Music functions are off-limits to iPhone SDK developers

I was disappointed to hear that any functionality related to the iPhone’s music playback is inaccessible by the iPhone SDK. Although the SDK has many possibilities, anything to do with the iPhone music player is prohibited. This means that possible applications for social networks like Last.fm are not possible through the SDK. This is something I do right now with my Jailbroken iPod Touch running 1.1.4, using an app called MobileScrobbler. Apple hasn’t spoken about this restriction, but some suggest that the reason for it being in place is to stop rival music stores to iTunes being created. I’m happy for no rival stores to be created, but Apple is limiting a lot of the capabilities a developer could do with the device. There is, of course, a chance that the restriction would be removed later on, once the SDK is out of beta stages.

Via [iPodNN]