Joe Hewitt, the developer behind the iPhone Facebook app, has quit due to tyrannical App Store approval policies.

Hewitt tweets, “Time for me to try something new. I’ve handed the Facebook iPhone app off to another engineer, and I’m onto a new project.”

TechCrunch managed to obtain further details finding out that Hewitt attributed his decision to quit the project entirely on Apple’s tyrannical App Store approval policies:

My decision to stop iPhone development has had everything to do with Apple’s policies. I respect their right to manage their platform however they want, however I am philosophically opposed to the existence of their review process. I am very concerned that they are setting a horrible precedent for other software platforms, and soon gatekeepers will start infesting the lives of every software developer.

The web is still unrestricted and free, and so I am returning to my roots as a web developer. In the long term, I would like to be able to say that I helped to make the web the best mobile platform available, rather than being part of the transition to a world where every developer must go through a middleman to get their software in the hands of users.

If the developer of what is likely the most popular iPhone application has reached such frustration then think about how the rest of the developers must feel. Apple has a real problem here.

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