Apple Rejects iPad Camera Button from Astro Michael Kwan October 31, 2017 News A couple of weeks ago, we reported on the innovative Astro Luna Display. It’s this wonderfully inventive solution that effectively transforms your iPad into a wireless secondary display for your Macbook. Part of that innovation came from how Astro effectively created an iPad camera button to free up precious screen real estate. Unfortunately, Apple has decided this is a no-go for them. In a post published to the Astro HQ Medium blog, the company announced that the iPad Camera Button has been rejected by the Apple’s App Store review. As you might recall, the way that Astro wanted this to work was that when you are inside the Astro Luna Display app, you could put your finger over the front-facing camera, blocking its view. When you did this, the contextual menu would pop up with a variety of options. The idea was that you didn’t need to have an on-screen menu button to bring up these settings. That made for a cleaner interface and it took advantage of a feature — the front-facing camera — that was otherwise going unused when inside the app. However, Apple sees this as a violation of their app review process under Section 2.5.9, which states: Apps that alter or disable the functions of standard switches, such as the Volume Up/Down and Ring/Silent switches, or other native user interface elements or behaviors will be rejected. The App Store Review Guidelines don’t explicitly state that Astro can’t do what it wants to do with the front-facing camera, but I guess it violates the spirit of that guideline. The selfie camera is designed to be used as a camera and not as an iPad camera button. Astro is understandably disappointed with the decision, but they have vowed to continue “pushing the boundaries of software and hardware engineering so that we can create the best productivity tools possible.” Share This With The World!
