way to minimise the wobbles is to press the screen shutter button and RELEASE to take a photo – less wobbly than tapping!)