"We've reviewed Airborne and determined we cannot post it to the App Store at this time because it encourages a physical activity that could result in a customer damaging their iPhone."<p>I had a great and simple idea for an application a while back. It was actually a pretty cool game, and I'm certain it would have spread like wildfire - but its rather understandable why Apple denied it.<p>The game simply asked a user to keep their phone airborne (i.e. by throwing it / dropping it onto soft surface) and then measured the amount of time it was in the air for. I threw in a looping scream as well as challenges to push further for good measure. There was a high score table too :).<p>I've been trying to work out a way to get something out of this for a while, but unfortunately haven't come up with anything reasonable -- so decided to just publish the source code.<p>Its all available at https://github.com/qix/airborne as GPLv3 (to the extent I'm allowed to by the Apple license.)
The code is pretty shocking, I was just fooling around while learning Objective-C.
Rework it for Android, no pesky risk of rejection there ;)<p>I'd most likely install it on my android phone, if it were free/ad supported. Could see it being a very viral game, with people finding interesting ways to game the scoreboard.<p>This is what insurance is for, right?
Recently i have started taking photos throwing my iphone in the air. Do you think you could extend app functionality to trigger camera while phone is free falling?<p>Let me know :)
You can push the app and generate buzz by giving away a replacement phone to the top scorer over some period. If its ad supported and grows large enough the money should cover the expense.<p>Something like:<p>"Want / Need a new phone see how far you can send yours flying for a shot at new hardware."
I had an idea for an Xbox 360 achievement involving peripherals with accelerometers (the Lips microphone, and Kinect).<p>"One Minute of Free Fall"<p>The Vomit Comet is about 45 seconds . . .
We have a game like that on Maemo: <a href="http://maemo.org/downloads/product/Maemo5/n900fly/" rel="nofollow">http://maemo.org/downloads/product/Maemo5/n900fly/</a>
Cool, I had a similar idea, which was to make people throw their phones into the air and try to make it do as many flips as possible. Great to see that you actually built something like that.<p>I was well aware of the "risk your phone" aspect, "iDare" was my working title...
Hey I really don't know you and I don't want to be personal but it's ideas like this that make me happy that Apple is taking care what comes to the App Store and what not.<p>You know I really don't understand how someone could enjoy a game which encourages people to throw a 600 dollar device onto a "soft" surface. You how this ends right? Kids want to play this and they will throw the from EVERYWHERE and BOOM you have to buy another 600 dollar phone.<p>You want to make money? Write something useful.<p>However I really like that you put the source code on GitHub.
I made an iPhone app called "HammerTime!"<p>Round #1 instructs you to place your phone on a hard surface, find a hammer of any kind, and hit your phone as hard as you can.<p>Rounds #2 and up instructs you to repeat Round #1.<p>A permanent blank screen indicates you have won and you may receive a prize (a brand new iPhone!!) if you can convince Apple your phone is malfunctioning because of something they did.
There was an app called Hangtime that did this, <a href="http://iphonehangtime.com/" rel="nofollow">http://iphonehangtime.com/</a>, but it seems like it's gone. I just searched the app store and found another app, also called Hangtime!, that appears to do the same thing under the guise of measuring how long you yourself are airborne (not just the phone).