µTorrent iPhone App Rejected, Heads Over To Cydia

You can access uTorrent's web interface from any web browser, you know... no app required, approved or otherwise.

Is there anything like that for us Blue-Froggers?

C'mon, you're just using the idea of legal torrents as an excuse here. Pretty much every legal torrent out there downloads so fast you have absolutely no need for monitoring apps. Ever tried downloading Ubuntu via Bittorrent? That thing is done before you can even find a spare CD to burn it to.

People wanting to monitor torrents most likely are downloading less-than-legal torrents, thus rendering Apple's stance to be quite valid.

That is, unless you're on dial-up. In that case, get lost, bittorrent is not for you ;-)

HeddaPigeon

Apple's stance on this seems pretty strange given the fact that there's a Usenet app made specifically for pulling NZBs and loading them into a binary downloader. I guess Usenet is too old school for Apple to care? Seems strange to me.

@SamburgerHandwich: Couldn't agree more, how else is someone going to organize their pirated music and get album art...apple is full of contradictions...I wonder why they removed drm? (did they give up the fight)

mricyfire

@paperless: Then jailbreak. Nobody is stopping you.

macpatrick

@Eugenia: I hope your kidding.

macpatrick

There is a native web gui from utorrent as well. If you search on the utorrent forums its an addon for their webui.zip file

ArdellaNovellus

Thanks to TorrentFreak I installed uMonitor yesterday, and have enjoyed being able to remotely start and control my torrents.

Eff off Apple. I bought the iPhone to be able to do what i want with it, not what you want me to do with it.

PixelProphet

@beyondthetech: Because there is something called Open Source and Devs who don't want any profit out of their apps.

uRbAnlP

Using a VNC app works just fine for me.

But then again, I'm not much of a pirate.

PageRook

stupid question of the day, can u use umonitor for transmission, or is there an app for that in cydia

Stone Fox

if you have a need for the uTorrent ap you probably have a jailbroken phone, or aren't too concerned to go that route I would think.

adoringava

If Apple took a lesson from Google's Android initiative, they should allow "non-market" apps to be installed. Instead, take it a step forward and allow both root and non-market apps installation capability with one caveat; if users choose this option they void any warranty on the device and will be excluded from support. With a nice little disclaimer, that will cover Apple from any possible mitigation due to it.
However, the real reason they would NEVER do so is because this keeps customers locked in and controls their behavior and lifestyle.
Nonetheless, I am glad I went the Android route instead, even if I bought an iPhone, I would end up Jailbreaking it. I don't have to do so with my G1 since I get access to all apps other than tethering (which I don't use anyway).

JunoonX

For once in a lifetime, I agree with Apple.

Let's face it: everyone who uses a torrent application (especially techies that read sites like this) more than likely do not use it for legitimate purposes. That's real life so let's not beat around the bush.

That is ridiculous. It implies that torrent use in inherently illegal ignoring the fact that it is a completely valid and effective distribution method for legal content as well. So maybe we now have the real reason Google Voice has not been approved, someone might use it to place a phone call with nefarious intent.

ZurielLance

@tdeffen:

Exactly. What is the point of a stand alone app? Transmission's Web client is pretty slick: [trac.transmissionbt.com]

@SeraphX2: Yeah, I'm finding it hard to blame them for this one. With everything that's happened/happening to TPB and Mininova, Apple really doesn't want to get in on that. I sure wouldn't either.

I can't believe I didn't think to add the transmission webui to my bookmarks tho, this is a great idea.

They should just make it a webapp, beyond Apple's scope of approval or rejection.

Doesn't uTorrent already have a Firefox extension or something like that anyway? If so, then It's probably not terribly difficult to make a webapp.

tdeffen

@dingus: Honestly, I'm seriously considering it. I just wrote a program for Android Developer Challenge in 5 days (from no code/eclipse/API knowledge to a working proof of concept). The same exact app took me 3 months to write on the iPhone.

Android SDK is way more flexible than Apples SDK and development is a lot more forgivng due to JAVA vs Objective C (C in general). My only problem with Android phones is the form factors. HTC is great, but those chins are hideous.

@SeraphX2: I can see why Apple, with loads of media company contracts holding up iTMS, would have to nix this. OTOH I used to use the Transmission webui on iPhone, which did just about everything I needed it to especially after Apple added cut n paste.

dingus

another program often used for the purpose of infringing third party rights: iTunes.

SamburgerHandwich

@rootfindr: Because I got tired of the arms race between the jailbreakers and Apple.

And I mainly used it for listening to podcasts, which you have to sync to iTunes to copy. Android has a few good apps for syncing podcasts automatically OTA. The only reason I have now to hook my phone up to my PC is to back up the SD card contents.

dingus

Finally, the first real reason I have to jailbreak my iPod.

wow Gizmodo takes 3 weeks to publish this it's an old news check here this article was published on 18 Aug http://www.ihackintosh.com/2009/08/monitor-%c2%b5torrent-downloads-from-iphone/ Although they also published it very late. Actually this was happened some time around July last

WhitneyEbonifly

@[www.davidraso.com]

KStrike155

I'd love to see every rejected app head to Cydia.

@dingus: In the one way that I have absolutely no problem with uTorrent (I use it) I can see why Apple would reject this. At least they didn't claim uTorrent itself is illegal and instead can see, unlike many other organizations, that is a legal tool that is used for illegal purposes. Sort of like Roms and Emulators.
Emulators are illegal, but the Roms aren't.

@dingus: why didn't you just jailbreak an iphone?

