In an unexpected turn of events, I was forced to take down iGreekNews. In short, Apple didn’t like that iGreekNews consults RSS feeds from various sources. I find it strange, considering that the purpose of RSS is to be free, and it is a means of communicating with news sources.
In any case, I cannot continue supporting it or try to mess with lawyers in order to gather any evidence that Apple may require. My full day job doesn’t leave me enough time to do that.
One year after I took down iGreekNews (along with iMe), I decided to re-implement iGreekNews using a new approach. It was time to put my NodeJS skills to good use, and construct an API around news feeds, and RSS, and also re-write the iOS application from the ground up using Swift. The result, after a few months of working in my free time, is iGreekNews v 2.0, which was released today as an update of the old application, in the App Store.
I hate good-byes but this one is long overdue. Yes, I have decided to let iGreekNews and iMe die, and withdraw it from the App Store. It has been a long and exciting journey, however, one must know when to say good-bye and take down one of the most successful applications released some years ago.
iGreekNews 1.8, followed by iGreekNews HD 1.2.1 are out. I know I promised that I would deliver the updates sooner, but technical reasons kept me from doing so. Not to mention that I have been involved in some other projects, and I also had to upgrade my systems to use Lion, and Xcode 4.1.
iGreekNews for iPhone has several improvements, from which many of them are not visible to the end user. One of the most notable changes, however, is the support for Facebook and Twitter. I originally implemented those functions for the iPad, and I wouldn’t do it for the iPhone, mainly because I didn’t want how the UI elements would behave. I decided to wait before I make large changes to the code.