I know what you’re thinking “oh, another app was rejected. Stupid developers always complaining” well, you’re kinda right. In May I started working on an iOS (universal, so it works on iPhone and iPad) app for watching movie trailers and viewing corresponding information about that movie…
So while I agree with the post, unequivocally, I think that there has to be a way to get around this limitation. After looking at several publishers sites I noticed that most of them disallow any type of redistribution of the content that they post on their site. So what’s the answer? Grab feeds from their youtube accounts (WB does have one), then pull the info for said trailer form the feed from imdb? Actually, while this is a feasible solution, it’s not elegant in any way.
So here are the options:
1) Use Hulu’s API and integrate their “Search Feed” solution into the app. The problem with this is that you’re limited to what Hulu has instead of what is new.
2) Take the Feed from Apple’s site and import it on your own site as a separate feed, which you’d add a tag or two to and then use that feed for the app.
The problem with the second option is that, while the information is freely available you’re still using that particular feed (even if you have customized it by tagging it up). You could cache all the movie data on your site (SQL or flat-file) and check for updates to it daily (or weekly), but then how are you going to pull the actual trailer? You could pull those too and throw them into table with a blob data type, but A) You’re probably violating a TOS because it’s now on your site B) That’s a HUGE amount of data and querying that db after 6 months would be painful. Obviously you can setup load-balancing, but you can only do so much without buying a rack (which defeats the purpose of a free app).
I think it’s a slippery slope and a crappy situation. I don’t think the dev is at fault at all on this one. I would have liked to have seen the app. BUT! There’s always Cydia. ;)
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streamates liked this
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texas-hold-em liked this
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play-blackjack liked this
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mspiky liked this
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morethanaprogrammer liked this
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digdog liked this
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joshhab liked this
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20-30 answered:
I think you should send them a listing of all the apps you have that do the same thing that did make it through. Maybe then they’ll notice.
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arrantsquid answered:
Left some suggestions on my reblog (although i’m sure you’ve already thought of them). Would have liked to have used this! ;)
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arrantsquid reblogged this from grantjonah and added:
post, unequivocally,...get around this limitation....looking...
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binarydigit reblogged this from grantjonah
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binarydigit answered:
Ah man, I feel for you dude! Sucks when you can reason with unreasonable people [re: the conversations post].
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daveswhiteboard liked this
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daveswhiteboard answered:
Why not find a bunch more trailer feeds and put them all together with Apple’s. They are less likely to find it and you might get approved.
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drse answered:
Maybe I’m not getting the point, but can’t you just provide your own feed that’s similar to the Trailers one?
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danielbru liked this
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webvampires answered:
What’s about Movies app and Hot Popcorn Movies app? They’re featured in App Store, and I’m pretty sure they do stream content from apple.com
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jakemates answered:
Damn.
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jakemates liked this
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webvampires liked this
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guillaumelemay liked this
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netspencer answered:
that sucks! :(
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dakotadallen answered:
If they don’t approve it, at least you can use this wonderful app on your device :P
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pryitopenwithyourlovee answered:
Wow, that is EFFED up. O_O
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bubonicpestilence answered:
Man, life suck :)
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karmcity answered:
So you’re angry because Apple rejected your app, even though it clearly violates the terms they defined? You should have read it.
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curtisbridges answered:
As a side note, the AppleTV streams all the trailers from the Apple site. While it still streams, it isn’t really a “computer”.
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gharper liked this
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sachinpatel reblogged this from grantjonah
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devthoughts answered:
Sad story man, I’ve got in a similar situation not that long ago. I could nothing do about this :/ Maybe, a solution will rise up for you !
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mike3k answered:
worst rejection ever.
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mike3k liked this
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artmsilva reblogged this from grantjonah
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brandontreb answered:
Why not do the scraping on your own web server? Then query your server for the trailer urls/thumbnails.
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mnlsv answered:
So. Fucking. Lame. Really sucks that they rejected it… :/
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smudgethefirst answered:
Any way you can find and use alternate data sources?
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henriwatson answered:
Are you thinking of releasing the app on Cydia so that at least someone can use it?
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grantjonah posted this