"often" LOL - so is the Internet :)

kentsmithnz

And this is why after two years I jumped ship to an unlocked G1.

dingus

@Vroomtrap: Come over to the Android side. We have MMS and Transmission in our app Market.

dingus

Tranmissions web ui is good enough for me.

searching for it on cydia brings up nothing.

hm

On a related note, is there a good free DNS service to get a flexible DNS name for my home PC?

hewhoroams

I have been thinking about unjailbreaking my iPod Touch since there arent many Cydia apps that i use but now that I've seen this i think it's really good to have an alternative place to get my apps.

F*** App Store selection policies.

@Vroomtrap: Cydia is great although I wish it was more like the app store and refreshing sources didn't take so long and stopp all use of the app.

It's not that big of a deal. I've been controlling my home file server's torrents via the web UI on my phone for a long time.

is anyone shocked this happened?? really, come on.

p.s. i downloaded it first thing this morning

heimbachae

Transmission already has an iphone-friendly web interface if you expose port 80 to the web. I use this round the house, and I have Prowl push my Mac's Growl notifications to my phone for instant notifications of when they're finished.

Over the net I use logmeinignition for remote access for the same thing, works like a charm.

BerwinCougar

As a paid dev, I don't want to jailbreak. Why not sell the source code so that devs who want some of these cool apps can at least run it on their devices?

@John Nahajski: And why is that if I may ask... Apple sucks when it comes to thees kind of things...

Way on earth aren't I allowed to control what I choose to add to my phone i freaking payed for, huh? It's just creepy...

No one should ever control something someone have bought, no matter what!

@kall: Indeed it does, I'm pretty sure there is already video of it doing so.

uTorrent has a nice webUI. why not just bookmark that?

glaeven

I would like to see Drivetrain come to Cydia too. I believe it was rejected quite a while ago.

If developers would make a habit of this decision (moving to Cydia upon rejection) maybe it would send a stronger message to Apple.

For those of you who don't know, Cydia has it's own store setup now. It's still going through some growing pains but it's a way for developers to get PAID for apps that Apple doesn't approve of. I think it's great and I've been using Cydia since the Installer.app days. ;)

ryanschmidt

The wonderful thing about uTorrent is that is has it's own built in mini web GUI you can access remotely with the browser, as long as you know your IP address. Just get something like no-ip running on your computer, or some other free IP tracker if you have a dynamic IP like me, and you can access uTorrent on your computer anytime, adding, deleting, and monitoring your torrents.

When I first heard about the iPhone at MacWorld in 2007 I was so excited; I mean a phone running Unix predicated off a pretty stable OS. I kept telling people "It's a computer an they can add more features." "Yeah I know it can't MMS/Copy-Paste, but that's just a software fix." Then the store came out and I championed for the iPhone ever more with statements like "See now anyone can make applications--it's going to be just like a desktop."

And now, with Apples app approval process, I have no defense. The phone will never reach it's full potential as long as Apple's Russian roulette approval process continues.

I'm waiting for the next torrent app that does get approved.
Hey, it's Apple. Double standards all over the place.

@everyone: My bad, I thought this was indeed for the iPhone. Crap.

USB_Humping_Dog

Feel free to bring it over to the Palm Pre, Homebrew at precentral is thriving and the app catalog is accepting submissions and set to open soon. I think Palm is a bit less anal about this sort of thing. They actually want googlevoice app.

SuramaAte

@Impul5se: I hope to god you where being sarcastic

John Nahajski

It just seems wrong that Apple have the final say on what we can or cannot do with our own phones. At least release something that lets us put our own Apps on the iPhone if Apple doesn't want to host them itself

Impul5se

@Nick2: There's also Torrentula, but I'm not sure if it got fixed after the 3.0 update.

@USB_Humping_Dog: But there are torrent apps already if you jailbreak that do. Go get dTunes, and you pick your Pirate Bay torrent there, click on it in dTunes to prep it, open mobileterminal and type ./gettorrent. It gets decent speeds. (iPod touch 802.11g, 256KB/s) It'll murder your battery however. Downloading a 700MB Ubuntu disk took it from 100% battery to dead in 20 minutes, so the torrent hadn't finished yet.

Booo, Apple!

@USB_Humping_Dog: You are aware that this won't download torrents to your iphone, but only controll them on your pc, are you?

And that's why i'm excited for the N900. Because the think will run actual Transmission.

I'll install this when I get a 16GB iPhone/iPod Touch.

USB_Humping_Dog

It just constantly crashes for me. Not sure why. :(

Twoje

Lame. Apple needs to lighten up.

I want DRIVETRAIN for the Transmission client. Why couldn't it be added to Cydia this quickly? Or is it available and I just can't find it?

@Eugenia: Yeah, pretty sure if they rejected GV Mobile, then they would reject a tool that is pretty much iTunes' competitor when it comes to downloading music. This is the one time I would have to agree with their approval process.

@macpatrick: Somehow I don't think he needed you to tell him that to figure that out. Somehow, I don't think I needed to tell you that for you to figure that out either.

@Ninety-9: Wow, you're rather good at selecting bits of someone's text and taking it out of context. You would be a good "reporter" for MSNBC.

For everyone who is reading his post and not looking back at the source, here is what I really said: "At least they didn't claim uTorrent itself is illegal and instead can see, unlike many other organizations, that is a legal tool that is used for illegal purposes."

@SeraphX2: "that is a legal tool that is used for illegal purposes."

So's your web browser. In fact I could argue anything to do with technology falls under that category.

Also, this would be a legal app that interfaces with a legal app, that monitors the transfer of files which may or may not be illegal. But that's just my take.

I can see why it wasn't accepted, I'm just thoroughly amused by the process that takes place in getting software, written by a 3rd party, onto a portable device that should offer the end user full control and fair use.

Ninety-9