5 iPhone Apps That Got The Boot

Apple's App Store has enjoyed enormous popularity since its launch last July. The latest tally shows 500 million downloads, and the number keeps growing. A recent study found that many apps that do make the cut are discarded very shortly after they are downloaded. But what about those apps that didn't make it and, maybe, should have? Here's a look at five apps that wound up on the compost heap.

Mailwrangler let users add their Gmail accounts (standard and Google Apps For Your Domain), which they could load and switch between quickly. To check multiple Gmail accounts in mobile Safari, users must log in and out of all of the accounts, typing the username and password for each. Apple does provide a desktop solution to this in Mailplane. Apple rejected Mailwrangler, noting that it duplicated the functionality of the built-in iPhone application, Mail. In a blog post, Angelo DiNardi, the developer, said, "This is an interesting claim since although handling e-mail, my app is simply directly loading and showing Gmail inside of an application. How you can confuse Gmail with Mail.app I'm not sure."

NetShare set up a SOCKS5 proxy that let a user get into his or her laptop/computer online through use of the 3G/EDGE connection. The app in effect allowed the use of an iPhone as a wireless modem. NetShare was briefly available on iPhone, then removed, then up again and finally removed for good. Word is that Apple and AT&T have been discussing how to provide tethering capabilities. Netshare could have been viewed as conflicting with those plans.

The iPhone app I Am Rich also briefly made it into the App Store before being removed. The featureless app was essentially a $999.99 screen saver. Initially, the app was ridiculed for being a meaningless "status symbol" because, once downloaded, the app did nothing but load a ruby red icon on the home screen. However, because only eight people downloaded it before being yanked by Apple, it's rare—thereby living up to its "precious" image. Ironically, if the app had just been allowed to stay on the shelf, its value would be nil.

Obama Trampoline, however, will have to reapply if it's going to appear on any iPhone in the near term. Despite its name, the game was not Obama-specific: Players selected a known U.S. politician (both parties were represented) and made him/her jump on a virtual trampoline. The user tilted the display to control movement—like backflips—and could use the character's head to pop some balloons with the White House or the Oval Office in the background. It's likely the app was rejected because it was judged to contain content that ridicules public figures and is in violation of Section 3.3.12 in the iPhone SDK Agreement.

The South Park iPhone app, created by the producers of the popular cartoon, was rejected by the App Store because its content was potentially offensive. South Park Studios has been back and forth with Apple since October 2008, when the app was first submitted for approval. Interestingly, the iTunes store has no problem with the content of the "South Park" cartoons; all of those episodes are available for download. Speculation is that Apple objects to the ability of the application to stream episodes onto the iPhone because it might conflict with something Apple has in the works.