Just a day after it was approved, C64 is once again off the app store. The developer foolishly left the feature that got the app rejected in the first place, the BASIC interpreter, in the application, just hidden like Yelp’s “monocle” feature. A few keystrokes and the interpreter was back up and running, and, of course, Apple heard about it.

So the app is back off the App Store until further notice. Why the C64 developer thought he would get away with it is beyond. Yelp got away with “monocle” because it didn’t allow you to do anything prohibited by the developer ToS. This, on the other hand, is strictly forbidden, whether it’s hidden or not. The developer issued the following statement:

Unfortunately Apple this night pulled the C64 App from the App Store. We had agreed with Apple to remove basic from the application, but as we believed it would be possible to convince Apple to let it in later on, we left it in the app to be activated remotely by us when we had “go” from Apple.

Clearly it wasn’t going to be remotely activated. It was activated by the user. Think this one through next time guys. It’s not that complicated.

The latest in Apple’s string of backtracking and approving formerly rejected apps comes to us in the form of the officially licensed Commodore 64 emulator app. I’m sure you’ll remember the app making headlines for being initially rejected because it contained its own executable runtimes for the ROMs of classic C64 games.

Well Apple has given the app another chance, and its already live in the App Store for just $5. The reason for the approval is that the 3.0 SDK makes allowances for in-app purchases, which probably means there’s now an infrastructure in place that keeps the ROMs and the app in the same location, one that doesn’t require access to any other parts of the phone. Purchase of the app includes Dragons Den, Le Mans, Jupiter Lander, Arctic Shipwreck, and Jack Attack.