As a hangover follows a night reading Instapaper in bed with a bottle of whisky, so a rude ejection follows the approval and sale of a data tethering app in Apple's App Store. This time it's iTether, which we advised you to to snap up yesterday for a rather steep $15, despite the fact that it may not work so well.
Unlike last year's Handy Light, which sneakily sequestered a tethering function inside an iPhone flashlight app, iTether comes from a company--called Tether--that already has some pedigree in mobile applications. Specifically, it makes a tethering app for the Blackberry. The company's blog details the story.
According to Tether's Patrick Hankinson, Apple contacted the Halifax-based company yesterday at around 12PM EST to let it know the app would be pulled. The reason given was that the app "burdens the carrier network." This comes despite Hankinson's assertion that his company submitted a video demo of the app, and also made "very clear when listing the app what the primary function was."
The real reason is likely that Apple has agreements in place with its carriers not to allow such applications. Hankinson says that Tether's average users consume no more than 200MB per month when using its apps. And given that all but the earliest iPhone and iPad users are on metered data plans, the excess use excuse seems flimsy.
If you really need to share your iPhone's data connection with a computer, you can always pay for the service or jailbreak your device. Otherwise, you'll just have to wait for the next app passes fleetingly through the store.
Apple Pulls iTether [Tether]
