A BitTorrent app called IS Drive is now available for iPhone, despite Apple's history of rejecting this sort of app. Even though Apple loosened some of its guidelines for the iOS Developer Program in early September, the policy still reads that your app cannot break the law or infringe on copyrights. And that's the reason why there have been no BitTorrent apps to date, according to an Apple spokesman who claimed last year when another BitTorrent app was rejected that "this category of application is often used for the purpose of infringing third party rights." It was a surprise, then, to see the approval of IS Drive, now available in the App Store. IS Drive allows users of Imageshack's torrent download service to check and manage their downloads. The app was previously available on Cydia under the name "Jack Torrents." The app does require a premium Imageshack membership. In an interview Read More

Jack Torrents, an app for managing downloads on the torrent service of ImageShack.com, is now available on the App Store under the name "IS Drive." Either as part of the recent liberalization of the approval process, or because reviewers genuinely missed the fact that it could be used for BitTorrent downloads, this is the first torrent-related app to make it to the App Store. Apps with similar functionality - such as Drivetrain and µTorrent - have been rejected in the past by Apple. "Because this category of applications is often used for the purpose of infringing third party rights," read an email to the developers of µTorrent, "we have chosen to not publish this type of application to the App Store." As a result, both apps ended up on Cydia, as did TorrentTRAK, a remote control app for the desktop Transmission BitTorrent client. Derek Kepner's Jack Torrents app has also been Read More